The Holy Spirit - Part 2

The "Devoted" Five

We continued our talk about the Holy Spirit tonight. We talked about the Israelites's sin in Exodus 32 with the making of the golden calf and how God was so angry with the people He didn't even want to go with them on their way to the promised land anymore. We talked about Moses's stand to not go anywhere without God's presence and how we too should refuse to go anywhere without God's presence (the Holy Spirit) leading us (Ex. 33:1-3, 15-16).

To illustrate this, we brought a glove, just a plain old glove. We talked about what the glove could do. Can it pick things up, hold things, use a pen to write? Not by itself! Alone, a glove is just a limp piece of material shaped like a hand, but unable to do anything a hand can do.

Then Tara put her hand inside the glove. Now the glove could pick things up, hold things, write with a pen, make a fist, walk on two fingers, etc...

To God, we are like a glove. And God's Holy Spirit is like the hand that fits into the glove when we become Christians. Without God, we are limp and lifeless, useless and empty gloves. Once we have the Holy Spirit inside of us, God can begin to do wonderful things with us and through us. When God's Holy Spirit is within us we have a far greater ability to love others and to understand right from wrong. We can genuinely and with the right motives, exhibit the fruits of the Spirit as found in Galatians 5:22-23. It's like we have this supernatural power when we have the Holy Spirit inside of us (Acts 1:8a).

We went outside then and planted some giant sunflower seeds along the fence next to the educational building. It'll be a reminder to the kids of last week's lesson about following God wherever He goes just as the sunflower follows the sun wherever it goes.

This was also our week to celebrate with pizza for dinner and rewards for those kids who took on the challenge of daily devotions from last month, completed them, and returned them by the deadline we set for them. The kids who received their rewards were quite proud of their handmade candles from us in their favorite colors. A special thanks to Jennifer Smith for helping out with this project too!

The Holy Spirit - Part 1

We left for a mini vacation this morning until Friday and so ZG was taught by Mrs. Lynn and Mr. Don.

Pastor Billy talked about the Holy Spirit this past week. We asked the kids who the Holy Spirit is, what His job is, how He helps us, how we get the Holy Spirit living inside of us, and what happens to us once the Holy Spirit is there? What do others see in us when the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts?

We discussed how God gave us the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, but in the Old Testament, He spoke personally with those He loved, like Moses. We read Exodus 34:29-35 about Moses' encounter with God on the mountain top and what happened to him afterwards. We talked about why Moses' face shone after His encounter with God, why the people were afraid of Moses when they saw his face shining, even his own brother Aaron and the other leaders of Israel. We talked about why they thought Moses then chose to cover his face with a veil when he was with the people from then on.

We looked at some New Testament Scriptures then about what happens to us when we receive the Holy Spirit as new believers. We read 2 Corinthians 3:13-18. This Scripture says that, as believers in the New Covenant, or the covenant of Jesus Christ, we radiate the Lord’s glory like Moses’ face did. We don’t wear veils any longer once we become Christians, but we shine with God’s love and glory and example to those around us. We discussed how this means we should live then. How it should direct the way we speak, think, and behave in any and all circumstances.

Then we read Isaiah 60:1-3 and talked about what should be the result of our living as examples of Christ and letting our light shine in such a dark world of unbelievers. We looked at verse three again and decided that maybe nations and kings would not necessarily be drawn to us individually, but neighbors and friends, people we run into in the grocery store or at a park and you start talking to, homeless people you give a brown bag to, unsaved family members, people at Prayer Stop, etc...the possibilities are endless.

Then we showed the kids a sunflower and asked them what it was. We told them a little bit about what makes sunflowers so special. Sunflowers grow anywhere the sun shines hot and bright. They protect the land from erosion when it rains too much and produce seeds that birds, chicken, cattle, and even humans can eat. The seeds also grow more sunflowers when they are planted.

Do you know that the sunflower follows its true love all day long? When the sun rises in the east, the sunflower leans in that direction. Then as the sun crosses the sky towards the west, the sunflower follows it by tilting toward the light. By sunset, the flower gazes west, faithfully taking in the last warm rays of its beloved sun.

Unlike some other flowers whose names I can't even pronounce (and we tried to give a few examples), the sunflower’s name is easy to remember. Here is a flower that loves the sun so much that it even looks like the sun!

The Bible tells us that God is light. In talking about the end of this age, Isaiah 60:19 tells us that, the sun will no more be your light by day, nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you, for the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. How cool is that? In heaven, we won’t need a sun or a moon because God will be our light and there will never be darkness because of His presence.

We thought back to our story about Moses’ face glowing after he spent time on the mountain with His God. Moses’ face shone because he began to look like the One he loved…just like the sunflower looks like the one it loves, the sun.

We have a Son whose glory we are to reflect and follow and shine in this dark world as an example of. It’s not the s-u-n though. It’s the S-o-n, Jesus Christ. We prayed and asked God to help us be good reflectors of His glory to those around us, to always remember those that are watching our example, and to keep our faces turned towards Jesus, following His example and His glorious light because we can’t be good examples if we aren’t good followers of the BEST example.

Pressed Down, Shaken Together, and Overflowing

We talked tonight about Elijah and the widow from 1 Kings 17:9-24. We discussed how grave the times were for the widow and her son and still, when asked to do so, she gave what she had and didn't attempt to hold onto it even tighter because she had so little. We talked about how we could apply this to our own lives and discussed times we found it difficult to share something with someone else because it was all we had left of that specific thing. The kids gave some great examples!

Then we talked about how it shows true Christian character when we give out of our lack because it shows how great our faith in God to provide all of our needs is. We discussed how having faith even as small as a mustard seed can be enough (Matthew 17:20) if that faith is strong and does not waiver when difficult times come our way.

To illustrate this, we brought an air popper popcorn maker and some popcorn kernels. On the outside and uncooked, all of the kernels look just alike and they're not very tasty either. There is nothing to tell them apart or make some stand apart from others. But then we put them in the popper. We heated up things a bit, the heat representing times of trials and tribulations in our lives. Some of the kernels popped into beautiful, fluffy, tasty popcorn that gave off a delightful smell. Some of the kernels didn't change at all. Still others cracked, but never fully transformed.

We compared the kernels that turned into popcorn to true Christians. When tested, true Christians grow in their faith, they flourish and bloom and become even more beautiful on the inside and more appealing to others around them on the outside. The cracked kernels were those Christians that cracked under the pressure of the fiery trials and didn't grow or flourish, but instead remained unfruitful, unedible, not able to be used by God. The unpopped kernels of course represented the non-believers who don't change one way or the other as a result of their circumstances. Doesn't some of this sound familiar after studying the different types of soils?!

Back to our widow, we discussed how she was definitely a popped kernel of popcorn. We also talked about how, as a result of her faith, God gave her a gift pressed down, shaken together, and overflowing (Luke 6:38)...literally! He made it so that, in a time of great famine, her flour and oil containers never stopped flowing so she and her son could eat and survive the difficult times they were in. To illustrate this we used a measuring cup and asked the kids how much of a large bag of cotton candy they thought we could fit into it. None of them thought the entire bag of course, but that's exactly what we did...pressed down, shaken together, and overflowing!

And with popcorn and cotton candy as our object lessons tonight, I bet you can't guess what we had for snacks after class! Hey, at least it wasn't fried butter!!

The Parable of the Sower - Part 2

Matthew 13:22-23 - The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. ²³ But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”

We finished our study of this great parable tonight by talking about the last two soils. We discussed the thorny soils and what those thorns represent (cares, deceitfulness of riches, desire for other things, pleasures of life). We talked about how these thorns can literally choke the Word for new hearers of it. We looked at Philippians 4:6-7, 1 Timothy 6:9-10, and Matthew 19:16-22 and asked the question, "What is all you really had was Jesus?" This was a hard reality for the kids to imagine, but we talked about what that would look like and mean for each of them.

Next we talked about the good soil and how those hearers of the Word understand what they hear. They accept it and hold it fast in an honest and good heart. It bears fruit in their lives, which can represent souls they help lead to Christ through evangelism, the fruit found in Galatians 5:22-23, or even character. We looked at Colossians1:3-6 and John 15:1-8 and talked about how God prunes us through trials and tribulations, but that pruning helps us to grow in Christ and bear even more fruit, unlike the trials and tribulations the rocky soil hearers face that cause them to turn from Christ altogether.

We also discussed how it was a good season for the crops back in Bible times if a harvest produced 10 fold. Yet Jesus says good soil hearers will produce 30, 60, and even 100 fold harvests. That would have been considered miraculous and in some cases even impossible. But we know that with God, ALL things are possible!

We also finished our parable cubes tonight and assembled them. So parents, quiz your kids with their cubes! Ask them to tell you the Parable of the Sower, its elements, and what each soil represents. They know it!

We also replenished the bubble gum on the drama club's bulletin board in the hallway and loaded some food for a family in need into Mrs. Kim's van. Just because we had no brown bags to fill tonight because we still have some left over from the big lot we did at Christmas, didn't mean God couldn't use us for a few missions.

Bible Hangman

Well, we were supposed to finish our parable cubes with the last two soils from the Parable of the Sower tonight, but then HALF OUR CLASS WAS A NO SHOW!! There's a nasty flu bug going around! Needless to say, we didn't want half the class to not have the benefit of hearing the lesson and completing their cubes and so we played Bible Hangman instead. Everyone had a turn coming up with a Scripture, people, or event from the Bible to try and stump us with.