Pool Party!!!

Our 4th annual pool party was a success at Jennifer Lancaster's house on Saturday.  We had good food, good fun, and great fellowship with each other!  And EVERYONE made it!!

Remove the Poop

Kitty Litter Cake

There are many strange things in the Bible.  If we were writing a book to base a new religion on, we would probably clean it up a bit, but God isn't afraid of strange things.  In fact, He uses them to teach us more about Him.  Over the next few weeks, we're going to take a look at some of the gross, weird, and true  things found in the Bible to see what we can learn from them.

Tonight, we talked about poop, or more specifically, where to poop.  Yes, the Bible even mentions where to do your business!  We started off with a funny short video.

Everyone Poops - The Movie

We read Deuteronomy 23:12-14 - Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement. For the Lord your God moves about in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you. Your camp must be holy, so that he will not see among you anything indecent and turn away from you.

What is the command in these passages?  Why does God tell the Israelites to do this?  Why else do you think this is beneficial.  We talked about the cleanliness of it, diseases, the potential smell...to name a few.

God is serious about holiness.  When the army was assembled, He wanted to make sure that they were taking their lives and their actions as serious as He was.  If the army got together and didn't follow God's rules then He wouldn't go into battle with them.  God wanted His people to approach Him with respect and to live in holiness.  God intends for us to be holy.  This wasn't only an Old Testament idea either.

1 Peter 1:13-16 - Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. 14 As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. 15 But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”

Because God is holy, what are we supposed to be?  What does it mean to be holy?  What are some synonyms for holy (sacred, devout, sinless, righteous, moral, just, good, angelic, blameless, saintly, perfect, innocent).

Next, we played the Holy Are the White M&M's Game.  We set up a table and chairs and partnered the kids up.  One youth sat in a chair at the table with a plate of M&M's in front of him.  The plate had 20 "whiteless" M&M's and 10 white M&M's on it.  They had to keep their arms down at their sides.  Their partner, blindfolded, stood behind them, but with their arms under the arms of their partners seated at the table.  On our signal, the blindfolded students had to find all of the non-white M&M's and feed them to their seated partners.  Candies that fell to the floor were replaced with new ones so that all teams had to eat the same amount of M&M's.  The first team to have only 10 white M&M's on their plate won.

This is sort of a picture of what it means to be holy.  To be holy is to be set apart, to be undefiled, uncorrupted.  That is what we are called to be.  We are called to remove from our lives anything that isn't of God.  God wants us to be holy like He is holy.

So what exactly does being holy mean in the lives of the youth?  That's what we discussed next, letting each student give their own examples.  There were some obvious things like don't drink or do drugs, smoke, or cuss.  But there were some more subtle things too (don't lie, obey parents, don't cheat, don't bully, be kind, etc...).  Holiness means avoiding hateful thoughts about others, It means to not only stop doing things, but start doing holy things.  Holiness is about standing up for others and cutting out gossip and backbiting.

So how do we get holy?  We have to clean up our lives!  Maybe you've tried to do this before...after an awesome youth event life ATF or a message on Sunday.  This time things will be different is what you tell yourself.  You make commitments to stay away from the bad stuff and to read your Bible and do good stuff. But for some reason, it never seems to work or doesn't seem to last anyway.

It doesn't work because we aren't strong enough to clean up our own lives.  Only God is strong enough.  We can be holy if we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us.  We shared a little more then on what that means and how to obtain it if any of the kids were unsure of their salvation.

If you are a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit working and giving you strength to change from the inside out.  But that means that you will have to decide that holiness is something that you actually want.  It means that you are going to surrender to God and go out of your way to live the way He wants.  And why try to be holy?  Because God's Word says so...because it's how we succeed in this world...to save us from unnecessary pain and help us live fulfilled lives.

We ended with giving each youth a copy of a picture of a toilet.  We gave them pens and asked them to quiet their hearts and think about tonight's lesson.  Are you serious about holiness?  Is your life clean or are there some things that you should bury "outside the camp"?  They were encouraged to write some of the things in their lives that they knew needed to be removed.  We then prayed and asked God to give them the strength to flush them out forever.  Pun intended!!

Being a mom of 3 boys, we had to end our evening together with a snack of kitty litter cake.  I actually succeeded in grossing out some of the grossest boys in our class!!!  It was a real treat!  Praying it's a lesson they'll never forget and is practical enough for them to work through in their own lives.

Fools Part 4 - The Simple

Psalm 19:7 - The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul.  The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple.

Tonight was our last night learning about fools.  Kerissa taught our lesson and the kids love her!!  We talked about the Hebrew word for this kind of fool, the simple fool...peti.  This kind of fool welcomes correction and instruction, but they are immature, easily led into all kinds of enticement.  They are naive, gullible, easily fooled.

We showed the kids a couple of YouTubes on people being scammed.  These were gullible people who were fooled...

Magazine Scam Sales
Sweepstakes Scam

Simple fools don't think things through.  They believe what others tell them because they don't think for themselves.  Most young kids are like this and can be talked into believing all sorts of things that aren't true.  We asked the kids if they have a younger brother or sister that they've ever tried to fool into doing or believing something.

Proverbs 14:15 - The simple believe anything, but the prudent give thought to their steps.

The opposite of a simple person is a prudent person.  He thinks about what he has heard and decides if it is true.

Saul is an example.  He was the King of Israel, but he disobeyed God.  He was a rebellious fool.  God sent the prophet Samuel to him to speak the words in 1 Samuel 15:23b ("Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has rejected you as King.") .  God took the kingdom away from Saul and promised it to David instead.  Saul became jealous and angry and tried to kill David.  David fled and Saul chased him everywhere.

David spared Saul's life one day when he and a few of his men were hiding in a cave where Saul entered to relieve himself.  David could have killed Saul then and ended the chase.  David's men spoke 1 Samuel 24:4a to David to convince him now was the time to kill Saul (The men said, "This is the day the Lord spoke of when He said to you, 'I will give your enemy into your hands for you to deal with as you wish.'").  And a simple fool might have.  But David was no fool!

1 Samuel 24:4b-6 - Then David crept up unnoticed and cut off a corner of Saul’s robe.  Afterward, David was conscience-stricken for having cut off a corner of his robe.  He said to his men, “The Lord forbid that I should do such a thing to my master, the Lord’s anointed, or lay my hand on him; for he is the anointed of the Lord.”

David didn't just follow the advice of his men.  He was prudent (wise).  He thought about what it would mean if he killed Saul.

Young children don't often think things through.  They blindly follow what others tell them.  They believe what they're told.  Adults can be simple too.  They can easily be led astray by people teaching them bad things.

For a visual, we used celery that had spent two days sitting in cups of colored water.  The celery absorbs the food coloring and becomes the color it was placed in.  We are like celery.  Just like the celery becomes the color of the water, you can become like the people you spend time with.  If you are with wise people, you will become wise.  If you hang around foolish people, you become foolish.  When you are foolish, harm can come to you....painful things can happen to you.  Choosing the right people to hang out with is very important.  If you want to be wise, you must be around wise people, not foolish people.

Proverbs 13:20 - Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.

We put vinegar in a bowl and called it foolish people.  A glass of milk represented the kids.  We asked the kids what they thought would happen if the milk was poured into the vinegar and sat in the bowl with it.

Then we did the experiment and talked about Proverbs 13:20 as they watched the milk change.

Then we discussed our lesson:

• What does the Bible mean when it says that a "simple man believes anything?"  
• What should you do instead of believing everything?  
• Does not wanting to be a simple fool mean that you NEVER believe what others tell you?  
• How can you tell if something is good advice or foolishness?  
• How can you find out what is good and right in a situation?  
• What happens to simple fools?  
• Does this mean that nothing hard or painful or bad or hurtful can happen to a wise person?  
• What is the difference?  
• Do you want to be a simple fool or a wise person?  
• What can you do to become a wise person?  
• What kind of people do you have for friends?
• What are other ways besides friends that we are positively or negatively influenced?
• Is there any bad influence in your life that you need to get rid of?  
• What will you do about this?
• What are some good influences you can add to your life?

We re-read Psalm 19:7 in closing.  Great four weeks studying the fools of the Bible!  Praying the kids remember the mockers, godless, rebels, and simple as they choose how they will live and what choices they will make on a daily basis!