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.
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.
