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Being God's Friend

Unit 1 / Lesson 4

Being God's Friend

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Teacher's Prep

  • Games

    • Intro Game: What's the Time, Mr. Wolf?

      • If you are not familiar with the game, here are the basic rules:

      • Before class, set up a line to mark a safe zone for the class. Ideally, this line will be about ten feet from a wall so it can be crossed while running at full speed without crashing into anything.

      • Masking tape or painters tape on the ground would make a great line, though it takes a bit of effort to get tape off the ground afterwards. Alternatively, you can set up two pylons at the sides and say there's an imaginary line between the pylons.

  • Main Activity (Board Games):

    • You will want simple board games that are easy to understand and quick to play. 

    • Carnival-type games would work well, e.g. Jenga, Beer Pong, Matching Cards, Operation, and the Fishing Game.


    Intro

    SLIDE 1

  • Gathering

    • How was your week?

    SLIDE 2

  • Intro Game: What's the Time, Mr. Wolf?

    • Instructions

      • We will start with a game! It's called, What's the Time, Mr. Wolf? Let’s watch the instructions together.

      • Teacher: play this YouTube for a one-minute summary of the game.

      • Here are the rules again: Everyone will start behind a line. This is your home, and this is where you're safe. Someone will be Mr. Wolf, and they'll start on the opposite wall. Then we’ll ask, “what’s the time Mr. Wolf?” Mr. Wolf will say something like, “it’s 5 o’clock.” Then everyone will take 5 steps, or whatever number Mr. Wolf said. You can take big steps or little steps, but you can’t hop or jump in your steps. They have to be walking steps.

      • If someone manages to tag Mr. Wolf, everyone wins. BUT, there’s a catch. When you ask “What's the time Mr. Wolf,” Mr. Wolf can also say, “Dinner time!”, and turn around and try to tag someone, and everyone else will run home. If Mr. Wolf tags someone before they're home, then everyone loses, and we'll pick another Mr. Wolf.

      • We'll need as much space as we can to run, and then we'll have one of the adults be Mr. Wolf for the first round. Adults: go easy on them at least on the first time around.

      • Teacher: you may want to play a few rounds depending on time and interest. Note: as this game involves running and chasing, there is some risk of injury. You will want the running space to be as clear as possible, perhaps with some padding (or adults in front of objects) to prevent collisions with corners and other hazards. To adjust the difficulty, you can either say that the wolf can peek between rounds to see who is getting close to them, or they can’t peek to see who is getting close to them.

    SLIDE 3

    • Debrief

      • Let’s all make a semicircle facing the front!

      • We played this game because it's a bit like life. We all want to do well and win. But a lot of people get into trouble, and their story doesn't end well.

    SLIDE 4

  • Big Question

    • Our big question today is: How can we make sure our story ends well?

    SLIDE 5

  • Big Idea

    • Our big idea today is, our story will end well if we HEAR from God and DO what He says.

    SLIDE 6

  • Bible Reference


    SLIDE 7

    Point 1

  • Our first point is, we need to HEAR from God.

    SLIDE 8

  • Bible Reference

    • Let's read from the Bible.

    • Genesis 6:5-14 (CEV)

      • 5  The Lord saw how bad the people on earth were and that everything they thought and planned was evil. 6 He was sorry that he had made them, 7 and he said, “I'm going to destroy every person on earth! I'll even wipe out animals, birds, and reptiles. I'm sorry I ever made them.”

        8 But the Lord was pleased with Noah, 9  and this is the story about him. Noah was the only person who lived right and obeyed God. 10 He had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

        11-12 God knew that everyone was terribly cruel and violent. 13 So he told Noah:

        Cruelty and violence have spread everywhere. Now I'm going to destroy the whole earth and all its people. 14 Get some good lumber and build a boat. Put rooms in it and cover it with tar inside and out.

    SLIDE 9

  • Explanation

    • Let me explain what I just read. Noah lived in a time when nobody loved God or listened to Him. Everyone was terrible. All day long, they only did evil, and they only thought about doing evil things.

    • Noah was different from the people around him. People must have thought he was really weird, because he didn’t just do what everyone else did. 

    • Noah always wanted to do the right thing because he loved God.

    • The big adult Bibles tell us that Noah walked with God. It's the Bible's way of saying, Noah was God's friend. God and Noah did everything together.

    • Nobody else wanted to listen to God, but God spoke to Noah and told him things.

    SLIDE 10

  • Application

    • If we are close to God, God will tell us things too.

    • Normally God uses the Bible to tell us things, but He also uses all kinds of things in life to remind us of what He taught us in the Bible.

    • It's important to know our Bible well, because it contains good news and great wisdom.

    • But there is a lot of stuff out in the world that sounds like good news and great wisdom, but it's not.

    • We need to be able to tell which ideas come from God and which ideas don't.

    SLIDE 11

  • Video story: With You All The Way, by Max Lucado

    SLIDE 12

  • Debrief

    • In this story, the wisest of the knights was the one who went with the prince and knew the song that he played. Because he was so close to the prince, the knight could tell the difference between the real song and all the imitations out there.

      That's what it's like to walk with God. We do everything with God, and we know Him so well that we can tell the difference between God’s idea and anyone else's idea.

    SLIDE 13

  • Discussion Question (optional)

    • Let’s pause for a discussion question.

    • What's something you can do to be close to God?


    Point 2

    SLIDE 14

  • Our second point is, we need to DO what God says.

    SLIDE 15

  • Activity: Simon Says

    SLIDE 16

    • Debrief

      • We played this game because it's about doing the right things. We had to make sure that Simon said it before we did it.

      • Being a Christian is like that too. We need to know what God says, and then we have to do those things.

    SLIDE 17

  • Bible Reference

    • In our Bible story, God gave Noah some instructions. Let's read what God said.

    • Genesis 6:14-22 (CEV)

      • 14 Get some good lumber and build a boat. Put rooms in it and cover it with tar inside and out. 15 Make it 133 meters long, 22 meters wide, and 13 meters high. 16 Build a roof on the boat and leave a space of about 44 centimeters between the roof and the sides. Make the boat three stories high and put a door on one side.

    SLIDE 18

  • (Skipping to verse 19…)

    • 19-20 Take into the boat with you a male and a female of every kind of animal and bird, as well as a male and a female of every reptile. I don't want them to be destroyed. 21 Store up enough food both for yourself and for them.

    • 22  Noah did everything God told him to do.

  • Explanation

    • In our Bible story, God told Noah to build a big boat that would save his family and every kind of animal. It was a simple idea, but in order to build the big boat, he had to take care of a lot of small details.

    • He had to chop down his own trees and make his own lumber. He had to make his own tools. He had to gather the food for the animals himself. There was so much work to do. Some people say Noah might have taken about 70 years to finish the boat. Every day, he had to just do what he could, a little bit at a time. That's how he saved the world.

    SLIDE 19

  • Application

    • We can learn from that. In the Bible we have really big ideas, like loving our neighbor, helping people to know God, and making a difference that lasts forever.

    • We need to get the big ideas right. We can't just follow what everyone else does. That's why we pay attention at church and that's why we keep trying to understand the Bible.

    • After we get the big ideas right, we need to do the little things every day. Every day we do our best for people, we try to get a little stronger and learn a bit more, and we build good habits. Over time, we'll get a lot done.

    • The big idea matters, but the small details matter too. We need both.

    SLIDE 20

  • Discussion Question (optional)

    • Let’s pause for a discussion question.

    • What's a small thing you can do every day?


    Conclusion

    SLIDE 21

  • Let’s wrap up our lesson by going over the big ideas again.

  • Our Bible story shows us how to make sure our story ends well. We learned today that we need to HEAR from God, and DO what He says. This means we need to spend time with God and get to know Him, and we need to get big ideas from Him. We also need to do little details every day. If we do, we will be God's friends, and He will do amazing things with us.


    Main Activity (Board Games)

    SLIDE 22

  • Now we'll end our lesson with board games!

  • Board games are a bit like life, because there’s normally a big idea in the game, but there’s also little details that are important to do in order to accomplish the big idea. It’s like that in our relationship with God too.

  • Teacher: lead board games


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