Tuesday, September 22, 2009

God Wants Me To Talk With Him

Props: Puppet (Sheldon) and large box

Review object lessons "God Knows My Name" and "What Language Does God Speak?"

Does God know me? He knows my name! He made me.
What language does God speak? My language.
How has He talked to us? Thru His Word, the Bible.
What do we call it when we talk to God? Prayer.
Today, we want to talk a little bit about prayer.
How many of you pray? When do you pray?

(Interrupt the discussion using Sheldon, who is in the box (prayer closet)

He speaks from the box (closet) as he prays. "Dear God…I need help! Mumble, mumble."

(Teacher to kids) Did you hear something? (Teacher as Sheldon mumbles again) "And Trixie was mean to me… Mumble, mumble…"

(Teacher to kids-I think it came from here-indicate "closet"-Let's take a look)

Teacher..."Sheldon! What are you doing in that box?"

(he appears from box, speaking) "Go away! Can't you read? I'm praying to God—The Bible says in Mathew 6:6 to go into your closet and shut the door and pray to God and I'm trying to do that and you're interrupting me!"

Teacher..."Praying? Sheldon…You don't really have to go into your closet to talk to God.
I don't? No…The Bible just means that you have to quit thinking about other things and just think about God when you talk to Him. You can do that anywhere."

Sheldon..."I can?"

Teacher..."Sure. Sometimes it helps if you close your eyes, so you don't see what's going on around you, but you can be alone with God even if you're in a crowd of people… Like those people out there? Right. Just pretend they aren't even there… It's just me and God? That's right—just you and God."

"Oh…" (Sheldon turns to face blackboard) "…and, dear God, as I was saying before we got interrupted, Trixie was mean to me, and I don't know what to do about it… mumble, mumble. Amen!" (walk him down)

Teacher to kids...Sheldon had a problem. What was it? He thought he had to go into a closet to pray.

When Jesus said to pray in a closet, He was talking about some people He called hypocrites (people who said one thing, but really did something else). These people went out on the streets and stood there praying very loudly about how good they were, so people would think they were extra spiritual.

Jesus told His disciples not to pray just to impress people, but to close out everything but God, because God is everywhere and knows everything. When you want to talk with God, you can do that anywhere--at home, at school, with other people...or even in your closet.

Children draw a picture of some places where you can pray.

No comments:

Post a Comment