Youth for the Lord, September 22

Happy Monday Dear Parents!

I was blessed yesterday!
First...just about every 'kid' was at church and came down for our classes. It is so nice to see so many chairs filled with smiling faces!
Second...the kids taught ME something and I'm kind of ashamed to say so. The morning started great. I loved the worship service and the songs we sang. I even liked the Hebrew lyrics we learned (though I was disappointed at first to hear our language may not be the language we speak in heaven...silly me). Kids are cool because they will show love so easily. If you treat them right...being kind, listening, giving them attention...they return that love 100 times over. A couple of the younger ones came over to hold my hand and be near me while we were singing. It seemed they were so happy to be next to me. They were smiling and hanging on tight. Simply put I felt loved and it made me feel good. That's what I love about children...they lack some of the social inhibitions we have learned over the years (especially introverted me). Then I felt God's hand on my shoulder. He said, "Chuck...notice the children. That's how I want to be worshiped; with hearts filled with love and overflowing with joy." Do you feel like reaching out and grabbing God's hand when you are worshiping Him? Do you want to throw your arms around Him and squeeze as hard as you can? Are you 'on cloud 9' because you are in His presence? I'm sure it will be like that in heaven and I can't wait for that time. I want to worship Jesus like that now! 

Thanks for letting me share that, and thanks for sharing your kids with me. They teach me so many things. In fact it was so nice to see all the kindness (the topic of our lesson) all around. I saw examples of kindness  everywhere I looked.

Our lesson this week is about sin and what we do about it. The lesson title is "God Forgives David" and the focus is that God wants us to repent when we sin. Repent is a big word for kids. It's more than saying you're sorry. It's a heart felt awareness that you have done something wrong that hurt someone else with a desire not to do it again. It is not saying your sorry because you got caught and are told to apologize.

David sinned what we would call some very bad sins. But sin is sin. All sin hurts God and separates us from Him. It's the darkness in our hearts that makes it hard to see and feel God's love for His love never ends, never diminishes. We like to justify our sins, especially the ones we like most (they are the ones that cause us the most grief but the same ones we keep repeating over and over). David was a sinner too. He was married to a woman whose husband he had killed after having an affair with her. Some how he was justifying all this as God had to send Nathan to help him understand what he had done wrong...adultery and murder. David's actions cost him dearly but God's love and forgiveness never stopped. When David realized he had offended God He was heart broken and wrote a beautiful psalm. David repented...he realized he had hurt God and he wanted to restore his relationship with God.

The text for our lesson is 2 Samuel 12:1-7 and Psalm 51:1-12. You will find the story of David, Bathsheba and Uriah in 2 Samuel 11. Please read and discuss these verses as you feel appropriate with your children and help them begin to understand God's love for sinners (that's all of us) and His hope that we will repent. It is also a good time to help them understand the difference between forgiveness (an act done by the one offended) and repentance (an act done by the offender). I don't have my lesson planned yet but think I will be touching on the sin David committed. I'm not sure How God wants me to do this yet but I know I need to be sensitive to the details but also help the kids understand what David did was so wrong. Yet God never stopped loving David and never stopped called him a man after His own heart. 

One of the very best things about God is that it does not matter how heinous our sin is, He forgets all about it once we accept Jesus as our Savior.

Blessings!
Mr. Chuck