God's Mission

We just finished our annual focus on missions at church.  I was blessed to be able to work on some curriculum for our preschoolers.  I love getting to work with these kiddos.

We were able to tack on a few extra lessons due to how the Christmas series concluded, but then missed a Sunday due to a fabulous missions experience.  All in all, five lessons were prepared.

It was so fun to think through and get them ready.  Here is a quick summary of the lessons & the main point we were trying to communicate.  Seeds of TRUTH.

God Calls  Abraham is called out.  (Genesis 12:1-4a)

• God called Abraham so that ALL nations of the world would be blessed. 

 God Sends  Jonah is sent to Ninveveh (Jonah 1-3; 4:1-2, 11)

• God sent Jonah to tell Nineveh about Him.  

We Tell Others  The Woman at the Well (John 4:4-30, 39-42)

• We can tell others about Jesus even if we only know a little.

We Bring Others  Four Friends (Mark 2:2-12; Matthew 9:2-8)

• Those who know about Jesus bring others to Him.

We all play a part  Choosing the First Missionaries (Acts 13:1-3)

• Everyone in God's family in involved in His mission for the world.

For all these lessons, we went over our memory verse:

Let the nations be glad and sing for joy.  Psalm 67:4a

All nations will be represented in that great multitude--and worshiping the the Lamb who was Slain will be glorious!

May He be praised now and forever!

We All Play a Part

Last week we met missionaries.  They are some of the people that our church has SENT out to other places in the world to TELL OTHERS about Jesus.

We have learned that from the beginning God has had a plan for having someone from EVERY nation and language and tribe worshiping in heaven.

He WILL do it and we get to play a part in how God works out His plan.

Just like the missionaries you met were sent out by our church, we learn about some others who were sent out by a church a long time ago.

In the book of Acts, we learn that there is group of people who love Jesus and are praying for God to show them what to do.  We can do that too!  We pray and read God's Word and He tells us what we should do. They were praying and even going without food so they could keep concentrating and listening for God's answer.

We don't know how God spoke to all of them, but the Bible does tell us that God told them that two of them were being chosen for a specific job.

God told Barnabas and Paul to GO.

God told the rest of those praying to SEND them.

They ALL played a part in obeying the last thing Jesus had told them before going up to heaven.

Go make followers of all people in the world.

Tell people what you've seen me do--tell them in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to ends of the earth.

We too can all pray and ask God what He would have us do.  Obeying Jesus last words to His followers means some of us will GO and some of us will SEND.

WE ALL PLAY A PART!

We Bring Others

Let the nations be glad and sing for joy.  Psalm 67:4a

Jesus is the one that will make all the nations glad and able to sing for joy.  Only through Jesus can we go to God the Father in Heaven and be part of that big group of people who will be singing for joy and worshiping God.

The woman at the well from last week had an amazing meeting with Jesus Himself.  She ran back to her town to tell others about Jesus and how He had told her things about her life that no one knew.  More importantly, Jesus had revealed to her that He was the Messiah, the Promised One, the Savior.  Many people from the town were able to listen to Jesus and believed Him too.

The story today is about some men who also believed that Jesus was very special, that He was sent by God.  Maybe they didn't understand everything, but they believed that Jesus could heal their friend.  Four men who believed Jesus could help their friend did something extraordinary.

Their friend was paralyzed--that means he could not walk.  He needed to be carried to be able to go anywhere.  His friends heard that Jesus was in their town and in a house nearby.  Together they picked up their friend and started walking toward the house.  They knew which one it was because there were people crowded at every door and window.  They would not be able to get through!

But they believed Jesus could help their friend, so they did not give up.  They slowly and carefully climbed on top of the house and started to make a hole in the roof.  Can you imagine how little pieces of roof fell into the house?  Would everyone have stopped and looked up?

There were men working very hard to make the hole large enough for their friend to fit through.  When they could, the slowly and carefully lowered their paralyzed friend in front of Jesus.

People who know about Jesus bring others to Him.

Jesus could see how much faith they had because of all the trouble they had gone through to get their friend to Jesus.  Jesus looked at the paralyzed man and said, "Young man, your sins are forgiven."

There were some leaders and teachers of the law that were there and they did not like that Jesus had said that.  "Only God can forgive sins," they thought.

Jesus could tell what they were thinking and asked them, "Why do you think that?  The Son of Man has power to forgive sins, but I can't prove it to you.  What if I said, 'Stand up, take your mat and walk?' Then you would be see I have this power."

Jesus then turned to the man, "Stand up.  Take your mat and go home."

Immediately the man stood up, picked up his mat and walked out.  Jesus healed the man!

We Tell Others

The last two weeks we looked at stories from the Old Testament.  We learn that from the beginning, God had a plan to tell all people about Himself.  God chose a family, a nation, to tell others.  God chose Abraham's family. God promised to bless Abraham so that all families on the earth would be blessed through him.  We learned that the most amazing blessing for Abraham's family was Jesus.  Jesus came from Abraham's family.

This story is from when Jesus lived on earth.  We learn from this story that we can TELL OTHERS about Jesus.

Jesus was traveling with His followers through a foreign land.  As they got close to one of the towns, Jesus sat down to rest. Jesus sent His followers to go into the town and buy some food.  Jesus sat down by a well.  Even though it was the middle of the day and very hot, a woman came to the well for some water.  Most of the women from the town had come early in the morning, but she had waited until no one would be there.

But Jesus was there.  AND Jesus talked to her.  He asked her for a drink.

The woman was so surprised that Jesus had talked to her.  She knew that people from Abraham's family did not like people from her country.  Yet Jesus talked to her and told her things about herself that she hadn't told Him.  He should not have known because they had never met before.

After talking to Jesus for a bit, the woman could tell that Jesus was special so she asked Him questions about God and the promise that God would send the Messiah, the Savior.  Jesus told her HE was the Messiah!

The woman left the jar that she'd taken to get water and ran back to the town, back to the people she hadn't wanted to see, and told them about Jesus.  She told them how He had told her many things about herself.   "Maybe he is the Messiah.  Come and see."

The woman didn't know very much about Jesus, but she knew what He had told her about herself. She knew He said He was the Messiah.  And that is all she needed to know to be able to TELL OTHERS about Jesus.

The people of the town came out to meet Jesus.  They also believed that Jesus was the Messiah sent by God the Father.  They asked Jesus to stay longer and teach them, and even more people believed.  They told the woman--"We first believed because you told us, but now we believe even more because we hear Him for ourselves."

Jesus met ONE woman and she TOLD OTHERS and eventually many believed.

We can TELL OTHERS about Jesus--whether we know a little about Him or a lot.

God Sends

We started the series by learning about Abraham and how God called him and his family to a very special purpose: to bless all the other families of the world.  We have God's Word recorded for us in the Old Testament because those in Abraham's family wrote it for us.  We learn about God through the stories recorded for us.  All stories in the Bible are true.

Many of the stories in the Old Testament tell us about how God showed us about Himself through Abraham's family, this story is different.  In this story, we learn about another nation. A nation that didn't know that God is the one and only true God.  God is God over all people--whether they know it or not.

We learn this story in a book called by the same name:  Jonah.  Jonah was called by God to be a prophet.  A prophet is someone who tells God's Words to others--even when they are difficult to hear or believe.  Sometimes God's words are telling them what is going to happen.  Always God's words are true.

God told Jonah he had to go to a city called Nineveh.  The people in Nineveh were very wicked--that means they did things that God didn't want them to do.  They were mean and hurt others.

God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and tell them God had seen them.  And to stop doing wicked things.

But Jonah did NOT go to Nineveh.  Jonah went in the other direction.  He bought a ticket to get on a boat to go far away from Nineveh. Jonah was trying to run away from God.

While they were on the boat, God sent a storm.  The men on the boat were scared and were trying to save the boat.  They were each praying to their god.  But that didn't work because their gods were not real.  There is only one God over all people.

The captain went to find Jonah:  "Wake up!  Pray to YOUR God.  Maybe He will save us."  The men on the ship figured out that Jonah was the reason for the storm.  "What have you done?!"

Jonah told them he was running away from God. Jonah told them they would have to throw him into the sea.

The men did not want to do that, they tried to row back to land, but the storm was too rough.  The men finally threw Jonah into the water.  Immediately, the sea was calm.  The men from the ship realized that Jonah's God was the true God.

When Jonah fell into the sea, he did not sink and drown.  Instead, God sent a big fish to swallow Jonah.  Jonah was inside the fish praying (talking to God) and worshiping God.  Jonah was sorry for disobeying God.  Jonah promised to obey God. After three days and three nights, the fish threw Jonah up onto dry land.

Once Jonah was on land, God spoke to him again:  "Go to Nineveh."  This time, Jonah obeyed.

Nineveh was a very big city.  Jonah walked through the city telling the people that God would be punishing them because of all the evil they had done.

Imagine how he must have looked and smelled after being in the fish for three days and three nights!

The people of Nineveh listened to Jonah.  They believed in the one true God who had sent Jonah.  They were sorry for what they had done and even put on special clothes to show how sorry.  From the most simple workers to the king.  The king even told all the people to stop eating for a time and to cry out to God.  Maybe God would change His mind and not punish the people of Nineveh.

God did see.  And God forgave them and did not punish the people of Nineveh.  God sent Jonah to Nineveh because God loved them too.

God loves people from all the nations and wants them to hear how much He loves them.  God still sends people to tell nations around the world about Him, about His love, about Jesus.

"Let all the nations be glad and sing for joy."    Psalm 67:4a

God Calls

This year we get to take the preschoolers through a journey of seeing God's plan for all peoples.  I have loved getting this series ready and am looking forward to having others come in and share with the kids as if they're the character in the story.  

We started Sunday with a simple introduction--God had a plan from the beginning.  We looked at Genesis 12:1-4.  God's call to Abram. 

I open my Bible and listen to God,

He tells me what I should do. 

I know that He loves me, 

He hears when I pray.

And ALL OF HIS STORIES ARE TRUE.

We have just finished looking at the stories from the Bible about when Jesus was born.  Now we're going to look at the first book of the Bible and how Jesus was mentioned there!

God, the Father, knew from the beginning that He would send Jesus to be our Savior.  He knew that the only way for any person to join His forever family was to love and believe in Jesus.  

He picked one man, Abraham (Abram).  God CALLED Abraham out of a country and out of a family that didn't know the one and only true God.  I don't know how Abraham knew it was God, but he OBEYED the call of God.  Abraham didn't even know where he was going.  Abraham trusted God to show him the way.  

God told Abram that He would make his name great.  God promised to bless Abram and his family so that Abram would be a blessing to all the families of the earth!

God went on to tell Abraham and his family about Himself.  Abraham and his family lived differently that those around them--people noticed the differences!  We call Abram's family "God's chosen people."  We have the Old Testament because those in Abraham's family wrote God's words down for us.  We are some of the families who are being blessed because Abraham's family wrote this [hold up Bible].  

We get to now learn about God because of THIS TRUE BOOK.  And you know?  There are people in the world today who still don't have God's Word in a language they understand.  There are still families who still haven't been blessed.  And God said ALL FAMILIES.

The MOST important blessing God gave Abraham was that through his family, God sent Jesus.  Jesus is the only way for people to know God and to become part of God's forever family.  Jesus is related to Abraham! 

The last book of the Bible, Revelation, describes for us how it will be in heaven.  There will be a great multitude--"multitude" means "many, many people"--they will be worshiping God.  They will be singing for joy and worshiping Jesus--and EVERY language ever spoke on earth, every nation, every family will have someone there. Only those who believed Jesus died for them will be there.

Now, we know about God and how He wants to bless ALL FAMILIES--how that has been God's plan from the beginning.  We get to now tell others about God, about Jesus, about what we know.  We can tell our friends at school, our neighbors, our family, other families.

Some of our missionaries go to places where they have heard of Jesus but don't know that He is the ONLY way to God.  Some of our missionaries go to places where they've never even HEARD the name "Jesus."  They all trust God when he said ALL FAMILIES will be blessed.  God has called missionaries to go to places near and far.  

Maybe someday, God will call you.

Our Bible verse for the next six weeks:

Let the nations be glad and sing for joy!               Psalm 67:4a 

One day, ALL nations will be glad and sing for joy--they will worship the One who is worthy.