Prayer - We can listen to God

 Hello and welcome back to our Christchurch Kids blog, We hope you've had a great week.

Recently, we've been looking at prayer and the sorts of things that we can talk to God about. The thing about prayer is that it's not just talking to God but listening to Him as well. Prayer helps us be close to God. Can you imagine having a friend who only ever talked to you but never listened to a word you said? That would be a bit strange. God wants us to listen to Him as well as talk to him - He's got things he wants to tell us. 

Let's listen to a story from the Bible about a boy called Samuel who became really good at listening to God, but it wasn't always like that...

Have you seen people praying when they just sit in silence? Sometimes they are thinking of what to say, or talking to God in their heads but sometimes they are listening. It's good to pray and ask God to help us listen to Him. 

Here is a story from the Little Shoots, Deep Roots blog about a time when this mum's two sons listened to God...

Giggling, my boys scurried into their beds. One up the ladder to the top bunk, the other underneath. Damp hair curled around their ears, smelling fresh from the bath. 

It was time to listen to God.  I asked them to repeat these words:

“Jesus, please help me to listen to you. Help my heart and mind to be quiet so I can hear you. Jesus, what would you like to say to me today?”

Then I reminded them that it was time to be quiet and wait for Jesus to respond, something that is very hard for small boys to do. 

But within a minute, my younger son said “I think he wants to say ‘I love you.’”

The older boy was discouraged because he hadn’t heard any whispers in his heart; he said his brain was too noisy. I encouraged him to ask God to help his brain be quiet.

His quiet whispers traveled from the top bunk to my ears, and straight to God’s heart: “God please help my brain to be quiet so I can hear what you have to say to me.”

Only a few seconds had passed when I saw his face poking out over the top of the bunk. With a smile that simultaneously held surprise, joy, and bashfulness, he told me what God had spoken to him.

“God said ‘I love you, Cubbie.'”

Both boys had an experience with God that evening but I believe it was the most meaningful to Cubbie, my 7 year old. He knows what it’s like to have an incredibly busy brain, one that is constantly coming up with ideas and plans. But in one simple heart-whisper, his heart and mind were brought to peace.

Isn't that a great story. It's even better that we get to share that story and be encouraged to listen to God as well.  God can talk to us if we listen just like He did for those boys.

There are lots of ways that God can talk to us:

• Through the Bible.
• Sometimes it's a whisper in our heart, like in the story above.
• It might be in a special dream or a picture that pops into your head.
• God might tell us things by giving a message for us to someone who we know and trust.
• Sometimes it can be the words to a Bible verse or a song remembered at just the right time.

If you think that God has spoken to you, talk it through with a grown-up you trust, just like Samuel did in our story today.  Eli helped Samuel to hear God's voice.  

A Game to play

We've been doing a lot of talking about listening so here's a game where we can practice our listening skills

Can you guess what animal is making the sound?

Colouring

God speaks to us through the Bible and so the better we know the Bible, the easier it is to hear God.

We've got some colouring pages that we have collected over the past year on our blog with lots of different Bible verses. Have a look through them. Is there one that that jumps out at you? Maybe that is what God wants to say to you today?

Click here for our colouring pages

Prayer

We can take a moment to be still and quiet and pray the prayer that the boys prayed in the story above. 

Jesus, please help me to listen to you. Help my heart and mind to be quiet so I can hear you. Jesus, what would you like to say to me today?

We've got a song to finish today which is great to help us get moving again after we've been sitting still and quiet. We can sing and dance and praise God that He is the only one we want to follow...

 We'll be back here next week with F@CT Online but you can also join us in church for our F@CT service. You don't need to book a space anymore so you can just pop along on Sunday morning at 10am to join in with F@CT . We'll be hearing a story, doing actions to songs, trying out prayers, making crafts and having fun learning more about God. 

Prayer - We can say Thank You

 Hello and welcome back to  Christchurch Kids. We hope you’ve had a great week. Happy Fathers Day!

We have been asking lots of questions about prayer recently. Have you prayed this week? What did you chat to God about? 

We’ve been looking at the different sorts of things we can talk to God about when we pray and today we are looking at...

Thank you prayers

There are lots of examples of people saying thank you to God in the Bible and sometimes they happen at the most unexpected and surprising of times! 

Do you know the story of Jonah? Let’s have a watch now so we are reminded of the story.

Jonah prayed his thank you prayer inside the great big fish! What do you think he thanked God for as he was sat inside a big, smelly fish!? Jonah thanked God that He had sent the fish to save him from the stormy sea.

Do you know the story of Daniel and the Lions’ Den? Daniel was living in a place where prayer had been banned but he still got up and prayed to God and thanked him even though it meant he didn’t just get in trouble he got thrown into a pit full of lions. Wow!

What about when Jesus took the five loaves and two fishes and fed 5,000 people? It was a miracle but the interesting, surprising thing for us is that Jesus said his thank you prayer BEFORE he shared out the food.

The Bible is full of surprising stories of thank you prayers. It shows us that we can say thank you to God anywhere, anytime and for anything.

What would you like to say THANK YOU to God for today?

In case you're wondering what to say thank you for, here's a silly song to remind us that God made everything! Can you sing along??

Activity

Today we are going to make Lego models of things we are thankful to God for. Maybe you can put it on a shelf this week and when you see your model you could think of something to say thank you for. Maybe you could make a model of your Dad or your Grandpa as we are feeling especially thankful for Fathers today.

Prayer

We’ve got a fun way to pray today. Do you know how to play the Alphabet game? It’s a great game to play in the car. You choose a category and you have to think of something for every letter of the alphabet. We usually try animals or boys/girls names or countries.

Today we are going to play the alphabet game but this time we are going to think of things we can say thank you to God for. We can say ...

“Thank you God for...” and add a word starting with the next letter of the alphabet. 

Maybe today we are going to extra thankful for xylophones, yoghurts and zebras! 

We've got a great song to sing to God today all about saying Thank You. The actions are fun to join in with as well. 

We hope you have a good week and find lots of things to say thank you to God for. We'll be back here next week asking more questions about prayer but you can also join us in church on Sunday mornings for our group for primary school aged children. We will be playing games, telling stories, making crafts and of course, trying out the things we have learnt about prayer. 

If you would like to join us on Sunday mornings in church, please book your place here.

Prayer - We can say sorry

Hello! We're so glad you could join us this morning on our Christchurch Kids blog. 

Over the past few weeks, we have been talking about prayer and the different sorts of things we can pray about. Today we are looking at prayers where we say sorry to God. 

Jesus told a story (also called a parable) to help us understand how much God forgives us and how that should remind us to forgive other people too.

This church had great fun retelling the parable of the unforgiving servant. We hope you have fun watching it!

Why do we say sorry to God and what do we say sorry for? 

There's a word you hear a lot in the Bible and in church and that word is "sin". Sin means anything that isn't perfect as God is completely perfect. We're human and so we all get things wrong. Sometimes we do something on purpose that might hurt someone else or make them sad, sometimes we might think badly about someone else and sometimes we don't do a good thing that we could have done. 

When we get things wrong, it gets in the way of our relationship with God. We say sorry to God so that we can remain close to Him. He always forgives us because when Jesus died, he took the consequences of all the things we do wrong. God loves us that much! 

Challenge

Peter asked Jesus "How many times should we forgive people - seven times?" and Jesus replied "Seventy times seven!" 

That's 490 times! Here's a challenge for you. Can you do something 490 times? Hop? Bounce a ball and catch it? Pop a bubble? Keep a balloon off the ground by patting it up?  Build a tower with that many Lego bricks? (Do you have that many Lego bricks??)

That's a lot of times!

Prayer

Saying sorry can be tricky. We have a sorry prayer we can say together

Saying Sorry prayer

Make a fist  We are sorry for the times we have got angry with other people.

Point away from yourself with your index finger We are sorry for the times we have blamed others and seen things wrong in others without recognising we get things wrong too.

Close up your hand and hold it close to your chest We are sorry for the times we have kept things selfishly to ourselves .

 Put your hand over your mouth We are sorry for the words we have spoken which have hurt other people.

After a pause, hold out that same hand with an open palm upward, as if you are waiting to receive something. 

  Jesus says, 'If you are tired from carrying heavy burdens, come to me and I will give you rest'. So we bring all that we are to Jesus - all our sins and our failure to love. Thank you that you died for us so that we might be forgiven and start a new life in the power of your Holy Spirit.

As a way of remembering that it is through the cross that our sins are forgiven,  trace the shape of a cross with the index finger of your other hand across the palm of the hand you are holding out.

Amen

God is a Super Wonderful God! He's amazing and we love singing about it!

Here's our song for today. We hope you enjoy joining in. 

Thank you for joining us on the blog today.

We'll be back here next week asking more questions about prayer but you can also join us in church on Sunday mornings for our group for primary school aged children. We will be playing games, telling stories, making crafts and of course, trying out the things we have learnt about prayer. 

If you would like to join us on Sunday mornings in church, please book your place here.

June F@CT

 

Hello and welcome to F@CT Online! We're so glad you could join us here. We hope you've had a brilliant half term week.

We're going to start F@CT Online with a fantastic song. At F@CT, we love to sing to God and dance and join in with the actions. This is the perfect song to get us moving. We hope you enjoy joining in.

Phew! Are you feeling warmed up now?

This year at F@CT we are finding out about God's promises. We know that God always keeps his promises but what are they?

Today's promise is...

God protects us

We've got an amazing Bible story today with some people with some pretty strange names. Let's listen to the story and find out how God protected three men who followed God.

Isn't that a fantastic story! God protected Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. 

It says in the Bible 

I am the Lord your God.
    I am holding your right hand.
And I tell you, ‘Don’t be afraid.
    I will help you.’

Isaiah 41: 13

There are lots of stories in the Bible where God has protected people. Do you know the story of Daniel in the Lion's Den? What about when God protected Noah and his family in the ark? Or when Jesus protected the disciples when he stopped the storm?

What does it mean for us today when we say "God protects us?" Does it mean we don't need to wear our cycle helmet when we ride our bikes? Certainly not! When someone loves and cares for us, they give us rules and teach us how to be safe - just like a parent teaching us to cross the road carefully or not to play near a hot stove. 

God has given us lots of good rules to follow to protect us and he sent the Holy Spirit to help us too. It doesn't mean that difficult things don't happen to people who love and follow God, but if they do, God is with them.

Craft

At F@CT, we love to make things to remind us about what we have learned about God. 

Today you could make a shield to remind you that God loves and protects us. 

What would you use to make your shield? Cardboard?  Kitchen foil? Paper and pens?

Prayer

Maybe you've used kitchen foil to make your shield. You'll need a small piece of kitchen foil for our prayers today.

From Flame: Creative

Take a piece of kitchen foil (not too big)

Hold your foil shiny side up and thank God for all the good things you have in your life.

Gently scrunch the foil up (not too tight as we are smoothing it out again). Think about the times when we have got things wrong and say sorry to God.

Smooth out your foil again. Thank God that he forgives us and loves us so much.

Scrunch up your foil into a shape that reminds you of someone or something to want to pray for. Maybe it could be a letter to remind you of someone's name.

We're going to finish our time together on the blog today with another song. We going to sing out loud that God is BIGGER THAN BIG!

Thank you for coming over to the blog and joining in with F@CT Online. We hope you have lots of fun at school this week. 

We are now able to meet together on Sunday mornings at church and if you are primary school age, you can join us in the church hall during the morning service for games, stories and crafts as we ask lots of questions about prayer. 

If you would like to join us on Sunday mornings, please book ahead here.