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.