July F@CT

 

Hello and welcome to F@CT Online! Thank you for joining us for dancing, crafts, fun and learning more about God.

Let's start with a song as we love to get up and moving at F@CT as we praise God. This song helps us celebrate that God is our amazing creator. We can sing, clap, dance and do actions to join in...

This year at F@CT, we are looking at the God's promises to us. God always keeps his promises so what are those promises? Today's promise is...

God Forgives Us

We've got a story about a time that Jesus showed forgiveness. When Jesus met Matthew, he was a tax collector and in those days, that meant that he would have been very unpopular as he was working for the Romans and he might well have been stealing some of the money for himself. Let's see what Jesus thought when he met Matthew.

Just like Matthew, we get stuff wrong too. The Bible calls this sin and that word means anything which isn't perfect, just like God is perfect. In this story, Jesus called Matthew and he stopped what he was doing and chose to follow Jesus. Jesus didn't walk away because Matthew was making wrong choices, he asked him to stop and follow him and Matthew did. 

When we pray and say sorry to God and choose to follow Him, God forgives us. 

It says in the Bible

There is no God like you. You forgive people who are guilty of sin.

You, Lord, will not stay angry forever. You enjoy being kind.   

Micah 7 : 18

Craft

When we pray we can use a teaspoon to help us. Does that sound a bit strange? When we are cooking and following a recipe, we might see the word teaspoon shortened to TSP. We can use this to help remember the sort of things we can pray about.

T = Thank you

S= Sorry

P= Please

When I pray, we might find it easy to say "thank you" and "please" but it's important to remember the "sorry" bit too. We are going to make a teaspoon to help us remember to add the sorry into our prayers.

If you don't have a wooden spoon, you could draw around a spoon onto some paper and card.

It's bit boring to have a spoon stuck up on your wall, or next to your bed to remind you about prayer so why don't you create your own spoon character.

Can you remember Forky from Toy Story 4? You could create someone a bit like him to help with your prayers.

You could use any crafty bits and bobs to add to your character or use pens and pencils to design your own spoon character.

Prayer

We've got a prayer we can say together to say sorry to God and we can remember God's promise that He forgives us. 

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

We've got another great song to join in with now. God's love is so BIG, GREAT, and STRONG and it goes on and on. We love to sing and dance about it.

Thanks for joining us for F@CT Online. We hope you've had fun finding out about God's promises today.

For the next two Sundays (11th - 18th July) we will be asking more questions about prayer here on our Christchurch Kids blog and in our Christchurch Kids sessions in church. If you would like to come to the group at church, you don't need to book anymore which makes it even easier to pop along and join in.

After the 18th July, it is the summer holidays - Hurray! We won't be posting on here and our Christchurch Kids group will be taking a summer break too but F@CT will be happening in church on August 1st. 

We hope to see you soon.