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.
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 fingerWe 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 chestWe 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.
Hello everyone and welcome to another action packed adventure with The Story Keepers. We have lots of unexpected twists and turns in today's episode. We hope you enjoy watching it.
(Some of you may notice that this episode is labelled Episode 8, but it matches with the week 5 worksheets in our activity book)
It's great that we can be Story Keepers too. By watching the video and learning the stories from the Bible we can share them with others and pass them on. Today, maybe it's enough to watch this video. If you would like to find out a bit more, keep reading...
There is a page for you to have a look at all about Episode 5 in the back of your Story Keepers Activity booklets.
Our BIG question today is...
What is God's unexpected Good News for us?
In today's episode so many unexpected things happened.
Justin didn't think very highly of Cyrus' circus skills but they helped save the children from the Roman soldiers.
Cyrus thought he was going to treated badly by Flavius but he was treated like a prince... to start with.
It was very unexpected that Cyrus chose to stay with Flavius when Ben and the family come to rescue him.
Did you think it was unexpected when the Story Keepers forgave Cyrus and Justin gave him his cloak?
Today we heard the parable of the Prodigal Son. A parable was a story Jesus told that tells us more about God. What does this parable tell us about God?
In this parable, God is the father and we are like the Prodigal Son. Every day we get things wrong, choosing to go our own way instead of relying on God. When we say sorry and turn back to God, He is always there waiting for us, running towards us for a big hug.
This is the unexpected good news.
We will all get things wrong, because everyone does, but God will always forgive us. He doesn't just "forgive and forget" - it's even bigger than that. God came up with a rescue plan and that plan was Jesus. When Jesus died, he took the punishment for all the things we had done wrong. God loves us so much that his Son died for us - and then came back to life three days later!
This is sometimes called the gospel, which means GOOD NEWS.
This video explains that Good News really well...
Prayer
This month we are looking at Thankfulness in our prayers. We can say a huge THANK YOU to God for sending Jesus to be our rescuer.
If you want, you can say a special prayer that invites Jesus to be your friend forever. This is what we mean when someone says that they are a Christian. It means that they have prayed that special prayer.
There aren't any special words to become a Christian and you can talk to God about it using your own words. These words are an example of the prayer that you could pray.
Jesus – I know that you made me and want me to obey you with all my heart.
I know I have disobeyed and wanted to go my own way. I have thought and done things against your directions. I am sorry.
I know that you gave up your life to save me from these sins and make me your child again.
I accept your promises and ask you to please save me now and forever.
Amen.
God's Good News is so amazing it makes us want to jump up and down and spin right around!
We can do that right now this song!
We hope you all have a fantastic week and we'll be back next Sunday with more adventures with the The Story Keepers.
Hi everyone and welcome to Christchurch Kids . Today we are talking about forgiveness. It's something the disciples were finding difficult and so they asked Jesus "How many times do I have to forgive someone? Seven times?"
Jesus replied with "Seventy times seven". That's a really big number. In our video, some children are going to tell us the parable that Jesus told to explain forgiveness. It's called the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.
In this parable Jesus was reminding us how much God has forgiven us. When Jesus died on the cross and came back to life on Easter Sunday, he was taking the consequences of all the things we get wrong.
Jesus forgave us for everything.
If someone does something wrong that upsets us, it can be hard to forgive them but if we remember how much God loves us - and them, then it can become easier. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes and forgiveness of each other is an amazing way to show love in our families and with our friends.
Sometimes, people can get things wrong and they need help to know that they are making the wrong choices. If we are being bullied at school, we can forgive that person for their wrong actions but it doesn't mean we have to let them carry on. We can ask adults we trust to help that person make good choices. God can help us forgive that person, which would mean that we wouldn't be carrying around anger and upset towards them in our hearts.
Our colouring page today has a Bible verse about forgiving each other. It asks us to BEE kind and loving.You can download it here
Target games
When Jesus replied to the disciples that we should forgive others seventy times seven (not really a jillion and twenty!), he wasn't really talking about Maths. We could remember our story today by making some target games. Maybe we could make the points from the 7 times table? Maybe the highest score could be seventy times seven. Do you know how much that is?
Today, we are going to spend some time thinking about what forgiveness is like.
If we choose not to forgive someone, it can be like carrying around a big weight in our hearts.
Forgiveness experiment
You will need:
Two people
A backpack
Some food tins (or something similarly heavy)
One person will put the backpack on their front. The other person will say "Will you forgive me?" and the person wearing the backpack says "No". Every time they say "No", the person wearing the backpack adds a tin to the bag. Repeat a few times until the bag is feeling heavy.
Now the second person asks "Will you forgive me?" and the person wearing the backpack replies "I forgive you" and removes a tin from the bag. Repeat until the bag is empty. What does it feel like now all the tins have gone?
If we choose not to forgive, we are carrying that upset, hurt and anger around inside and it is a like a big weight. It can be hard to let it go, but God is there to help us.
Spent a few moments quietly talking to God about forgiveness. We can say sorry to God for things we have got wrong. We can thank God that he has forgiven us. We can ask God to help us say sorry to the people we might have hurt or upset. We can ask God to help us forgive people who have upset us.
We've got new song today about when things don't go well we can trust that God is bigger and stronger than anything that could go wrong. Could you make up your own actions to this song?
We'd love to see pictures of your target games. You can send them in following the instructions in the right hand column. Thanks for joining in us today and we'll be back for a dance on Wiggle Wednesday.
