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 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.

The Walls of Jericho

 Hello Christchurch Kids and welcome to our blog. This Sunday is our last look at the exodus of the Israelites. They escaped slavery in Egypt and have spent years in the desert. The land God promised them is nearly in sight.

First there is a river to cross... but we've already seen that water doesn't get in the way of God's plans.

The Israelites have crossed the river and so now the only thing in their way is a wall but it's not just any wall. This was the wall surrounding Jericho.

Wow! What an amazing story. How do you think the Israelites felt when Joshua told them the plan to take the city of Jericho? Do you think they wondered how God was going to make it work? They had seen God do incredible things  already so maybe they didn't doubt it. 

God can do amazing things when we listen to him and follow his ways. Sometimes God's way might seem strange to those around us but this is what the Bible tells us about God...

Yes, God’s riches are very great! God’s wisdom and knowledge have no end! No one can explain the things God decides. No one can understand God’s ways.

Romans 11:33

We are going to have some fun building and knocking things down today as we remember the story of the walls of Jericho.

Our challenge today is to see how tall a tower you can make with Lego BUT you have to stack the bricks on the smooth sides not using the bumps! How high can you build your tower before it falls over?

or  you could play a game of Jenga - another great game of building and knocking down.

Prayer

Father, You are the God who can do anything. You can even make shouting at a wall work to bring it down. Help us believe in You and follow Your instructions even when it seems weird to other people.

Amen

Here's one of favourite songs from F@CT and we can sing it today as we have heard that God is bigger than big, stronger than strong and mightier than mighty. God can do anything!

Thanks for joining us today and we hope you have enjoyed following the adventures of  Moses, Joshua and the Israelites. Next week we begin our journey towards Easter, starting at Palm Sunday.

Sunday December 13th

 Hello and welcome to Christchurch Kids. We are looking forward to Christmas now. Have you got decorations up yet? 

The Three Kings Advent-ure

We've been following the three kings all week and today they have made it to the sea. It looks very blue today. I wonder if the kings will stop for a quick swim?

Where does the Christmas Story start? There are four books of the Bible that tell us about Jesus' life. They are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and they are called the Gospels. Then word 'Gospel' means 'good news'. 

Matthew starts the story of Jesus with his family tree which goes all the way back to Abraham.

John starts the story at the very beginning of creation.

Mark starts the story when Jesus had already grown up and it starts with Jesus' cousin, John the Baptist and Jesus' baptism.

The Christmas story that we are most familiar with comes from Luke and he starts the story with a visit from an angel. It isn't the angel who came to see Mary, but the angel who came to visit Zechariah to say that his wife Elizabeth would have a baby.

Elizabeth was Mary's cousin and her baby grew up to be John the Baptist.

This is a really great retelling of the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, complete with an unusual looking angel and a tiny bike!

Game

Our story above actually misses a little bit from the end of the story.

When John was born everyone thought that he should be called Zechariah after his father, as that was the custom. Zechariah wrote down that the baby's name would be John, just as the angel had told him. When he had done this he was suddenly able to talk again. 

Our game today is ... who can be the quietest the longest?

This is also a good game to play in the car.

Another variation of this game is deciding a word that no-one is allowed to say and the last person to say it wins. Sometimes this game can last for hours in our house as everyone tries to avoid saying "banana"!

Prayer

This week is the third week of Advent and in church we will be lighting the third candle in the Advent wreath. This candle is the Joy candle.

Let's take a moment to be quiet and talk to God. 

We can thank him for the joy that comes with Jesus' birth at Christmas, the joy that God loved us so much that he sent his Son.

We can ask God to help us remember that joy at times when we are finding things difficult or sad. 

We've got a joyful song today with some fun actions to get us celebrating together for Christmas. We hope you enjoy getting moving to this one.

Keep checking back here this week as we carry on with our online advent calendar. Where will the kings go on their journey around the town?

We are going to be having our Christmas Eve Christingle service online and we have a pack to make your own Christingle for every family who books one. We hope you can join us for songs, puppets, magic and lots of fun as we celebrate Christmas together.

Click here to book your Christingle pack.

December FACT

 

Hello and welcome to December F@CT. We are getting really excited about Christmas now. Are you?

The Three Kings Advent-ure

This week we've started following the three kings for our very own online Advent Calendar as they make their way to find Jesus. Have you seen where they've already been?

Today they are going to catch the bus!

Come back each day and find out where they've travelled to.

Oh look! That's a big present. Do you think I should open it now or wait for Christmas?

It doesn't look like I'm very good at waiting for Christmas. What would Christmas look like if we didn't wait? Do you think it might look a bit like this?

Do you have an Advent calendar? Advent is a special time of year and it's all about waiting for a special arrival. 

People were waiting for Jesus for hundreds of years - imagine how big their Advent calendars would have been!

Prophets in the Old Testament told everyone that Jesus was coming. 700 years before Jesus was born, Micah said the Messiah (or God's chosen one) would be born in Bethlehem and Isaiah said he would be from the family of King David.

Jesus is called "The Light of the World" and before he came we were in darkness.

Isaiah was talking about the coming of Jesus when he said

The people who walked in darkness

have seen a great light.

They lived in a land of shadows,

but now light is shining on them.

Isaiah 9 : 2

Advent is a time of waiting for that light but for us we know who is coming on Christmas Day.

Have you played Hide and Seek recently? Maybe our waiting in Advent is like the time when you are hiding in a dark place waiting to be found. Do you stay still and quiet? You know it's going to be funny when the light shines on you because you've been found. In our house, when someone is found after hiding for a long time, there is laughing and chatting.

We are waiting in the dark in Advent, waiting for the light of Christmas Day. When that light shines we are so happy that Jesus has come!

Activity

Maybe you could have a game of Hide and Seek today. When you are waiting in a dark place you can remember what we have been talking about today. 

Have fun!

We've got a fantastic Chat Mat for you to colour and chat about with your family.

You can download it here

Prayer

Let's take a moment to be still and quiet. We can thank God that He sent Jesus to be the Light of the world. 

You can use your own words or you can use these words to help you. 

Dear God,

Thank you for the light you created.

Thank you that you saw your beautiful world needed another kind of light.

Thank you that you sent Jesus to be that light to the world.

Please help us to be lights to those around us.

Amen

We've got a Christmas song to listen to and join in with today. Let's listen together as we praise God for that glorious night.

We hope you've had fun celebrating Advent with us today. Pop back every day and you can see where the Three Kings have been on their travels. 

We would normally be getting ready for our Christmas Eve Christingle service and the good news is that we are getting ready but this year all the fun of the service will be online. We are packing up Christingle kits so that every household can join in and make one together during the online service on Christmas Eve. 

If you would like to book a Christingle pack, you can click here.  

The Unforgiving Servant

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?

Here are some great ideas to make target games...

Basket targets

Target Golf

Maybe you could go outside and make a nerf target game?

Nerf targets

Prayer

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.

The Lost Sheep

Hi everyone and welcome to Christchurch Kids. Today we are looking at the parable of the Lost Sheep. Jesus told a story about a farmer who had 100 sheep but one went missing. Here's a lovely animation to tell us the story.

How did the farmer react after he had found the lost sheep?

Jesus told this parable because religious leaders had started to complain that Jesus was spending time with people who made bad choices. They didn't think he should welcome people like that. Jesus told them about the farmer who left his 99 sheep to find the one that was lost. The farmer was so happy to find the sheep that he ran and told all his friends and neighbours that the sheep that was lost had been found.

Jesus was comparing the people who made bad choices to the sheep who had lost his way. He said that God is excited when people who have forgotten about God choose to come back to Him and make good choices in their lives. 

Jesus was telling us that everyone is welcome with God.

A Game

Have you ever played "Hunt the Thimble"? It's a traditional game and you may not have a thimble to play it with nowadays but you can use any small object to hide. Maybe you could hide a small sheep?

To play the game, one person hides the sheep and everyone else playing the game covers their eyes. 

No peeping now!

When everyone starts looking for the sheep, the person who hid it will give clues. If the seeker is getting close to the hiding place, the hider says, "Getting warmer" and if the seeker is getting further away, they say, "Getting colder. If they are far away, the hider can say "You are freezing cold!"

When the seeker gets really close, it's fun to say "You're really hot now!" or "You're boiling hot!". 

Jesus talked about himself as The Good Shepherd. He said that he knows his sheep and his sheep know him. He wasn't talking about actual sheep. He was talking about his followers. We are Jesus' sheep! He said that we will listen to Him and follow him and he knows us.

This is the verse on our colouring page today and you can download it here

There is a fantastic Chat Mat about the Parable of the Lost Sheep. Chat Mats are great to download and colour and talk about with others in your family. You can download it here

Prayer

We are going to spend our prayer time today listening to God, our Good Shepherd. When we spend prayer time being quiet and listening for God it can be easy for our minds to start to wander. Here is a word cloud you can look at as you are spending time being quiet. You can ask God to speak to you through the words from the parable. Maybe you can talk to someone in your family about what the words mean to you.

You can look at the word cloud on the screen or you can download it here

Our song today reminds us that God's love is big! It's big enough for everyone to join in.

As we have been talking about sheep again today, we thought it would be nice to see the singing lambs again! Look out for the cheeky grey one!

Thanks for joining us today. We hope you have a great week and we'll see you on Wiggle Wednesday.

Guardians of Ancora

There are lots of new games online at the moment as well as things to learn. Scripture Union has brought those two things together with an exciting new game to play that helps us learn more about the Bible. It's called "Guardians of Ancora."

When we are online, it is very important to stay safe and so if you would like to learn more about playing Guardians of Ancora, please ask an adult to help you get started.

There is more about the game on the Scripture Union website here.

Guardians of Ancora have their own website too here.

Here is a video from YouTube which gives you an idea about what the game is like. 

Why Pray?

Hi everyone and welcome to Christchurch Kids. This Sunday we are joining in with the whole of our church and asking a BIG QUESTION...

Why pray?

Here's a short clip to start to explain why we pray.

We're getting an idea about prayer now. It's about being in a relationship with God. 

We can't talk to God like we talk to our friends (can we?) so here is another short clip with some ideas about how we can pray.

We have an idea about why we pray and how we can pray but what do we pray about?

This video talks a bit more about prayer and gives us some great examples of when people have prayed in the Bible. 

Using the letters P R A Y can help us remember the things we might pray about. Our colouring sheet this week looks at those letters from the video and you can download it here.

A game

 We can talk to God about anything! Have you ever played the alphabet game where you have to think of something that starts with every letter of the alphabet, such as animals. See if you can think of something beginning with every letter of the alphabet that we can talk to God about.

Prayer

We are going to have a go at making our own prayer station. A prayer station is an activity or a collection of objects that help us to think about our prayers. 

We can make a Lego prayer station. This a great idea from the Flame:Creative blog. If you don't have little Lego, you could use Duplo or Playmobil or you could draw a prayer station.

Start by making a cross shape on the base to help us remember we are bringing our prayers to Jesus.

Now you can use your Lego to pray. You could use different colour bricks to represent different things you would like to pray for. You could build bricks together to represent a family or a group.  You can use figures and accessories too, such as trees and flowers for prayers for the environment.

When you have assembled your prayer station, take some time to be still and talk to God about the things you have on the board.

We've got a song about prayer. When we pray we are trusting God instead of trying to do things on our own. Can you make up your actions for this song?

Thanks for joining us. We would love to see pictures of your prayer stations. If you would like to send them to us to put on the blog, please follow the instructions in the right hand column. We hope you all have a great week and we will be back on Wiggle Wednesday for a song and a dance.