Hello all! Welcome back! Today’s story is 1 Kings 18. Last year’s story and activity can be found HERE.

Elijah was a prophet (someone who talks to God and then tells the people what God wants them to know.) Ahab was the big BAD, MEAN King. Ahab and his wife, Jezebel, made really bad choices and they got the people in Israel to make bad choices too! They all started worshipping a pretend god instead of the REAL God. Ahab even killed a lot of the other prophets and the consequence for not worshipping God had been no rain for years! The plants, animals and even people were dying because there was no water.

So Elijah said “Let’s have a contest. We will each give a sacrifice to our God, and we’ll set it up on some rocks and sticks ready for a fire. But WE won’t make a fire. We will pray and ask each of our gods to make a fire FOR us. The God that gives a real fire, is the real God. Ok?”

The people agreed. The pretend god’s people went first. They set up an altar (place to sacrifice an animal) with rocks and sticks and then they called out to their pretend god for fire from morning until lunch time. “Please send fire! Pleeeeeease? Pretty please??”

“What’s the matter?” Elijah asked. “Is your god busy? Is he asleep? Maybe he went on vacation? Just yell louder and THEN maybe he will answer you.” So the people did. They yelled louder and louder until dinner time! But no one answered. (Because a pretend god can NOT answer!)

Then Elijah said, “Ok. My turn.” He got twelve big rocks (one for each of the big families of Israel) and some wood and then had the people pour water on it all! Do you know what water does to fire? It puts it out! There couldn’t be a fire where there was so much water……right? Well THREE times they poured water on everything so it was all soaking wet!

Then Elijah prayed to God, “God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that YOU are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things like YOU told me to. Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, Lord, are God, and so that you will turn their hearts back to you again.”

Then WHOOOOOOOSH!  A big, HUMUNGOUS fire came and burnt up the sacrifice, the woods, the rocks, the water, EVERYTHING! All the people were SOOOOO surprised! They fell down and said “WOW! It IS the real God!” They were sorry they had disobeyed God and worshipped other pretend gods. Now they remembered who the REAL God was and is.

And just like that….Elijah told one of his helpers to go look at the sea…7 times the helper went back and forth from the sea….and then he saw it….RAIN CLOUDS! Now that the people had come back to God, He sent rain for them.

Let us NEVER forget who the REAL God is and let’s only love and worship HIM forever!

For our craft today, we drew Elijah, glued on some toothpicks and then took pipettes and some paint.  (We had to water the paint down just a touch–a tablespoon or so–so it would suck up the pipette easier). Then we sucked the paint into the pipettes and squirted it back onto the paper to look like fire.

 

Thanks for joining us again, love to you all!