Grace

God’s graciousness in the wilderness

~ hebidsthemcome ~ Leave a comment

Hello again! Today we continue to follow Moses and the Israelites. This is from Exodus 16 and 17 in the Bible. Last year’s lesson and craft can be found HERE.

manna and quail

Moses and the Israelites had been freed from the Pharaoh and from living as slaves in Egypt. But now what?! God had led them through the Red Sea, saving them AGAIN from the Pharaoh and his army…and now? Sand. Lots and lots of sand. They walked around the desert for a LOOOOOONG time. (It wasn’t supposed to be THAT long…but they ended up disobeying God…but we’ll get to that part later.) For now…they were wandering around the desert.

What is a desert like? Do you know? (My kids said BOOOORIIIIING). There is little water or food. And the Israelites were hungry! Do you know how people act when they are hungry? That’s right…they get GRUMPY! They whined and complained and said, “WHY would God brings us out here?! At least we had FOOD in Egypt…I mean…it was terrible! But at least we had food!”

How do think God responded? Was He mad? Did He let them starve to death?

God was patient and He listened to the people and then He was gracious. (That means He was extra nice to them even though they didn’t deserve it.) God told Moses that He would send birds (called quails) that the people could eat every evening and that each morning He would provide a special bread called manna.

Every day (except for church day) they were supposed to go out of their tents and get as much manna as they needed for THAT day. If they got too much, it would get yucky. God wanted the people to trust Him every.day. If they could get as much as they wanted, they wouldn’t have to trust God to give them food every day. God wanted them to have just enough for each day (and twice as much the day before church day so they could rest on church day) so that every single day HE could give them what they needed.

And God DID give them manna every morning and quail every evening.

The people SHOULD have been thankful….but they got grumpy…again. They were tired of just eating the quail and manna. And one day, when they stopped walking, they were complaining about not having enough water. God AGAIN was gracious to His people and told Moses to go to a certain rock and to touch it with his staff (big stick). So Moses went before all the people and water came pouring out of the rock. Remember, nothing is too hard for God!

Every time the people needed something God provided (He took care of them and gave them what they needed.) When God asks you to do something that seems crazy (like pack up and move your family away from a wicked Pharaoh) you can be SURE that God will take care of you. Anything God asks you to do, He will take care of you through it.

God loved His people and took good care of them…providing for them every day. God loves YOU too and He will take care of you every day too!

Thanks for joining us, love to you all!

Believe and Confess

~ hebidsthemcome ~ Leave a comment

Hello again! Today’s lesson is Romans 9 and 10.

This is another lesson from Paul’s letter to the Romans.

This time he wanted the people to remember that we are only given forever life in heaven because God loves us. We can’t do enough good things to earn our way there. If we could, then people would always say “look at all the good things I’VE done. God loves me MORE. But God doesn’t have favorites. He loves everyone and because He loves us, He gave us His son Jesus to die for us. THAT is why we are saved from our sins.

This is grace. When we are supposed to get bad consequences and we don’t it’s called mercy. But God does even better than that. He doesn’t just forgive our sins, He also calls us His children and says we will live forever in heaven with Him! That is grace. God gives us more than we could ever earn. The Bible says God is like a good Father who loves to give His children gifts. The best gift God gives us is eternal life in heaven with Him.

Paul said “Some of the Israelites don’t want God’s grace. They want to go to heaven because they follow all the rules. But nobody follows all the rules all the time, we all sin. We NEED God’s mercy and grace. And there’s nothing we can do make Him let us into heaven….it is a gracious gift from God to us.”

Romans 10:9 says all we have to do is accept God’s grace. “If you confess (say) with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Jesus already did all the work! Of course when we love Him, we WANT to do good things, to be like Him….but those good things are never good enough to forgive our sins…only Jesus can do that. We just need to believe and say “Yes, you ARE Lord, I believe.”

For our craft today we cut out little hearts, put on some lipstick and kissed them (confess with our mouths and believe with our hearts), then we wrote today’s memory verse.

imageimage

Thanks again for joining us, love to you all!