life after jesus

Ananias and Sapphira

~ hebidsthemcome ~ Leave a comment

Hello again. Today we’ll be covering a story from Acts 5–about Ananias and Sapphira.

So during the early days just after Jesus had gone back to heaven and the people had received God’s Holy Spirit…all the people who followed Jesus, gathered together and lived together, worked together and shared everything. They shared their money, their houses, their food…everything. Some people even sold some of their things so they would have extra money to help take care of the disciples who were telling people about Jesus.

One man and woman, Ananias and Sapphira were some of these believers. They sold some of their land to help pay for the disciples’ food and clothes. But then, they made a bad choice. (Everybody makes bad choices sometimes…even people who love Jesus..even grownups.)

Ananias went to Peter and the other leaders and he took the money they had gotten from selling their house and land and he hid some of it (maybe behind his back or in his pocket). And he said “Here’s all the money from our land!”

But God told Peter that Ananias was lying. Peter said “Is that really ALL the money you got?”

Ananias said “yes…this is all of it.”

Peter said, “How could you lie to us? This land was all yours, the money was all yours…there’s no need to lie about how much money you got?! But since you did lie to us and to God!”

And then…Ananias fell down DEAD.

Then, a little bit later, Sapphira came in and Peter said “Is that ALL the money you got from selling your land?”

She said “yes, it is” (even though she knew they were hiding some.)

Peter said “How could you also lie to us and to God?!” And then right there, she died too.

This story is important because it shows us that God always wants us to be honest (to tell the truth) and that there is no tricking God. God knows everything.

Isn’t is wonderful to know that even when we make bad choices that God still loves us? He does! But He also wants us to come to Him and tell Him the truth. And He wants us to obey. Just because Jesus died on the cross for our sins (bad choices) doesn’t mean we can sin all the time or anytime we want! We still need to do our best to obey God and to always tell Him the truth.

Our craft was a picture of this story (we used aluminum foil for the money)

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Next time we’ll cover the story of Stephen.

Love to you all!

The Holy Spirit Comes at Pentecost

~ hebidsthemcome ~ Leave a comment

Happy May! This month we’ll be learning about the Bible stories after Jesus went back to heaven.

This story is from Acts 2.

After Jesus went back to heaven to be with God, the disciples and other people who loved Jesus remembered Jesus’ words that they were to go! and make disciples of all the people. But they had to wait for Jesus’ spirit to come back to them.

During a big celebration called the feast of weeks, the disciples were all gathered together in a house when a big wind came and what looked like tongues of fire came and rested near each of them and they were able to each speak new languages.

They started telling all the people who had come for the celebration about Jesus and everyone could understand them. They were so confused and said “how do these guys know how speak so many languages?! have they gone crazy?”

Then Peter stood up and said “no! these guys aren’t crazy! This is just what Jesus said would happen! Even from the beginning of the Bible, it was said that a savior would come and that He would die for us. Jesus is that messiah. He came and loved us and died for us, and now His spirit, His power has come to us. Believe in Jesus, tell Him you are sorry for your bad choices and you TOO can have Jesus live in your hearts like He has come to live in ours.”

Lots of people believed that day and became followers of Jesus. They all lived together and studied the Bible together. They shared what they had and did just what Jesus said…they told everyone about Him and made disciples of all the nations.

If we too choose to believe in Jesus and ask Him to forgive our bad choices, then He will forgive us and live in our hearts too.

For our activity, we drew some of the disciples and then added tongues of fire (tissue paper). We talked about how when the Holy Spirit comes to live in our hearts, we probably won’t see real fire, but we will be given the same power that helped the disciples know how to talk to all the people. We might not be gifted to speak in different languages, but that power of God is in us (if we believe and repent) and He will help us do what we need to do to tell others about Him.

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Disclaimer: I am a big proponent of child-produced art (minimal cut outs and directives), so our pictures always look child-like and often between our two children, the results vary. It is most important to me that they understand the story and as they work on their projects, we discuss the story again.

 

Love to you all.