Reconciliation

 Reconciliation 

 

The act of bringing together two people whose friendship is broken

 

“I’m sorry,” your friend says. After hurting each other’s feelings, you two had stopped playing together. “I’m sorry too,” you say as you give each other a high five. Now you’re ready to play tag and ride your bikes together again. 

Reconciliation means coming back together after fighting. When you and your friend were fighting, you couldn’t talk and laugh together like normal. Your friendship had a problem. You after you apologised, you ‘fixed’ your broken relationship. You were reconciled, which means you were friends again.  

God created people to be close to Him. He wants us to feel His happiness and love, like He’s giving us hugs and making us laugh. But God hates sin, so when we sinned, we became God’s enemies. Sin broke our relationship with Him. 

Sin also messed up the whole world. It brought in all the sad and painful parts of life, like fighting with friends or getting sick with a fever. 

This all made God very sad, so He made a way to fix everything sin messed up. And He did it through Jesus. 

Colossians 1 says, “God decided to bring all things back to himself again. . . At one time you were separated from God. You were God’s enemies. . . because the evil deeds you did were against God. But now Christ has made you God’s friends again.” (.20-22)

Even though we’re the ones who had messed up and hurt Him, God made a way to fix our friendship. That’s how amazing He is!

 

 

Genesis 25,27,33

 

Jacob and Esau were twin brothers who didn’t get along. As the firstborn son, Esau was supposed to get their family’s land and special blessings, but Jacob stole them. Esau was so angry that he wanted to hurt Jacob, so Jacob ran away. Years later, Jacob returned and bowed down before Esau as a way to say, “I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?” Esau hugged and kissed Jacob as a way to say, “I forgive you!” These two brothers fixed their relationship. They were reconciled!

 

 

Get three Lego blocks and connect two of them by playing the other block on top of them. Imagine those two blocks on the bottom are like you and God. Now imagine that you sin so you are now separated from God. Remove the block on top so that the two bottom pieces (you and God) are separated. Put that top block back on them, and this time think of it like Jesus bringing you back to God. 

 

God, thank You for sending Jesus so that we can be friends again!

Resurrection day4

 For some reason, people did not immediately recognise Jesus after His resurrection. One reason is surely because He was the last person they expected to meet, walking around like a, well, like a living person again. As we said earlier, dead people didn’t tend to do anything but stay dead back then. Just like now.

But there was another reason they didn’t recognise Him. There was something about His physical appearance that was different. His body had changed somehow. His closest friends recognised His voice, but they were skeptical about His identity until He offered some proof.

The proof He offered came in the form of His scars. (Lk 24.39)

Interesting, isn’t it, that God brought Jesus back to life, supplying Him with a new kind of body but choosing to retain the scars from His former life (and death)?

Apparently, the resurrected life — which is one that all followers of Christ are expected to participate in — is not identified by its accomplishments, possessions or honorary degrees. Rather, the resurrected life is known by its scars. After all, we are not only called to participate in His resurrection, we are called to join Him in His death. (Mt 16.24-25)

Jesus’ life after His resurrection looked an awful lot like His life before His crucifixion. We see Jesus, after He has come back from the dead, serving others,(Jn 21) telling people about the kingdom of God,(Ac 1.3) and preparing and commissioning others to continue the work He had begun. (Ac 1.4-8)

And now He calls us to live as He did — to serve others in love, to tell people about the availability of His kingdom, to prepare others and commission them to continue the work He began and continues to do in and among and through us. We will encounter hardship, but we will endure it with gladness. We will bear in our bodies the scars of our own crucifixion so that the ongoing, everlasting life of Jesus may be seen in us as well. (2 Cor 4.10)

We will live in the shadow of the cross and in the light of the empty tomb. We will live as those who have been crucified with Christ, raised with Him and sent back to this earth on a temporary mission.

 

Prayer 

 

Father, I know that if the earthly tent that is my bodily house is torn down, I will have a building from You, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. And while I am in this body, I groan for the new body You are preparing for me, which is no longer perishable but imperishable, no longer earthly but heavenly, no longer weak but glorious in resurrected power. For I know that my true citizenship is in heaven, and that my humble and decaying body will be transformed into conformity with the body of Christ’s resurrected glory. And I know that in that day, I will see how the sorrows, suffering and scars of this life will be fully redeemed by that glory. Seeing this, I pray that I will be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in Your work, knowing that my toil is not in vain in the Lord.

In Jesus’s name, Amen 

Sin

  Sin

 An action that God says is wrong 

 Crash! A ball you threw hits your mum's flower vase. When she walks in the room, you point to your brother and say, “He broke it!” 

Even if you don't get in trouble with Mum, you’ve lied, which God says is a sin.

 The Bible teaches us what is right and wrong by giving us commands. Don't lie, steal, or hurt people. Love God and love others. Keep your promises. A sin is anything we do that is not pure or good or that goes against what God says is best for us. 

 Sin hurts the people around us, and it hurts our own hearts. But most of all, it becomes a big problem in our relationship with God. It's like if you had a friend who kept stealing your things. That would become a problem in your relationship, wouldn't it? 

God is holy and pure, so sin separates us from Him. He is also just – He keeps things right and fair – and His justice says there has to be a consequence for sin. What is that consequence? Well the Bible says, “The payment for sin is death.” (Rom. 6.23) Everyone has sinned, so the whole world is in this bad situation. 

 But guess what! God loves us so much. His love for us is as big as the universe. He doesn't want us to be separated from Him, even though we've sinned. That's why God sent Jesus to earth. He wanted to save us! Jesus made a way for us to be forgiven – not punished-and to become close with God again. 

 GENESIS 3 

 Do you remember where the first sin happened in the Bible? lt was in the garden of Eden. God told Adam and Eve not to eat fruit from one tree. Later the fruit from that tree seemed so delicious that they went ahead and bit into it anyway. Their Sin made God so sad. It meant that they had to move away from the garden – and farther away from Him. 

 Pour some water in a clear cup. Add colour to it – either by stirring a marker in it or by adding a drop of food colouring. Now add some oil (any kind) to the cup and stir it. Can you see how the oil and water stay separate? That's like how God and sin are – God is always separate from sin. 

 God, thank You for showing us what is right and wrong. I believe that what You say is right for me.

Worship

 Worship

 

Giving praise and showing honour.

 

What something you own that's important to you? Think about how you treat it do you bury it under clothes and ignore it? Do you step on it? No! You are careful with it and put it in a special place, like on the shelf in your room. When anyone walks in, They’ll see how special it is.

 God can see how important He is to us by the way we treat Him. If He has a special place in our lives, then we can show Him how much we love Him by worshipping Him. When we worship, we are saying, “You're the most amazing and the most important!”

 How do we worship?

By singing songs to God and praying, by reading the Bible and obeying, and by loving and helping others. Worship is anything we do to show God that he deserves our time, attention, and hard work.

Why should we worship God?

Because He's wonderful! He's perfect and powerful. He made us and takes care of us. We don't worship Him to get a reward. We do it out of love for Him. It's just like why you give someone a hug – you do it because you love them.

Worship is what happens at church on Sunday, but it's also anything you do during the week to honour God, like saying a prayer or sharing with a friend. Our worship not only honours God –  it also shows others how awesome He is. It's like we're putting a giant spotlight on Him and His greatness.

 

Daniel 6

 

Daniel worshipped God everyday. He prayed, memorised God’s word, under page God. When he moved to a country where almost no one else worshipped God, Daniel thought, ‘I won't quit. I'll still worship God.’ When a new law said he wasn't allowed to pray to God, Daniel thought, ‘that won't stop me!’ Daniel was put in a lions’ den as punishment for praying to God, but God kept him safe. The king of the land said, “Everyone must now respect Daniel’s God – the one true God!”

 

Look at the worship activities below. Try to do one activity a day for a week. it's not about being perfect. it's about showing God you love him by trying.

1 Singing a song about how good God is

2 Praying

3 Reading the Bible

4 Obeying

5 Showing love to someone

6 Helping someone

7 Giving to someone in need

 

 

God, I want to worship you everyday. I think you're amazing!

Resurrection day3

 Think back to the very first meal in the Bible. Eve found a piece of fruit that looked good to her. She took a bite and gave it to her husband, Adam.

That’s how it all went wrong.

It was the wrong fruit from the wrong tree, and from then until now we’ve been regretting that very first meal.

One of the greatest things about Jesus was how He ate. The idea of sharing a meal with someone in Jesus’ time involved more than just ingesting nourishment, it implied acceptance of the other person. Jesus got in trouble with people because He was willing to eat with just about anyone, the poor, the unimpressive, the despised — the bottom of the social barrel.

It was during mealtime that Jesus revealed His true character and nature.

He shared that last meal with His friends before He was betrayed and crucified, giving them new insight into His identity and mission. After His resurrection, He shared meals with them again. After encountering a pair of them on the road to a village called Emmaus, He stopped to eat with them. They didn’t even realise it was Him until He took the bread, gave thanks for it and began to distribute it.

There’s something about Jesus and mealtimes. That’s when we come to know Him.

Since the very beginning, God’s great desire has been to share in a relationship with these humans He created. They would walk together and talk without fear or hesitation. There was no shame, there was just fellowship — communion.

You can think of that companionship being symbolised by a table.

But then sin entered the world, rupturing the relationship. And where sin is present, death is always close at hand. Because Adam and Eve sinned and realised their nakedness, animals died that day, giving their lives to cover the humans’ shame.

Sin and death, sin and death, century after century of sin and death. Death of relationship. Death of friendliness. Death of companionship.

You can think of that sin and death being symbolised by an altar.

Year after year, animals were sacrificed on the altar so people could live without the guilt and shame brought about by their sinfulness. All the animals, all the sacrifices, all the altars pointed forward to one central event, the crucifixion of Jesus. That was the ultimate altar upon which the ultimate sacrifice would ultimately be made.

But it can’t end there. We must not stop with the altar. We must move beyond it to the table that has been restored because of this altar.

This is why we gather together around the table, to remember and celebrate the fellowship that has been restored, the communion that is now ours to share. We gather to commemorate the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, not merely as a meditation on the sacrificial death of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, but also as a celebration of the restored community we enjoy as a result of His victorious and vindicating resurrection.

 

Prayer

 

Dear Lord, from the beginning of history, You have desired to have communion with Your people and have delighted in those who passionately wanted to walk with You. I thank You for the imagery of table fellowship that runs from Genesis to Revelation and portrays Your acceptance and communion with Your people. I thank You for the God-Man who ate and drank with His followers during the years of His ministry, just before His death and after His resurrection. And I thank You for the great celebration to come, when we will share in the marriage supper of the Lamb. And as we celebrate through the communion elements of bread and wine our salvation and fellowship with You and with the restored community of faith, may we rejoice in all You have done and in all You will do in the ages to come.

In Jesus’s name, Amen 

Holy

 Holy

 

Pure and set apart

 

Would you ever use your toothbrush to scrub the floor and then put it in your mouth? Ugh!, no! You always make sure your toothbrush is clean, right? That way it's set apart for a special activity.

God wants His people to be set apart for a special activity too for worshiping Him. And just like we need to use a clean toothbrush to brush our teeth, we need to be clean from sin to worship God.

You see, God is holy, which means He’s pure and there's no sin in Him. But people are sinful, which means they don't always do what's right. God wanted a special group of people, the Israelites, to be set apart from everyone else. He said, "You must be holy because am holy" (Lev 19.2).

God gave the Israelites rules that helped them to do good and love one another.

It's like if you went to a friend's house covered in mud. You left dark footprints in every room, and at snack time, glops of mud fell from your sleeve into your friend's bowl! Afterward, your mum made a rule, always take a shower before playdates.

When the Israelites did what God said, they'd be holy. They could worship Him and show the world how good He is.

Nowadays anyone who follows Jesus can be one of God's holy people too. Colossians 3 says, "God has chosen you and made you his holy people. He loves you. So always...be kind, humble, gentle, and patient.... Forgive each other...Love each other" (.12-14). When we do those things, we worship God and show the world how good He is!

 

 

Exodus 3:1-6

One day Moses was taking care of some sheep when he saw a burning bush. He walked up to it to see what was going on, God called Moses name from the bush and said, "Don't come closer. Take off your sandals. You're standing on holy ground." Moses obeyed because he knew how pure, important, and powerful God is. He covered his face to show respect. Moses knew that any place where God is becomes a special and holy place.

 

The next time you put on pyjamas, think about how they are clothes set apart for bedtime. This is just like how we’re set apart for obeying God so that we can be pure and loving like Him.

 

God, I want to be holy like You. Help me do what is pure, good, and loving.

Resurrection day2

 If there’s no resurrection, nothing else makes sense. The demands of holiness, the call to turn the other cheek, the yearning for something greater than this life has to offer — none of it makes any sense. The sinless life, astonishing teaching, unbelievable miracles, gruesome death — none of it makes any sense.

We’re open to debate about Jesus. Was He a wise and moral teacher or one of many prophets sent from God? Was He a lunatic or criminally insane? Was He consumed with a messiah complex? Everyone can have an opinion, and everyone’s opinion is equally valid.

Unless there’s a resurrection.

In fact, if there’s no resurrection, the earliest disciples had it right. Go home. Go fishing. Go back to doing whatever it was you were doing before. Let’s call it a day. Close the book. Mourn for a little while the dream you had of things being different. Then eat, drink and be merry. Go ahead and slap your boss if he’s bothering you. Run your credit card debt up as high as they’ll let you. Steal something. Give in to every whim and indulge every desire.

Unless there’s a resurrection.

Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, today’s most famous trio of atheists, are or were right. Religion ought to be outlawed. It’s nothing but a source of misery and ignorance. We’re either the most lame-brained gullible fools, or we’re the victims of the most carefully guarded conspiracy theory ever concocted. They’re right in saying religious people have something desperately wrong with us, we’re sick and ought to be either cured or eradicated altogether.

Unless there’s a resurrection.

All the promises, all the laws, all the waiting, all the discipline — it’s all a bunch of nonsense, they’re all just silly manmade rituals designed to keep people in their place. Keeping clean, maintaining your purity, abstinence, fasting, self-control — these are just some humanly devised method of preserving order in society.

Unless there’s a resurrection.

If there’s no resurrection, what in the world are we doing? We’re the most nitwitted people on the planet. Life is what you make it. It’s every man for himself. It’s dog-eat-dog out there. You get what you deserve, and you better do unto others before they have a chance to do unto you. Be nice to those who will repay you. Forgive with strings attached. Take care of Numero Uno, and climb that corporate ladder by hook or by crook, stepping on whomever you have to in order to get that brass ring (whatever that is). Whoever dies with the most toys wins.

Unless there’s a resurrection.

Let’s be clear about this. We’re not talking about a metaphorical, allegorical, symbolic resurrection here. We’re talking a real-life, flesh-and-blood body that used to be dead but is now upright and walking and talking and conscious. Resurrection.

Without that, the life of Jesus doesn’t make any sense. And neither does yours. It may be an interesting read for a while, but the ending will be terrible. You die. That’s all. Your existence was nothing in the grand scheme of things. You will eventually be forgotten by history. Life is utterly meaningless.

Unless there’s a resurrection.

 

Prayer 

 

Lord Jesus, Your death and resurrection are the foundation of my faith, the source of my meaning, hope and purpose, the wellspring of my salvation, the assurance of Your truth and the basis of my eternal life with You. Life without the resurrection would be a brief episode between nonexistence and oblivion. There would be no long-term, abiding, transcendent hope. Human life and history would be a tragedy of epic proportions. Without Your resurrection, Your life would have been a terrible waste of extraordinary human potential. We would still be in our sins and there would be no real hope as we hurtle toward bodily decay and death. But thanks be to God that You were declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead through the power of the Holy Spirit.

In Jesus’s name, Amen