By way of a follow-up to yesterday’s post on Creating Your Own Object Lessons, here are a few illustrations I’ve created using that method:
The dual-purpose of the Christian: To Love God and Love Others – A hammer has two jobs. Hammering nails and pulling them out. You can use hammers for a lot of other things… but they were created for only two things… just like us.
Showing Christ With Our Love – Lightly sketched a Jesus face (from the internet) on a piece of poster board. The kids called out good deeds and ways we show love to others. I wrote them on the paper with a large black marker filling in the areas of the sketch that needed to be black. As we continued the image of Christ become more and more obvious. (They couldn’t see the sketch).
Obeying Parents Protects Us – Put a baseball helmet on a balloon (complete with smiley face) and bumped it against a piece of cardboard with thumbtacks stuck through it. When we obey our parents their rules act like armor that protects us from bad choices and danger. When we disobey we are choosing to not have that protection. (pop)
Including Christ In Everything – Had kids play tug of war against “Jesus” illustrating how many folks think that sports and hobbies are in competition with our spiritual lives. I then had Jesus stand with the child and pull the rope with them to illustrate how when we include Christ in every part of our lives, he helps us do it even better because it’s for his glory.
Illustrating Praise, Glory & Honor – I wanted to show the kids how our praise and worship honors God. We surprised a staff member with an abundance of gifts, played his favorite song, had his family bring the gifts to him. He cried and thanked everyone again and again. It was real, not rehearsed. I then drew parallels between that event and how God must feel when we lift him up.
God Himself Is Our Foundation, Not What He Does or Does Not Do – Kids often lose faith in their Middle School years because they can get the impression that God is like a grandfather or Santa. They may go through a series of unfortunate events and wonder where God was. I use a large Bible (God), Jenga blocks (The things we believe we need from God), and a short stack of blank CD’s (our Faith and Beliefs). I start to pull out Jenga blocks one at a time illustrating the things that can be taken away from us in life. When our faith is based on what God does for us (shake the table) our faith can fall right apart. But when we put our faith in who God is (I restack the configuration where the CD’s are directly on the bible and the Jenga blocks are on the CD’s) things are stable. I re-do the illustration, taking away Jenga blocks… but it doesn’t affect our connection and faith in God.
Standing Strong With God’s Strength and Power – I needed to illustrate how God’s strength could be our strength. Not an easy one. I ended up using a 2×4 (God’), a 8’ length of nylon rope (us), some Staple Nails and scripture references printed on half sheets of paper. I showed how the rope couldn’t stand up on it’s own… just like us. Then I read the scriptures which addressed different parts our lives and hammered them along with the rope up the length of the 2×4. I think it perfectly illustrated how trusting in God’s word gives us the power (God’s strength) to stand.
Do you have an object lesson you created from scratch? Share it in the comments!