lesson loop 9.27.13

High School - "Believable - The Story of the Centurion"
We began a 5 week video series called "Anything But Ordinary". It is our prayer that through this next month and a half we will all be challenged to live a life that is much more than ordinary, allowing God to use us greatly, and where we see "heaven and earth collide"!

This first week we looked at Matthew 8:5-13, and we looked at the faith of the Centurion man. We considered what we would ask Jesus for if we were standing face to face with Him. We also explored what we actually believe about Jesus.
The night ended with a challenge to find a verse from Scripture that provides hope and can build our faith in Jesus Christ and what He can really do through our life if we surrender completely to Him.

If you would like to watch the 2 videos from last Tuesday, here they are:

Intro Video - https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2zJ0haVL2YNQzJLUjVuNEwzN0U/edit?usp=sharing

Lesson Video - https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2zJ0haVL2YNSnV6aHV4dHZyWDQ/edit?usp=sharing


Middle School - "God's Mercy"
We began by talking about the "popularity scale" that is present at most every middle school. To be part of the "in" crowd, you have to dress a certain way, act a certain way, and maintain a certain amount of popularity.
We then talked about the "in" group in the Old Testament, who were the Jews. They were privileged to receive many blessings and benefits from God, most importantly the covenants that God established with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, etc...
As the story of redemption unfolds in Scripture however, God opens up the way through Jesus Christ to people from all walks of life, from every nation. This was always the plan, and God receives much glory through it. The beautiful thing about being "in" God's family is it has nothing to do with our popularity, the way we dress, or anything like that. It is simply because of God's mercy. God chose Abraham because of His mercy, He chose David because of His mercy, and He chooses us because of His mercy.
The students considered Romans 9 and talked in their groups about God's election, fairness, and ultimately God's astounding mercy to us.
We ended the night by gathering in a circle on the floor representing the fact that we have been brought "in", and we prayed thanking God for His mercy, and also asked Him to use us to bring others into this special circle.

lesson loop 9.24.13

Before we have our lessons tonight, I wanted to let you all know what we talked about last week. :-)

Middle School - "The Triune God"
We started a brand new series entitled "Limitless God". Over the next couple months we will be focusing our attention on who God is and what His character is like. We will see that He is limitless. He is perfect in all His attributes.
We began last Tuesday by considering the Trinity - 3 persons, 1 God. While this is a mind-boggling concept for us as humans, we must believe it because the Scriptures are clear that this is truth. We considered the following passages that show that God is One, and each member of the trinity is God:

• Deuteronomy 6:4 & Matthew 26:63-64
• Romans 3:30 & John 8:58; 17:5,24
• 1 Corinthians 8:5-6 & John 16:7-8
• Ephesians 4:5-6 & Acts 5:3-4
• 1 Timothy 2:5 & Philippians 2:5-6

Our main points were simple:

1. THERE IS ONE GOD! (we focused on Ephesians 4:1-6)
   vs. 4) One: body (church), Spirit (H.S.), hope (salvation)
   vs. 5) One: Lord (Jesus), faith (key), baptism (spiritual)
   vs. 6) One: God & Father [over all, through all, in all] vs. 2-3) One body - be humble, gentle, patient, bearing in love, unified, peaceful
2. THIS ONE GOD IS THREE PERSONS! (we focused on 1 Peter 1:1-2)
   Trinity Teamwork:
   Father - chooses us (foreknowledge)
   Spirit - sanctifies us (calls, saves, seals, purifies)
   Son - sacrificed for us (cross)

We used an illustration to explain how our perspective of the Trinity is limited - we looked at zoomed in photos, and tried to guess what they were. From that limited perspective, it was very difficult. The same is true with the Trinity - from our perspective it is very difficult to understand, but that does not mean that it is not true. 

These truths are foundational, and we must hold to them as Christians. We ended with reciting this creed of the church - 

“I believe in God the Father, who created me; I believe in God the Son, who redeemed me; I believe in the Holy Spirit, who makes me holy.”

High School - "The Devastation of Sin"

We started with a video of a tornado - because that is a physical illustration of where the nation of Israel is spiritually as a nation. Things have spiraled down to a point of maximum destruction, and their sin leaves destruction in its wake. The main point was:

When you give yourself over to sin, destruction is sure to follow.

We read Judges 19, and we shuddered at the depravity that God's people committed.

We traced this all back to Israel's idolatry which is sketched out in the entire book, and we mentioned that all sin is idolatry. It is nothing less than worshipping ourselves rather than God. We considered 3 things about sin and self-worship:

1. SELF-WORSHIP HAS DEVASTATING RESULTS There is an unavoidable correlation between Gibeah and Sodom and Gomorrah Sexual sin is especially heinous! “Sin will always take you further than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost you more than you wanted to pay.”
2. SIN HAS A SNOWBALL EFFECT Things go from horrible to worse. More and more people are killed, and more and more women are taken advantage of. Unchecked sin will spiral out of control.
3. WE ARE OUR OWN WORST ENEMY Christians tend to be so concerned about how vile and wicked the world is (and it is!), but often we forget that we tend to destroy ourselves most times because we allow our sin and lust to go unchecked. We will destroy ourselves if we do not regularly repent from our sin and self-worship.

This seemed a depressing end to our study in the book of Judges, so I ended by saying this - "While the deliverers in the book of Judges failed to bring about reform, there did come a Deliverer who was true, and holy and beautiful. His name of course is Jesus, and He is a great Savior. He offers hope to all who would turn to Him and repent from their sins. He is in the business of radically changing people. He takes us who are sinners (our own worst enemy), and he makes us more and more into the image of Himself."

lesson loop 9.3.13

RED CARPET NIGHT!!!
We had a great red carpet night, in which we welcomed some brand new 6th graders! My prayer is that they felt welcomed, and they quickly become an integral part of our student ministry. We are glad to have them!

MS Lesson - "Eternal Life"
We finished up our series on the End Times by looking at Heaven and Paul's words in Philippians 1:20-24, 3:20-21. Paul's outlook on life and death is a little strange to us, especially to middle school students who have their entire life ahead of them. Paul seems as anxious to go to heaven as he is to keep on living. It is because he really had a passion to be in the presence of God.
We drew a vertical line down the whiteboard, and wrote many of the things we love about life on the left side. Then we took time to write on the right side things we know about heaven. As we stepped back and looked at the list, it became clear why most of us struggle with the thought of heaven. There is so much that is unknown, and we know that we enjoy so many things about life here on earth.
However, we learned a couple things from the passages of Scripture we looked at:

• We don't have to be afraid of dying if we are secure in Christ (even though we will naturally fear death to some extent).
• The best part of being in heaven is knowing God (in a way we have never before).
• We have all at times felt a longing to know or experience God more fully.
• We are citizens of heaven, and we are merely passing through here on earth.

We finished with an excellent quote from C.S. Lewis -

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

HS Lesson - "Idols and Chaos"
We started by considering how every person on the face of the world is "religious", even if they would never admit to it. We all worship something, because we are designed by the Creator to worship. So if that is the one true God or something else (like another religion, no religion or ourselves) we will worship. It is just a matter of who or what.

We looked at this statement:
WE MUST WORSHIP GOD FOR HIS GLORY

1. WE MUST WORSHIP
   Humans have an impulse to worship - football teams, celebrities, etc...
2. WE MUST WORSHIP GOD 
   We saw that Micah was a worshipper, but he did not worship Yahweh. Worship was an attempt at manipulating God for his own gain. His primary purpose for woshipping was his own success and prosperity.
   We considered how the local church is very important, because there must be order and structure to our worship. We need church leadership, accountability, discipline, and proper doctrine. Worship without any perimeters will end up dishonoring God and perhaps we will be worshipping a god of our own imagination like Micah.
3. WE MUST WORSHIP GOD FOR HIS GLORY
   We considered why we might be worshipping God - could it be that we are most concerned with our own satisfaction, or to get rid of guilt that we have? Or are we worshipping God simply because He is worthy of our complete worship? This is a very important question that we must each spend some time asking.

We also noted that worship disorders will always lead to deeper and darker sin, just as it did with the nation of Israel. We are preparing to look at the last lesson in the book of Judges, which will show us just how dark Israel had become as they disobeyed and rebelled against God.

Last thing we saw was that none of the characters in this account act with integrity, and yet all of them (except Micah) succeed with their self-promoting agendas (it is a dangerous place to be when God removes his hand of discipline from us…)