Hm I’ll start off with the key points I hope the kids can take home. But if you feel there’s more, do add in your own.

1: We’ll saved by God’s grace through Jesus and His grace is where love and justice meet to provide our salvation.

2: God will always love us, no matter what, we can’t earn it.

3: Knowing we didn’t do anything to earn God’s love reminds us not to live in fear of losing it either.

Pray!

Hook: Today’s hook will be a piece of paper. I mean not just a piece of paper, but there’ll be a maze on it. Like you know those mazes where you start off at one point, and then you trace your way through the maze to get to the ending point? Yup. It’s not uploaded here but I’ll provide it for you on Sunday! Just remember to bring 3 different coloured pens. I’ll explain what the maze is about.

Um so there’s 2 starting points here, one titled Love and one titled Justice. The ending point is titled Salvation. There’ll be an empty landmark somewhere in the middle. The landmark will be known as Grace and the leaders are supposed to fill it in later.

Group your kids in 3s and get each of them to use a different coloured pen. 2 kids will start off at either Love or Justice and they are to start tracing at the same time. Remember to tell your kids no cheating with their eyes by looking ahead for smooth paths! Just tell them to follow their pen or pencil!

Anyway, eventually both kids will end up at the empty landmark. When that happens, the leaders fill it in with Grace (haha you can draw a cross beside it if you want to). Then the 3^rd kid takes over and finishes the maze till they reach the end, which is Salvation.

Okay, so the hook will launch you into the first key point which is under the part God’s Gift from Heaven in the book.

Lesson Start:

Key point 1: We’ll saved by God’s grace through Jesus and His grace is where love and justice meet to provide our salvation. (God’s Gift from Heaven)

Ask your kids if they know what justification means. Justification is being made right with God. But we are only justified if we accept the truth that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. We are justified by faith in Jesus. Romans 5:1-2 “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.”

Do question 1

God is a just God. He won’t leave any sin unpunished. Bearing this in mind and remembering previous lessons where we’ve learnt that our salvation is by God’s grace, its God’s gift to us, not by our own works (Ref Ephesians 2:8-9), ask your kids why they think God sent His son to die on the cross for our sins. (do question 3 in book but don’t read verse yet)

Possible answers from them might be because Jesus is the only perfect sacrifice that can pay the price for our sins and God cant leave any sin unpunished; God is full of grace and God is good.

All are true but an important answer I’m hoping will surface and probably will, is because God LOVES us. Read Romans 3-25-26

God is motivated to save us both because of his love for us and his responsibility to deal with sin. His grace is where love and justice meet to provide our salvation.

Key point 2: God will always love us, no matter what, we can’t earn it. (Can’t Help but Love)

Ask your kids whether there are times in which they feel God cant possibly love them because of something they have done wrong or maybe they feel God cant possibly love them if they’re so weird that other people don’t like them or laugh at them etc.

If they’ve never felt that, then great! But if not, we can refer to a verse that can comfort them and reassure them that God’s love is not dependent on anything we do or anything we are. Deut 7:7-8 “The Lord did not choose you and lavish his love on you because you were larger or greater than other nations, for you were the smallest of all nations! It was simply because the Lord loves you!”

He’s God and He doesn’t need anything from us. He loves us because He chooses to. 1 John 4:10 “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us”

He loves us because it’s His very nature. Refer to the 2^nd part of the verse for 1 John 4:8 “…God is love”

Do question 4 and learn more about God’s love J

Key point 3: Knowing we didn’t do anything to earn God’s love reminds us not to live in fear of losing it either. (Our Response)

Ask the kids if they’ve ever worried about losing God’s love.

Do question 6

Read Romans 8:38-39 “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Nothing can separate us from the God’s love! Tell your kids that!

End of with the new memory verse. For those who’ve been to Tacklecamp 2010, it was part of the theme verse!

Ephesians 3:18-19 “may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Hope this helps

Done by Cheryl and edmund will thank her by buying her lunch :)