Kids of the King, Arise!

Love #3

Let’s go one step further. There is no such thing as love without commitment. Now what does that mean you ask. Good question. Well commitment means you will hang in there no matter what, if you are hurt, or feel ignored or are sick or happy or sad or betrayed whatever. Alot like the type of promises people make when they get married.

The problem is not every day is a sun-shiney happy day. Some days are nasty and eveything goes wrong. What do you do then? Give up and grumble and complain and say “I”M outta here?

Matt 18:7 says that stumbling block will be inevitable, in other words you can’t avoid them. People WILL hurt you and it is often the little things that bug us. You don’t stumble over boulders when you walk but little stones. Has something someone did caused you to sin…like your brother peeeed all over the toilet seat! How did you respond to him? Yeah right, I guess I shouldn’t have yelled at him and called him a pig. Or your sister ate the last of the potato chips AGAIN. AAACH

See the little things, you Have to forgive in your heart otherwise your heart will grow cold and hard towards them…but NOT only them, it grows cold little by little towards God. You cannot start to think nasty thoughts about someone, (even if they deserve it) because little by little you will grow cooler and cooler to God as well.

1 John 4:20 look it up. Does it sound harsh? But it’s true isn’t it.

You may not like what someone has done but according to this verse you can’t stop loving him/her if you say you are a son and daughter of the king. Love is a choice not a feeling. It doesn’t mean you have to be all mushy towards that person, but it does mean showing them the kind of love we talked about in love #1, the same kind of you would show yourself.

The Kingdom of God will not be seen on earth, or God’s glory seen, unless we are committed to one another and show love. A lot of us will stumble over the little things and the enemy loves to whisper into our ears and blow these little faults out of proportion.

“Your brother went into the bathroom and peed on the toilet seat cause he knew you were going in to have a shower next, and was mad at you for eating those chips. Why don’t you go downstairs and see if he has some of his pizza pops left and eat those as well. He deserves it!”

BALONEY! Don’t let the enemy take you on those kinds of rabbit trails!

The people through whom the Kingdom of God is seen on earth are those who are able to overcome the obsticles of each other’s faults. They help one another become what God has called us to be…together the living body of Jesus on earth.(1)

Action: Ask God to show you a way to show your commitment to your family this week, no matter what. Agree in your heart to stand together no matter what wave hits you!

(1)Francis Frangipane: idea from The Three Battle Grounds, pg 54

If you look in the dictionary consecrate means to “with all our heart set yourself apart to worship God.” So what we are sayin is that deep in our hearts our desire is that there is - NO GOING BACK – WE PROMISE TO BE TOTALLY DEVOTED to love God and to love each other as well. Do you remember what the greatest commandment was?

Look up Matthew 22:36-40 and fill in the blanks

________ the Lord your God with all your heart and your _________ as _________.

Have you ever gone to a wedding ceremony? I have many times. What happens there, besides the groom getting to kiss the bride? The bride looks gorgeous and had spent all sorts of time and money to look her best. She was all dressed in white and the groom was in a fancy tux of some sort.

See a wedding ceremony is very important to getting married; you have to have some kind of ceremony in order to have a marriage. It can be a small wedding with only a few witnesses or a HUGE wedding with all the flowers and music like you see in the Sound Of Music. It is a time where the people that are getting married tell every one there, “we belong to each other and we promise to love each other forever…NO TURNING BACK- WE PROMISE TO BE TOTALLY DEVOTED to each other, NO MATTER WHAT. BUT this promise is only the start of a life of living together in a whole new way. The couple is set apart from all other people and the Bible says they are now “one flesh”. You can’t get closer than that!

In the Bible there were a group of people that were set apart to worship God. They were called the Levites. Let’s go check out what set them apart and how that can apply to you and your family.

Levites – Who are they and what did they do?

Deut 10-8-9 tells us how the Levites were set apart from every other tribe of Israel. God chose them to be his special servants and to lead worship. They didn’t have any inheritance (land that belonged to them) in the Promised Land, because God Himself was their inheritance. Wow! That meant that they had to trust God for all their needs.
They took care of the tabernacle or temple, and the priests, who were a special part of the tribe of Levi, were responsible for the sacrifices and offerings and spoke blessings over the people.

Why did God set this particular group of people apart?
Open your Bible and look up Exodus 32:1-26. What happened here?
Here we read the story of the time the Israelites sinned by worshipping the Golden Calf. When Moses came down from the mountain he was stunned when he saw that the people were running wild totally out of control., ESPECIALLY after God had just before given them the 10 commandments and had spoken to them! So he stood at the entrance to the camp and called out with a loud voice, “Whoever is on the Lord’s side, come to me.”
And what happened? All the Levites came to his side. They had to take a radical stand to follow God. It was this obedience and faithfulness that earned them the special privilege of ministering to the Lord.

So how does this apply to you today? There are a lot of things in our nation that look like the people at the foot of Mount Sinai with the Golden calf. Many people and situations are totally out of control and are running wild. Just take a look at the newspapers. Because of this we have felt God say as he did in Joel 1:16
“Gather the people, Consecrate the assembly, bring together the elders. Gather the children and nursing babes…” So this call is not only for the older people but for kids and teens as well.

ACTIVITY
Materials needed:
Masking tape
Bowl of water

We’re going to take part in several actions now, which symbolize this call.
1. Have someone in your family draw a “line in the sand”, with masking tape and ask, “Whoever is on the Lord’s side, come and step over the line in an act of dedication to God”.

Don’t automatically step over the line but ask yourself are you ready to totally follow God and obey Him no matter what the cost?
If you are not ready now, God knows, and He values your honesty. But keep on with the devotions during this time and maybe later on you will be able to make that stand.
Take the words of this song by Brian Doerksen and declare it as you cross over the line.

Today, I choose to follow you
Today, I choose to give my “yes” to you
Today, I choose to hear your voice and live
Today, I choose to follow you
As for me and my house, we will serve you
As for me and my house, we will spend our lives on you
Today

2. Purity (set up some basins with water and a towel)
Another character trait of the Levites was that they were true to God and avoided sin. This heart attitude made them what they were. Outward purity was required as well and when they washed it was a picture of what was happening in their hearts.

A time of consecration is also like getting your “inside home”, or your heart, ready for a special guest. This Special Guest, Jesus you want to have stay. What are the dust bunnies in your inside home that need to be cleaned out? What are the things you have hidden “under the bed” in your heart?

So let’s wash our hands together in these basins to show that we like the Levites want to have our hearts and hands clean before God. (Wash hands) As you do, pray this prayer and wait for God to speak to you. We are asking God to show us anything in our lives, our families that does not reflect the Kingdom of God.
Ps 139: Search me Oh God and know my heart, try me and see if there is any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.

Confess anything God brings to mind and then pray the following prayer:

LET THE WORDS OF MY MOUTH AND THE MEDITATION OF MY HEART (my thoughts) BE ACCEPTABLE IN THY SIGHT O GOD. Ps 19:14

THIS consecration call is also to ask God to help all Christians, as “living stones” come together to each do our part so that Canada really be a place where God’s Glory can be seen. Also our prayer is that we understand more that Jesus is the corner stone and that all we really need to do is to rest and trust in His promises and act on what He shows us to do. You can do the same for the country that you live in.

Over the next while I will be posting things that have to do with “commitment” and “living stones” and stories of God’s glory. If you have any stories or thoughts in these areas please send them to me at kkarise@shaw.ca

Me and my family flew to Florida for the Revival that is happening there. The leader, Todd Bentley, is very powerful. He prays for ears to hear, they hear. He prays for eyes to see, they see. He prays for people to rise from the dead, they rise from the dead. Between forty and sixty people have been raised from the dead! “Come On!” There is five thousand chairs filled with people every night. Once, one quarter of the countries of the world were represented. Most of the people had to stand outside of the “big white tent.”
Do you know someone who is deaf? Blind? Speechless? Dead? Come to the revival in Lakeland, Florida. God does miracles in the big white tent!

You can watch the revival on the Internet too! Go to freshfireministries.com

ASK the Helper to show you where you have allowed bitterness to come into your heart, and where your love has gone cold.
Repent…remember that is to change you way of thinking about the situation that Hurt you…
Man that may be hard but it is IMPORTANT
Then Ask Jesus to help you forgive the person that hurt you.
Then Thank God for allowing this situation as an opportunity to grow in love, as we only learn how to love our enemies if we have had situations where nasty things happen.

Listen to this song as you pray:



(1) Francis Frangipane, The Three Battle grounds (C) 1898 Advancing Church Publications

Celebrating the End of the ADVENTURE SERIES (that’s just a beginning)
An adventure seeking the heart of God

Materials :

Chalkboard/whiteboard to write on or posters made with the following steps written :

- Read God’s Word

- Reflect on God’s Word

- Memorize God’s Word

- Pray and Fast

- Confess your sins

- Serve Others

Ingredients for ‘trail mix’ plus ice cream (trail mix becomes topping for ice cream sundaes)

Suggestions : salted peanuts, raisins, sunflower seeds, granola, multigrain Cheerios, chocolate chips

Bowl

Wooden spoon

Ice cream, ice cream scoop, bowls and spoons

Focus :

Ask : Who’s hungry?

Say : For the past several weeks, we have been going on an Adventure, seeking the heart of God and trusting that we will be satisified in Him.

Ask, ‘What is the way to God’s heart?’ (through Jesus) We know that the Way to God is through Jesus. Because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, we can ‘draw near’ to God, or come close to Him. What does it mean to ‘draw near’ to someone? (be close to them).

Call a student to ‘draw near’ to you. Make it a game by calling first one, then another, and another.

Say : We have looked at different ways of ‘drawing near’ to God’s heart, and this has been our adventure. It’s an adventure that will never end, but can continue for the rest of our lives. At the beginning, we looked at different ‘steps’ to take to draw near to God :

- Read God’s Word
2.Reflect on God’s Word
3.Memorize God’s Word
4.Pray and Fast
5.Confess your sins
6.Serve Others

Today, we’re going to make ‘trail mix’ to help us remember the ‘ingredients’ for our journey towards God’s heart.

Procedure :

Have ingredients ready and have volunteers take turns adding the ingredients to a large mixing bowl. As each one is added, explain the meaning and write that meaning next to the name of the ingredient on the board or use posters to show.

- ¼ cup salted peanuts – memrize God’s word. Just like they’re salty, we can be ready to be ‘salt’ in the world if we memorize God’s word and are ready to share it at the right time. Salt makes people thirsty, so we can make people thirsty for more of God.

- ¼ c. raisins – raisins are grapes that are dried in the sunshine. Maybe you think they taste better than grapes. Just like them, we become better when we spend time praying / fasting / listening to God. We spend time in His ‘sunshine’, listening to His voice. We can tell Him our needs and trust that He will answer when we call.

- ¼ c. sunflower seeds – This is the only step we haven’t talked about a lot in our Adventure Series. Still, serving others will grow naturally out of spending time reading God’s Word, listening to Him and wanting to obey. Gal 6 :9 ‘Do not become weary in doing good for at the proper time you will reap a harvest if you do not give up.’That means that every time we serve someone else, doing something kind and generous for another person, we are planting a seed that can someday grow into their OWN desire for an adventure with God. It’s also a way for us to draw closer to God when we obey what He tells us to do through His Word and in our own time of listening to Him. Let’s be watching for people we can serve as a way to ‘plant’ seeds of love in their lives!

- ¼ c. granola – the granola absorbs honey and others flavors to taste good, just like we absorb God’s Word when we spend time meditating. God changes our ‘flavor’ so we ‘taste’ more like Him. (we do the things He would do and think the thoughts He would think)

- ¼ c. multigrain Cheerios – bite a section off to look like a ‘C’. This ‘C’ reminds us of confessing our sins. We looked at this as part of ACTS prayer. To confess means to admit sin and to repent means to turn away from it. Each time we come to God with our sin, He forgives us and removes whatever keeps us from Him. Psalm 24 :4 asks, ‘Who can go up the hill of the Lord? He who has clean hands and a pure heart.’ If we want to continue our journey of seeking God, we need to have a pure heart. Confessing our sin is what keeps our heart pure for the journey.

- ¼ c. chocolate chips – reading God’s Word. Do you think this is the ‘best part’ so far? Reading God’s Word is, for me, the ‘best part,’ because reading God’s letter to each day makes the rest of the steps along the journey possible – it’s what we reflect on and shows us how to pray when we sit in God’s presence like the raisins sit in the sunshine, it’s what we memorize so we can be salty to the rest of the world, it teaches us how to serve others and plant seeds of love, the Holy Spirit uses it to show us our sin so we can confess and become pure before God, and it changes our ‘flavor’ when we spend time reflecting on it and allow the Holy Spriit to use God’s Word to speak to our hearts, change us, and know His love for us. It’s actually healthy, too. J

Stir and ask : Is this a good mix? Is it healthy? Is it enough to fill you up? Do you think it could get better? (Hopefully they will answer yes to all)

Say : Just like we can grow with God by making these habits part of our everyday life, our trail mix can provide us with energy and make us grow. But what would be even better would be…

ICE CREAM SUNDAES!

Imagine all of this put together, but with ice cream underneath!

To me, that’s kind of what going to church is like. We can spend time with God on our own and it’s great, it’s healthy, but there’s something very special about getting together with other Christians, talking about our personal adventure with God, being taught about God’s Word, and singing songs that tell God how great He is! I think it’s more important than ice cream or dessert, but ice cream reminds me that coming to church shouldn’t be the only time I meet with God. If I only ate ice cream, I could never be healthy and strong! As Christians, we can’t DEPEND on church to satisfy our needs, but going to church and getting together with other Christians can be like our ‘spiritual dessert’! It’s a celebration of what God is doing in our lives!

Make ice cream sundaes to celebrate our journey together.

Closure :

After students have finished eating, challenge students to continue seeking God every day of their lives. Every time they eat trail mix, it can be a reminder of their spiritual adventure of seeking God’s heart. Review ingredients and their meaning. Close with prayer.

Optional Extension :

Have a time of ‘walking through the steps’ together. Allow the Holy Spirit to lead and guide you.

- read God’s Word

- reflect on God’s Word

- memorize a verse

- ACTS pray and listen

- serve others (by cleaning up the sundaes or even serving the community in a practical way)

Reminder :

It won’t be the same everyday. Walking with God has a rhythm to it that’s more than routine – it’s a relationship. These steps are spiritual disciplines to help us draw near to our Father. They are not an end in and of themselves. Seek God’s heart and let Him surprise you with the adventure He leads you to!

Blessing : Num 6 :24-26

‘ “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine upon you
and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.” ‘

Peace : nothing missing, nothing broken. Complete joy in Him. The answer to a longing for adventure.

Stephanie McIntyre

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.’

Answer: 29″The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.‘There is no commandment greater than these.”