Many of you have thanked me for attempting to make each of my Bible lessons relevant to kids today. I so appreciate your encouragement!! Some lessons work better than others, but all parts of scripture can teach us something if we think about it, and listen to the Spirit.
My sweet friend Ticia, from Adventures in Mommydom, is here to share ways to make your Bible lesson relevant to kids. After all, we want our children to see the value in learning about God and everything about him.
I’m sure if you’ve been teaching for any length of time, you’ve heard the question, “But why do I care what ______ did?” And it’s a legitimate question to ask. The Bible is filled with hundreds of pages that seem irrelevant. Do I really care who Adam’s great-great-great grandson is? Do I care what kind of cloth they are supposed to make the tabernacle out of? Do I really want to read 50 chapters of rules?
In my own flesh, the answer to every single one of those questions is NO! Quite emphatically, no. But, God said in 2 Timothy 3:16, “All scripture is God-breathed and useful,” not “The parts you really like and the stories that are fun to tell are useful“, but ALL. So, let’s look at how we make these boring passages relevant, first you need to ask some questions:
What is different in this passage?
Let’s look at the genealogy from Adam to Noah. It is several generations of “so and so was born, they lived until _____ and had kids, and then lived for ______ more years.” But there’s a few things to notice as you look at that lesson, or any genealogy lesson:
- Patterns, what patterns do you see? If you look at the years before the child is mentioned, it gets longer and longer before the son born is mentioned.
- Overlaps, there is a lot of overlap and repetition in the passage. If you sit down and look at the timeline, Adam died shortly before Noah was born. Noah was part of the first generation who did not know Adam, how does that change the story of Noah?
- What is different? Every other person mentioned in that passage is born, lived, had kids, and dies. Then you read about Enoch. He walked with God. He is the only one in that whole passage that does this. That one verse in the midst of all of this scripture makes a great lesson.
How does it relate to Jesus?
Did you know most of the details in the tabernacle point to Jesus? All of the Old Testament is written to point us to Jesus. So when you read about all of the steps to become pure, it’s to point out how we are not pure and sin-free, and by contrast Jesus is. The same often happens with the Old Testament laws, they are designed to point others to God. So when the Israelites were asked, “why do you not eat bacon? It’s delicious,” they can answer, “I do not eat bacon because God has called me to be set apart for Him.” Then you can broaden that idea out, we can eat bacon now, but how are we set apart for God? What makes us different?
What is the reason behind the story?
I mentioned the laws earlier in the example above, but look at the stories included. Why do we hear about David and Bathsheba? It sure doesn’t make David look good, but that may be why. So we can see even our greatest heroes have feet of clay. It also gives us a great example of how to repent. David is devastated by his sin when he realizes it, and mourns it, but in the end he doesn’t continue to beat himself up.
“All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching and correcting, rebuking and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped to do every good work.” ~ 2 Timothy 3:16-17.
Ticia blogs at Adventures in Mommydom about homeschooling and children’s ministry. She enjoys more hobbies than she can remember, and has 3 adorable and very energetic kids. You can find her on pinterest, facebook, and twitter.
