As our mid-week groups and Sunday morning ministries are launching I was reminded about such an important lesson that God continues to teach me. Sometimes when I am teaching a kids lesson in Hope Kids or facilitating a conversation in a small group, it can be easy to try to communicate a few big ideas and then go about life as usual. When you find yourself in that particular kind of pattern, God usually shows up and shakes things up to teach you something.
Two things have been happening over the last month that God is bringing together to cause a perfect storm for learning. Small groups are beginning to walk through a study called Life in Rhythm. In this study we are being challenged to look at life (work and relationships) through the lens of what God’s purpose is for us and how we can live honoring Him as we go about our natural rhythms of life. This may seem like a simple concept, but it is a BIG DEAL!
It is so easy to live a compartmentalized life, devoid of purpose and mission. It is easy to work, spend time with family or friends, go to church, and fail to see how God’s Lordship over all of these things brings fulfillment to each of area of our life. The bottomline is that if I want to live on mission for God, I cannot do it by keeping my faith contained to the hour long service I attend on a Sunday morning. I must walk out my faith in the context of where I do life.
Usually, my involvement with Hope Kids is about equipping my team to bring a lesson and activities each week to the kids who attend Hope Church. Each week there is a bottomline that we ask the teachers to emphasize and a Bible verse we ask the kids to remember. Our hope is that the lessons and the verse provide tracks for parents to jump on as conversations develop around what kids are learning on Sundays at home. Well, this week I had the opportunity to prep and teach our Grades 1-3 class and the lesson was about Paul. I was teaching about how Paul was a man of integrity and encouraged the church. The kids have been memorizing 1 Thessalonians 2:12, which says,
12 we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you
and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who
calls you into his own kingdom and glory.
As I sat “criss-cross apple sauce” on the floor with the kids, it struck me that our kids are learning the same lesson I am learning through the Life in Rhythm series. I am being challenged to “walk in a manner worthy of God…” which is exactly what my daughter is wrestling with along with her peers on Sunday morning. Little lesson… BIG deal!
It’s a little lesson that a child can grapple with, but an even bigger deal if we begin to make headway in actually walking out the mission to live in a manner worthy of God where we live, work, and play!
