AGE APPROPRIATE: ELEMENTARY AGE (7-11yr olds)
BIG IDEA: GOD CALLS US TO DO GOOD IN THE WORLD
AIM: The aim of the ‘Do All the Good You Can Do’ Lesson (Galatians 6:1-10) is to challenge the children to think about how they can do good, to get them practicing doing good and to help them to see the importance of doing good even when it is difficult.
SONG IDEAS:
1. ‘Rooftops’ by Integrity Worship Kids
2. ‘God is Good’ by Ken Blount Ministries
3. ‘Every Good and Perfect Thing’ by Yancy
GAME IDEAS:
1. Balloon Scram. Write an odd number of good things that children can do onto slips of paper. Then write the same amount of wrong things on slips of paper. Put each slip of paper in a balloon. Choose two contestants who must pop the balloons and pick up the paper inside. By the end of the game the player that has the most good things is the winner.
2. Who’s Good Enough? Write out some different types of people on cards for each team. They can include the President, a burglar, a murderer, a teacher and so on. You can use specific names if this helps. The children must work in small groups to decide who is good and who is not. They can put them in order of who they think is the nicest (at the top) and who they think is the worst offender. Then discuss with the children what it means to do and be good. Ask them questions such as, what if the burglar steals to help feed his family? Does this make him any better? You could also ask the children to draw a line or separate the cards between who is good and who is not. Discuss how all our ideas of goodness don’t measure to God’s goodness and it is only through Jesus that we can enter heaven.
3. It tastes good! Have a taste test with the children. Blindfold your volunteers and ask them to taste some good things to see if they can tell what they are, without looking. The player to guess the most correctly is the winner.
BIG VERSE: Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Galatians 6:9.
Click here for the bible verse visual.
SET the Scene:
Read Galatians 6:1-10. Tell the children that this passage was written by Paul. Paul was a man that hated Christians, but when Jesus appeared to him in a bright light he was blinded and decided to follow Jesus. It was not easy for Paul. He was shipwrecked, beaten and put into prison for trying to tell others about Jesus. Yet Paul never stopped telling others about the good news.
SPOT the Simple Meaning:
1) OBJECT LESSON: GOD IS GOOD.
You will need: a drawing, painting or cutout of a person that you think is the (closest to a) ‘perfect’ person. You may want to add notes on the picture to say what you think makes them perfect, or simply add comments.
What would it look like if someone was completely good?
Say: Why is it important to do good? [get feedback] It’s because God is good! Psalm 100:5 says ‘For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.’ God is good. He is 100% good. There is no badness in Him. Everything God does is good…even if we don’t always understand it, or we think it seems wrong. Psalm 145:9 says ‘The LORD is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made.’ God is good to everyone. The bible says that because we have all done wrong things, each one of us deserve death (Romans 6:23). God takes our wrong things very seriously. They are not to be laughed at. Yet God is so good that He gives us eternal life… not only that, but He gives us many many more things too, like material things (Matthew 6) and spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12). That means we don’t need to worry but that we can trust in Him and see Him do the miraculous in our lives!
This is my picture of who I think the most goodest person on the planet is today! Ok, so goodest isn’t a word, but you know what I mean! To me, this person seems almost perfect. But you know, this person is not perfect. They are not completely good. There is only one person who has ever been completely good and perfect. Who do you think that is? [allow for feedback] That’s right. Jesus! Jesus is God. Jesus lived a completely good life! He was perfect and never did anything bad. Everything he did was good. 1 Peter 2:22 says ‘He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.’ Jesus was 100% good. He wants you and me to be like God and do all the good we can do! Why? Because He is good and when we do good we show others what God is like too! That way, everyone can see by our good actions that we serve a good God!
2) OBJECT LESSON: LOOK WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU STOP DOING GOOD
You will need the images [of the items in brackets] on a powerpoint to reflect each of the items you are talking about.
Say: What happens when you stop doing good things? Look at the pictures on the screen and tell me what these people might have stopped doing: (some will be easier to guess than others but give the children a chance to think and shout out.)
[yellow teeth] When you stop brushing your teeth, you might not be able to tell straight away that your teeth were rotting, but if you never brushed your teeth they would slowly get worse and worse. We must not stop doing good! If you brush your teeth they may not seem great right away, but after a long period of time you can tell you’ve been looking after them! That’s the same with doing good to others too.
[messy room] When you don’t tidy your room it looks fine after a day, even a week, but after a month or more you can really tell how bad it has become! You might not be able to see the floor!
[sad face] People live not knowing Jesus. When we stop telling people about Jesus then many people are missing out on knowing him and being helped in their lives by him. Not only that, but they miss out on eternal life too. God can speak to people Himself, but don’t forget, He loves to use me and you to tell them about Jesus too! He loves it when we spread the good news of Jesus!
Can you think of any other examples? [get feedback]
So why does God want us to do good? [get answers] God wants us to do good to all people. Why? Because doing good helps others. When we do good to each other then everyone is looked after. God loves everyone and wants everyone to be cared for. Why? Because God is good!
God is good no matter what. Psalm 119:68 says ‘You are good, and what you do is good; teach me your decrees.’ But when people see bad things in the world they start to think that God doesn’t care. God wants us to do good to others to show them that He does care and that He is good! Paul knew that and thats why he didn’t stop telling people about God’s goodness and about how Jesus died for them – even when he got beaten up, put in prison and shipwrecked. He knew that God was good and he wanted everyone else to know it too!
We might not always be able to see straight away what the result of our good things has been, but when we stop doing those good things we soon see what a mess things get into. God promises that when we do good there will always be a good result eventually!
3) OBJECT LESSON: DON’T GET TIRED OF DOING GOOD
You will need to have two extra volunteers that are willing to act out the different scenarios.
Say: Paul was the author of our bible verse today. ‘Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up’ Galatians 6:9. He wrote those words! Paul loved Jesus. After Jesus appeared to him on the Damascus Road Paul began to get groups of believers to meet together. These were some of the first churches. Paul never gave up. He always did good. Maybe we aren’t going to get beaten up or whipped for telling people about Jesus, like Paul did, but other things could happen. Paul says in our bible verse “Don’t get tired of doing good.” Why might we get tired or want to stop doing good? Let’s have a think while we do some mini skits.
Get another leader to help you act out each mini skit. After each skit ask the children: How would this make you feel?
a) One leader tries to help the other whilst the other is nasty to them. (People are nasty to us, call us names when we try to be nice.)
b) One leader tidies the work area and the other doesn’t even notice. Makes a comment about the place always being a mess. (Nobody notices – parents don’t notice you’ve done anything when you tidy your room.)
c) One leader asks another to come to church – they say no.
Sometimes the good things we do get unnoticed, or worse, people dislike or hate us for it anyway. That can make us get tired or fed up of doing good. We start to wonder what the point of it all is?! Have you ever felt like that? We all get tired sometimes of doing good things, so we need to ask God for help when we feel like giving up. We can’t do it on our own – we need to ask God; the Holy Spirit to help us to keep doing good every day! One day we will see that all our good things have mattered and God will say “Well done, my good and faithful servant!” (Matthew 25:21) Who wants to hear those words from God? Me too!
SEARCH the Scriptures:
BIBLE DASH GAME. You will need even teams and the bible references printed or written out on slips of paper. Give each child a bible reference to find in their teams. However, tell the children that they cannot begin until the whistle is blown, or the music begins. One the game has started only the first player may find their bible verse. Once they have found it and read it out the next player in the team can begin to find theirs and do the same. This continues until every member has found and read out their bible verse aloud. The winning team is the team to finish finding and reading every verse. [If you have more than the number of players needed then duplicate the verses so that everyone can play]
Click here for Bible verses about goodness.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. What do you think God wants us to know about goodness?
2. How can we be good according to the bible?
3. How is God good, and what difference does that make to our lives?
SENSE How You Feel:
How does it feel to do good?
A great way to get the children thinking about this is to actually get the children doing good! Asking and helping them to volunteer in church or creating a special community event or acts of kindness day that they can participate in. Then follow it up with asking them how it went and how they felt as a result. You could do this event before the lesson or you could even get the children to plan the event during this lesson and reflect on it afterwards.
SEEK God:
You will need colored paper, scissors and markers.
Ask the children to close their eyes and think about what God might be asking them to do concerning doing good. The children should then draw around their hand and write a prayer inside the hand outline. They can ask God for help to do good or thank Him for the opportunity to do good, or ask for forgiveness for not doing good. Once they have created their hand prayer you can arrange the prayers into a wreath.
Prayer:
Father God, thank you that You are so good! Help us to remember that, even when we go through hard times like Paul did. Help us to keep doing good things and to show others that You are good. Help us not to try and do it in our own strength but to rely on Your power.
In Jesus name,
Amen.
Click here for the ‘Do All the Good You Can Do’ Powerpoint image
