BIG IDEA: WE HAVE A GOD OF HOPE
AIM: In the ‘God of Hope’ Childrens Lesson on Genesis 40 children will learn that
SONG IDEAS:
- ‘Waymaker’ by Allstar Kids Club
- ‘Build My Life’ by Good Kicks
- ‘My Only Hope’ by Gateway
GAME IDEAS:
- Bread Man. (regular/widescreen) Children are each given a piece of bread and must make a man out of the bread. A simple yet fun game. You can choose the most creative man as the winner. If they’ve washed their hands beforehand they can also eat their bread at the end – winner!
- Grape Smash. (regular/widescreen) A few players are chosen to race against one another. You will need a tub for each player. Place grapes in the tub and have children squash the grapes with their bare feet. Then pour the juice into a container at the end to see who has made the most juice – that player is the winner.
- Basket Head. (regular/widescreen) Children play a relay race with a basket of goodies on their head. (Just as the Baker has in his dream) Use cones to weave around and tables or chairs to crawl over and under.
- Butler, Butler. (regular/widescreen) Children race in a relay with a tray holding paper or plastic cups and plates. The quickest team to finish the relay is the winning team. They cannot drop any of the items on their journey or they must start from the beginning.
BIG VERSE: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13.
[mepr-s3-link src=”teaching-series-god-of-hope/God of Hope Bible Cards-min.pdf”]God of Hope Bible Cards[/mepr-s3-link]
ICEBREAKER: What job would you like to do when you are older?
DRAMA: [mepr-s3-link src=”teaching-series-god-of-hope/God of Hope Drama-min.pdf”]Access the fun ‘God of Hope’ drama here.[/mepr-s3-link]
SET the Scene:
Read Genesis 40.
VIDEO IDEAS:
- ‘Joseph in Prison’ by Faith Kids Video
- ‘Go Go Joseph’ from 1999 Movie’ Joseph and His Technicolor Dreamcoat’
REVIEW QUESTIONS:
- Who was thrown into prison with Joseph? (the cupbearer and the baker to the King/Pharoah)
- Who was assigned to look after them? (Joseph)
- What happened to the cupbearer and the baker on the same night? (they had a dream)
- Who did Joseph say gives interpretations of dreams? (God)
- What did the cupbearer see in his dream? (vine with three branches, grapes formed. He took them, squeezed them into a cup and gave them to the king)
- What did the cupbearer’s dream mean? (He would be cupbearer again in three days)
- In his dream, how many baskets of bread did the baker have on his head? (three)
- Who ate the bread on the baker’s head in his dream? (birds)
- What did the baker’s dream mean? (In three days the king would kill him and the birds would eat his body… eew!)
- Did what Joseph say would happen really happen? (yes!)
SPOT the Simple Meaning:
1) GOD IS THE GOD OF HOPE
You will need one empty balloon and one balloon filled with water and a candle or lighter. When you hold up the candle or lighter against the empty balloon, it will pop. However, when you hold it up against the balloon filled with water – where the water lies – you should find that it does not pop. [Make sure to practice this over and over again before you do it in front of the children.]
Say: You might have thought that life couldn’t get any worse for Joseph when he was thrown into the pit. Yet now he is stuck in prison with no way out! Sometimes we can feel like we have no way out of our situation. Maybe we feel sad or angry at where we are. A person without any hope is somebody that does not expect things to change. They settle where they are and give up. It’s like this balloon here – they are filled with nothing; no hope [Show empty balloon]. When something terrible happens to them they can’t handle it because they have no hope. [Pop the balloon]
Joseph had hope. In fact, he had the God of Hope! God is the God of Hope – He has ALL hope. This balloon is like a person filled with God’s hope – the God of Hope. When we decide to follow Jesus, God’s Holy Spirit comes into our lives and fills us up! He gives us the power to keep hoping. [Show the balloon with water inside]. So no matter what we go through, we will never give up totally when we know we have the God of Hope on our side. We can keep trusting that the Holy Spirit will help us. He will give us hope. We don’t need to fear because we have His hope. [Hold a candle up against the water in the balloon – it should not pop].
Who would you prefer to be? How would you prefer to react? A person that is hopeless and that gives up? Or someone that has the God of Hope on their side and keeps expecting that God will do what He has promised to do.
2) GOD IS ALWAYS AT WORK EVEN WHEN I CAN’T SEE WHAT HE IS DOING
Say: Have you ever felt like God wasn’t there? [Get some feedback] Sometimes it might feel like God has disappeared; like He doesn’t care. Sometimes He is a little bit like air. We can’t see air on a normal day. We aren’t constantly wondering, will there be air today when I wake up? [If you’re up for a laugh, at this point you could do some play acting around the concept of someone worrying about there being no air and how silly that is… ] Air is everywhere and it is always there.
Air example:
Yet the only times we see air is when it is a windy day. Or maybe if someone brushes something up into the air and it begins to float around in the air, making it dusty air. Perhaps you have seen the air on a very cold day when you can see your breath in the air. But that isn’t every second of every day. Yet we know the air is there.
God is always around us. Always at work in our lives. Yet we might not always see what He is doing. We might think He has gone, but just like the air, if we trust that He is there, we know that we will see Him do something amazing one day.
Joseph knew that God was with him. That’s why he told the cupbearer to tell him the dream. He knew only God could interpret the dream… yet he knew God was with him and that through Joseph he would speak the meaning of the dream! Joseph knew God had not left him. He knew God was with him even in prison and that He was working behind the scenes.
Director example:
Have you ever watched a movie? [Get feedback] What is your favorite movie? [Get feedback] Did you know that every movie that has ever been made has a director? Someone that works behind the scenes of the movie. That person decides what will happen in the movie and makes it all happen. Yet you will never see them in the movie. They never really pop up and say hello. Their job is to make it all happen behind the scenes where nobody can see them.
God is always at work in our lives, even when we cant see Him. We just have to trust that He is there and that He cares. We need to have hope in the God of hope!
SEARCH the Scriptures:
LOVELY BUNCH. (regular/widescreen) Use lots of purple or green balloons and tie them together in bunches to create bunches of ‘grapes’. Each team gets their own bunch. Children must take turns to run to their bunch, and stamp on one balloon, then run back. In one balloon there will be a bible verse (Print off the Big Verse Bible cards and use these – the verse is also below).
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13.
However, they must stamp out all the balloons before the last player can run and pick up the bible verse and bring it back to the team.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
- What does it mean to say God is the ‘God of Hope’?
- Why would having God’s hope bring joy and peace?
- What does it mean to trust in God and in His hope?
- Why might we overflow with God’s hope when we trust in Him?
- Who is the Holy Spirit and how does He give us power to live in God’s hope?
SENSE How You Feel:
Encourage your children to imagine what it would be like for the cupbearer and the baker to hear the news of what their dreams meant. Let them spend some time thinking about this as they do one or more of the activities below.
How would you feel if you were the butler or the baker?
- Sensory: Mash some grapes to make grape juice.
- Mould a clay or playdough basket with bread or a cup with grape juice.
- Build a grape smashing machine with lego or building bricks – get the children to think about how they might have done this in Bible times.
- Make some juice pictures by [mepr-s3-link src=”teaching-series-god-of-hope/Grapes Painting Printable-min.pdf”]painting with Grape flavored Kool Aid.[/mepr-s3-link]
- Fill in/color the activity booklets for [mepr-s3-link src=”teaching-series-god-of-hope/God of Hope booklet 5-7s-min.pdf”]5-7s[/mepr-s3-link] and [mepr-s3-link src=”teaching-series-god-of-hope/god of hope 8-11s – butler baker-min.pdf”]8-11s[/mepr-s3-link].
SEEK God:
Where do you need hope in your life right now? Can you see God at work or does He feel hidden?
- Pray for those that feel God is hidden from them right now.
- Pray a prayer of hope – that God is working in the background, behind the scenes, in the lives of your kids.
Click here for ‘God of Hope’ PowerPoint image
Click here for the ‘God of Hope’ widescreen image
Click here for the ‘God of Hope’ social media image
