BIG IDEA: GOD PROVIDES US WITH AUTHORITY!
AIM: This session aims to help children understand the concept of authority and how each of us must obey authority because God puts people in places of authority.
SONG IDEAS:
1. ‘The Centurion’s Secret’ by The DonutMan
2. ‘Totally Transformed’ by Jana Alayra
GAME IDEAS:
1. The Soldier Says. Follow the rules of Simon Says but swap the words to the Soldier Says. To make this game even more fun why not dress up as a soldier and give yourself a name? Such as ‘Sergeant Simon Says…’ When you say ‘Soldier says’ (or your alternative)and follow it with an instruction i.e. …”do a pushup” the children must obey your instructions. But when you simply say “do a pushup” they must avoid doing the action. Children are eliminated when they move incorrectly. The last child standing is the winner.
2. Army Flick. Players will use a tiny toy army man to flick at their opponent’s army of toy army men and see how many they can knock over. After three turns the contestant to knock over their opponent’s army is the winner.
BIG VERSE: All authority comes from God. Romans 13:1.
SET the Scene:
Read Matthew 8:5-13 and create a skit with the children to tell the story or watch the centurion’s story video.
SPOT the Simple Meaning:
1. OBJECT LESSON: JESUS HAS ALL AUTHORITY AND GIVES SOME TO OTHERS
You will need to put together a little skit showing a General, Sergeant and their soldiers. Have one of your soldiers disobey the Sergeant – with consequences.
Say: What happened when the soldier disobeyed their sergeant? Thats right. They got into trouble and could have been thrown out of the army. That’s because the sergeant has authority. Authority is the power or right to give orders, make decisions and enforce obedience.
The centurion soldier understood that Jesus had authority to heal because he was God! Nobody else had that kind of authority or power. Yet the centurion knew what authority was because he had given orders to an army too! He had 100 soldiers that had to listen to him. One day every knee will bow to Jesus, whether people like it or not. Jesus is going to return and everybody will have to recognise him as Lord! That’s because he is God and He can do that! God has all authority over everything because everything belongs to Him! God has all authority over the earth; he tells the water when to rise and when to fall, the tides when to come in and when to go out, the sun when to come up and when to go down. He tells the clouds when to rain and when to have thunder. God has authority over all creation (just remember the story of Jesus calming the storm!) God can give orders to anything He wants. That’s because He has authority. yet He chooses to give some people authority too. Can you think who might have some authority? Think of people who can give orders? (teachers, parents, Prime Minister, children’s ministry leaders). So even though God has all authority he gives some to others too.
2. OBJECT LESSON: WE HAVE AUTHORITY WHEN WE PRAY
What does it mean to have all authority?
SIMON SAYS DRAW GAME: Hand out paper and markers to all the children. Draw a picture, without showing the children, of what you want the children to draw. Then ask the children to only follow the instructions that you say ‘Simon Says’ beforehand. For example, you can say “Simon Says draw a rectangle,” “Simon Says draw eyes inside the rectangle.” “Draw a mouth.” The winner is the player that has listened and obeyed your instructions correctly so that their drawing matches the drawing that you have in your hands.
You will need a bible.
Say: When I was asking you to draw and gave you directions I had the authority. I was telling you what they could and couldn’t do. Well, in a similar way we also have authority when we pray. Just like when the Sergeant in the skit told the soldiers to do something; they will say they have been given permission to say what they say from the authority; the Government. Now, the sergeant can’t just tell the soldiers to come to his home and clean his rooms or brush his teeth for him. His authority comes from the government who tell the sergeant what he can and can’t order the soldiers to do. The government will have a special rulebook that tells him those kind of things. [Hold up a Bible] We also have a rulebook that tells us what our Sergeant wants us to order. It’s the Bible. It tells us what we can pray for and how to pray. When we pray we can order the Devil to go and we can ask God to come in. We have authority to tell people about Jesus and see them come to know Him, and we have authority to pray for healing and see them get healed. Yet our authority comes from God and that means He has the final say! So, we have authority when we pray!
3. OBJECT LESSON: WE HAVE AUTHORITY TO TELL THE DEVIL TO GO
(Ladder of rank. ‘God’ way high up. ‘Us’ in the middle. ‘Devil’ way below!)
Look at our ‘ladder’. Can you see that God is way at the top?! That’s God the Father, Holy Spirit and Jesus! We always need to remember that God is higher than anyone or anything and whatever He tells us to do we must do – just like being in an army! However, there’s something really cool about this pyramid…. We are not at the bottom. We are in the middle! We have authority to tell the devil to go because we have Jesus in our lives. It’s all because of Jesus! He has all the power and authority. So because Jesus is in us He can tell the devil to do whatever he wants and the devil must obey! Can you see that in our pyramid of rank the devil and all his demons are way way way at the bottom! That means we can tell him to go when we pray. Sometimes we may have to keep telling him – because he wants to come back. He wants to bring disease, death, poverty and suffering into our lives. The Bible says he is out to steal, kill and destroy us. Yet God has the power to get him out of the way. When we pray we are asking God and all his angels to come and bring life into the situation, making the devil flee. That’s why it’s so important that we pray because we have the authority to tell the devil to go!
CRAFT IDEA:
1. MINI CHALKBOARDS.
You will need: card, scissors and spray blackboard paint.
Create mini chalkboards in whatever style they like; cutting card into the shape that they would like. Then simply spray the card with blackboard paint.
