Tuesday, June 23, 2009

The good news, elementary style :)

In our small group, we are about to start a study in the gospel of John. One of the first questions before starting the study itself was "How would you describe the bible and what it is to an eight year old?" The question intrigued me! How would I do that?? How would I explain the gospel as well? So here is my attempt at it (keep in mind, I'm only human LOL this is my best attempt - which isn't saying much...) :D


Everything was made by someone.

Everything except God - that is what makes him more special than everything else.

God has always been here and will always be here.

God wants us to know him.

God gave us the Holy Bible so that we can know him.

The bible tells us about God and what he says about every part of life. We choose to believe this and that is called having Faith. Faith is believing and trusting.

The bible tells us that God loves us and wants us to love him back.

The bible also tells us that we do not love God until he opens our eyes to see his love for us. This is because everyone thinks mostly of themselves, from the moment they are born. This is called selfishness. The bible says that everyone is selfish. That is called having a "sinful nature".

The bible tells us that being selfish will lead us to do things only for ourselves, hurting others and the things around us. The bible also tells us that this is NOT how God wants us to act. It is wrong and we know that because the bible says so.

The bible gives us certain rules to help teach us how he wants us to live. But we can not do these things because we are selfish. We need God's help.

The bible tells us that God will help us if we ask for his help. Once we know and say out loud that we are selfish, we also can ask God to help us to not be selfish. The bible tells us this is called "repenting" or turning away from our sins (our selfishness). Repenting means feeling sorry for our selfishness and asking God to help us to not be selfish and asking God to teach us how we can love him back.

When we ask God to help us and teach us to love him back, he sends his Holy Spirit to live inside of us. We can not see his Holy Spirit, but we can feel him with our emotions and see the things that he does.

God teaches us to love him back by having us read the bible. This is how we learn about him and the things he loves. The bible also tells us about the things God does not want us to do because these are selfish things and are wrong.

As we learn to love God, we learn to be happy because of God and all that he does. This happiness makes us want to do things that make God happy. Making God happy makes us even happier! We learn what makes God happy by reading the bible.

This happiness also makes us want to tell everyone about God and how he has made us so happy because of who he is and what he has done for us. He has taught us about himself and he has taught us to not be selfish anymore.

We will still make mistakes and be selfish sometimes. The bible tells us that when we do this, we should tell God that we are sorry and ask him for his help to do what is not selfish even though we do not deserve help. But God wants to helps us. This makes us happy and we want to tell everyone about how happy we are and why we are so happy because of God.

When we tell everyone about our happiness because of God, people will see God and want to know him too. Then you can tell them how to know God, just as I have told you.

1 comment:

natedavidscott said...

Close...
I'd remove the "rules" part and talk more about Jesus.
It would be better to have them understand early that it's not about religion and rules and works, but about Jesus, the cross, forgiveness, grace and faith.