Your pastor was schooled by a bunch of 3, 4, and 5 year old children this week!
1. Children have a natural desire to love the Lord Jesus Christ.
During the lesson time these little bundles of squirming, wiggling, and easily distracted firecrackers, will surprise you with their answers as the shout with the long drawn out version of the Name above all names… Jesus!
I am convicted that as an adult, when I speak that Holy name, I don’t show near the amount of excitement regarding my Savior that these precious little ones do.
May God help us to be as excited about Jesus as our children are.
2. Even when I thought they were not listening, they were!
Trying to teach 3, 4, and 5 year old children will challenge you at so many levels. Teaching these 3, 4, and 5 year old children is much like herding cats! About the time you get one or two to sit in the proper place 6 other children are escaping. Most people have a first name, a middle name, and a last name. When you have a classroom full of 3, 4, and 5 year olds… Suddenly they all are referred to by new names like: sit-down, listen to me, and get in line. Yet when the lesson is reviewed most of them will knock your socks off when they shout out the correct answers over and over! Believe me they receive more than we think. Again I am convicted when I get frustrated thinking “what’s the use” no one is paying attention… They do pay attention, and they will amaze you how much they retain. May God continue to show me it’s not my words that impact others, it’s His words that change hearts! 3. They want to please you… Even if it only lasts a few seconds. Because these children want to please you they will obey just about anything you ask of them. With all my heart I want to please my Heavenly Father. I want to obey Him. I want Him to be pleased with me… But sometimes, I can’t help but wonder if God gets frustrated because my momentary obedience is so short lived? May the Lord help me to stretch the few seconds of obedience into minutes, and minutes into hours, and hours into days, and days into weeks… I so much want to please God by being obedient to Him. 4. Everyone wants to talk to me. When you have 15 or more children in your classroom, you soon discover that each one wants to tell you something or another. Conviction once again rolled over me! I realize that I have access to the very throne of Grace. I can talk with Jesus anytime I want, anytime I need to, anytime… ANYTIME! Yet most of the time I choose not to talk with my Lord. I don’t even try, until it’s often to late, or I need Him to bail me out of the mess I’m in. I want to have what these 3, 4, and 5 year old’s have… The excited, overwhelming desire to talk to my Lord! 5. Every child wanted a turn to walk next to me. I’m not sure why it was so important for them to walk next to me, I’m not all that special. When you are tasked to be the teacher suddenly you become bigger than you are. The closer the child walked with me the more they displayed the traits and actions I was leading them in. Yep, another round of conviction. Lord help me to walk close to You, so I can imitate how You walk, how You talk, how You live… Lord help me walk close to You. 6. The Children are so much more important than the planned curriculum or lesson. I appreciate that our church purchases the finest materials for VBS! The material is vast in resources. It is almost overwhelming to have 10 or more pages for the lesson. In my class there was at least one or more child that would break out into tears. There were one or two who could not sit still, there were some who had a pressing problem that needed addressing immediately, and there was always that one child that needed some extra help. I’m positive that I was not able to communicate the material as effectively as I wanted to this bunch of precious children. I’m not sure that what material I was able to teach will be retained. Because the Lord convicted me, I now know at least one thing for certain… Each of the children the Lord allowed me to have in my room this year is far more important than a few concepts that we could try to teach. My prayer is that the Lord Jesus Christ would help us see others as He sees others… Yes it’s true! Your pastor was schooled by a bunch of 3, 4, and 5 year old children this week!
(Can’t wait until next time!)
Yes it’s |