Grace of God

2 Kings 5

Something to say and show

*put on thug voice* Right! My names The Jailor, do you know what the Jailor does? If you've done something bad, then he puts you in prison. And as I look around here I can see a few criminals in this room! Can I have 4 volunteers to be my prisoners. (Line children up behind a jail grate made out of card). The rest of you are the jury, do you know what the jury does? they decide whether or not we should let the prisoners go free! So lets look at the first case shall we? (Get the kids to hold up a piece of paper with their 'crime' on it) What have we here? Oh that's pretty serious etc. So what do they jury think? Should we let them go? why do you think that? (Eventually decide to release the child). Crimes are: Farted in class, Lied, forgot to say please and thank you, and made a little girl my slave and killed her family. go through each crime in the same format, let them go. When you reach the last one ask the 'jury' if they would let the prisoner go. Say, now imagine if you were that little girl, I don't think I'd let him go. could you let someone go who had done that to your family? It would be hard wouldn't it? You'd be very sad and angry. but this is the crime from todays story. The man in our story had a disease called leprosy. A terrible disease that would kill him one day. the little servant girl knew there was a God who could heal him and a prophet called Elisha to do it. Even though Naaman was her enemy, even though he had treated her and her family terribly, even though he deserved no sympathy at all, she forgave him. she showed him amazing grace. So hears a tough question for you. Why do you think the servant did it? Why did she show grace to Naaman, why did she forgive him even though he didn't deserve it? Well lets think about it. Have you ever forgotten to say please or thank you? Have you ever lied? Yeah, because we all make mistakes, we all sin. But we have all been forgiven and we have all been shown grace. We have a gracious God. Every time we screw up he forgives us. that's amazing grace....giving us something we don't deserve!

 

Something to pray

Imagine you have a piece of paper in your hands. I want you to think of something you've done wrong and pretend to write it on the paper. Now we are going to pretend to rip up the paper all together! Go! Pray a prayer of thanks to God for forgiving us and showing us amazing grace!