If you are still exhausted from the Holidays, this is a great time to step back and let imaginations fly. This easy New Year’s Object Lesson using Play-Doh will have kids making promises to God for the New Year. But instead of promising to strive alone for perfection, which is stressful and based on our own efforts, they’ll find it much more freeing to commit themselves to the hands of the Great Potter.
New Year’s Object Lesson: Committing Ourselves to God’s Hands This Year
Materials
• White Play-Doh
• Four Spiritual Laws, one copy of the printable list (follows the instructions below).
Reading
Yet you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. –Isaiah 64:8
…he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. –Philippians 1:6
Images 1-2 from An Educated Palate: “The Simple Beauty of Native American Pottery”. Image 3 from “A Visual Glossary of Greek Pottery”
Lesson
What is a New Year’s resolution? Let them answer.
What are the most important kinds of New Year’s resolutions? Are they about grades? Talents? Being good? Many will say being good.
Actually, there is a much more important New Year’s resolution than having good behavior this year. It does have to do with God. But what should we be promising Him, if not good behavior? Let them try to answer.
Let’s start from the beginning, with the Four Spiritual Laws for Kids. Use the printout of the “Four Spiritual Laws with Object Lesson.” Read the pages, then
put them down in the middle of the teaching table where the kids can see them.
God loves mankind and created man to be His friends: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Man decided to do wrong things and that made God sad because He couldn’t be close to man anymore. He is too good. He wants to be close, but we still do wrong stuff and think wrong thoughts, all of us sometimes. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (Rom. 3:23); “But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God,” (Isaiah 59:2).
God made a way to be close to man again. He sent Jesus to stand in our place and die for our sins. Anyone who believes Jesus took away their sins– past, present and future–can be God’s friend again. But that’s the only way God provided. You can’t get friendly with Him just by trying to be good; you’ll just mess up again. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me” (John 14:6); “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” (Rom. 5:8).
We must individually receive Jesus as Savior and Lord. Everyone is invited to do so. But you have to “sign on” with Him. It’s a decision. “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name,” (John 1:12); “…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved,” (Rom. 10:9); “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God,” (Eph. 2:8).
Once we “sign on” with Jesus, He becomes our best friend. He promises to begin molding us and guiding us.
Isaiah 64:8 tells it like this: Yet you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, You are the potter; we are all the work of Your hand. –Isaiah 64:8
The most important thing you can promise God for the New Year is that you will commit yourselves to His will for your life. As we walk with Him, He continues to shape us. Each year, we may not be able to feel the difference between what we are now and what we were at the last New Year. But God promises we are bigger. And we are better, so long as we continue to walk with Him.
Break off a piece of clay the size of a baseball. Roll it into a ball and lay it on the table. As soon as we “sign on” with Jesus, we look like this. Then God begins to work on us.
Roll the ball around until it is soft, then begin molding it into a vase.
He increases our faith.
He shows us His love.
He encourages us to love others.
He encourages us to forgive.
He gives us patience, wisdom, persistence.
Stop molding.
Someday, according to Philippians 1:6,…he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Some days this year, we might not be able to feel God working on us. It may even seem like He is off somewhere and not paying attention. Not true.
Just like plants can’t be seeing growing, people cannot be seen changing in the hands of Christ. But we are. This year, let’s commit ourselves to letting Him work on us and believing He is doing it. It’s so much easier than committing to getting straight As. And it’s important because it continues on into eternity, and doesn’t end with a report card.
Let’s make vases today. Let’s see the process from God’s perspective and maybe as we mold, we’ll be able to almost feel His loving hands upon us, taking us exactly where we need to go in the life.
Spiritual Laws Printable List
Spiritual Law #1:
God loves mankind and created man to be His friends.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Spiritual Law #2:
Man decided to do wrong things and that made God sad because He couldn’t be close to man anymore. He is too good. He wants to be close, but we still do wrong stuff and think wrong thoughts, all of us sometimes.
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (Rom. 3:23);
“But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God,” (Isaiah 59:2).
Spiritual Law #3
God made a way to be close to man again. He sent Jesus to stand in our place and die for our sins. Anyone who believes Jesus took away their sins– past, present and future–can be God’s friend again. But that’s the only way God provided. You can’t get friendly with Him just by trying to be good; you’ll just mess up again.
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me” (John 14:6);
“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” (Rom. 5:8).
Spiritual Law #4
We must individually receive Jesus as Savior and Lord. Everyone is invited to do so. But you have to “sign on” with Him. It’s a decision.
“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name,” (John 1:12);
“…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved,” (Rom. 10:9);
“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God,” (Eph. 2:8).
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