THINK TOGETHER
Have you ever been really hungry? What did you do about it?
READ TOGETHER
The fifth book of the Bible is called Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is a sermon given by Moses to the Hebrew people just before they would enter into the Promised Land. Have you ever heard a pastor preach a sermon before? A sermon helps remind people to trust God. And that’s what Moses’ sermon in Deuteronomy did. Here’s part of it:
Deuteronomy 8:2-3. And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. 3 And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
Moses is reminding the people that God has always been with them, even when they were in the wilderness (the desert) for 40 years. Do you remember why the Hebrews had to wander around in the desert for all that time? Do you remember the story about the 12 spies? The spies gave a scary report to the people about giants and big walls, and the people got scared and decided to stop trusting God and go back to Egypt.
But Moses is reminding the people that God led them into the desert. But why? Why did God make them go into the desert where things were really hard? No food. No water. No houses. No new clothes. Moses said it was to “humble” them and to “test” them so God could see what was in their hearts.
Sometimes God lets us go through really hard things doesn’t he? Maybe we get sick. Or maybe somebody hurts us. Or maybe we have a bad day at school. Have you ever gone through something that was really hard?
But why would God let these hard things happen to us? Moses said that God let the Hebrews be hungry in the desert so that they would learn to trust God. And they could trust God. God fed them with bread from heaven!
God lets us go through hard things so that we learn to trust him too. This is the most important things that we can ever learn – WE CAN TRUST GOD IN THE GOOD TIMES AND THE BAD TIMES.
And just like God took care of the Hebrews in the desert by sending bread from heaven, God takes care of us by sending us the greatest “bread” of all – Jesus.
One day Jesus was preaching a sermon to people, just like Moses. And the people were very hungry but they had no food. And do you know what Jesus did? He took a little bit of bread and turned it into a whole lot of bread. Enough to feed thousands of people! And then Jesus said this to the people:
John 6:35. Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
What should we want more than anything else in the world (even food)? Jesus.
How do we know that we can trust God even when things are hard? Because God sent us Jesus.
How can we make sure that we will live with God forever in Heaven? By coming to Jesus for his love and forgiveness.
Because of Jesus we know that God has given us what we need the most – his love!
With Jesus we can go through hard things and still trust that God is good.
DO SOMETHING TOGETHER
Eat something together – maybe a snack, or your next meal. Use eating a meal together to talk about what happens when we eat food. Something from the outside of us enters into the inside of us (bite – chew – swallow). We don’t grow food in our stomachs. It is a gift from God that we receive.
Love and forgiveness and kindness are the same. They come from outside of us from God, and enter into us when we believe in Jesus. We don’t figure out how to grow them in our hearts on our own – we must receive love, and forgiveness, and kindness from Jesus first.
And
Here’s a good bed time song about coming to Jesus.
PRAY TOGETHER
Jesus,
You are the bread of life that fills my heart with love. I want to learn to trust you more and more even in hard times.
Amen.
***
To see today’s post from the TLIC Daily blog –> Click Here
TLICfamily 