This devotional is a rehash of an earlier post, Livin’ on Strained Carrots. That devotional was written for grades 7 thru 12 and this is a re-write for grades 1 thru 6.
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Today I want to teach you guys something very important. The thing I want to teach you is pretty easy to do, but there are lots of grown-ups that still don’t know how to do it. In fact, the thing that I’m going to teach you is so important, that if you learn how to do it today, and you start doing it – you will never be the same! Do you want to know what I’m going to teach you? I’m going to teach you how to feed yourself.
Before you tell me that you already know how, I want to play a little game.
Game:
Three contestants blindfolded, guess what object they hold. If they are right, they win the object.(Pop, Smarties, and baby food)
Imagine that it’s Christmas time. Christmas day, actually. All of your relatives have arrived and it’s time for the feast. There’s a big turkey (or ham or whatever your family usually eats complete with all the trimmings. Name a few of the things you would have at your Christmas meal…
So there’s all this food just waiting to be eaten, someone asks the blessing on the food and everyone digs in – except you. For you, your mom or your dad opens a jar of baby food and starts feeding you that stuff.
How would you like that? No way! That would be gross. And besides, you’re not a baby anymore! You don’t need your parents to feed you – you can feed yourself!
But you know… you couldn’t always feed yourself, could you? When you were a baby, you had to be fed by your parents. You had no teeth and all you could eat was baby food. But aren’t you glad you grew up and learned how to eat regular food all by yourself?
Today, I want to show you how you can grow up as a Christian and feed yourself spiritually. If you don’t know what that means, that basically means that I want to show you how to be really good friends with God.
Like most of you, I grew up in a Christian family and did lots of Christian things as a kid.
- My family read the Bible and we did family devotions.
- I went to church every Sunday.
- I went to a Christian school – just like you guys.
- I even worked a Christian Bible camp in the summers.
I didn’t have to hardly do anything to be a Christian. Sure, I asked Jesus into my heart to take away my sin, but after that, everything was done for me.
My parents read the Bible to me. My Mom and dad both prayed with me at night. My Sunday school teachers told me the stories in the Bible. My principal read a devotional each morning – I didn’t have to do a thing!
Just like how a baby is fed baby food my their mom and dad and they don’t have to do a thing, I was learning about God only from what my parents and teachers told me, I didn’t have to do a thing. I was being fed Christian baby-food!
Now do you think someone would grow up big and strong if their mommy fed them baby food all their life. _________ is a big, strong guy… (call him up) _________, are you so strong because your parents feed you baby food everyday? You’re big and strong because you feed yourself real food – meat and potatoes and vegetables.
Just like kids need to learn to feed themselves real food to grow big and strong, Christian kids need to learn to feed themselves Christian food to become a strong Christians who really love God.
So what kind of Christian food am I talking about? Let me show you…
Acts 17:11 – “Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.”
These Berean guys read their Bibles every day. Every day. I tell you, if you want to grow to be a super strong Christian, you’ve got to read your Bible every day. That’s the kind of Christian food I’m talking about – things that will help you grow as a Christian.
Now could you guys eat the “Read-Your-Bible-Every-Day” Food? Let’s see, who hear knows how to read? You could eat the “Read-Your-Bible-Every-Day” Food! If you don’t know how to read, who here knows how to listen to your mom or dad read? You could eat the “Read-Your-Bible-Every-Day” Food by listening to your parents read the Bible to you! If you don’t want to eat Christian baby-food all your life, start eating the “Read-Your-Bible-Every-Day” Food!
Here’s the second food.
Psalm 119:11 – “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
Do you know what it means to “Hide God’s Word in your heart”? It means to memorize verses from the Bible. So the second food is the “Memorize-God’s-Word” Food.
Do you think you guys can memorize verses from the Bible? Well, let’s do a test. Repeat after me. “Jesus wept.” Can you say it again? Again? If I asked you to tomorrow? There! You’ve memorize a verse!
How about a little harder one – Say it with me if you can… “For God so loved the world….”
You guys can eat the “Memorize-God’s-Word” Food. That’ll really help you to grow up to be a strong Christian!
So that’s the second food. What was the first food again? And what was this one?
Here’s the third food.
1 Thessalonians 5:17 – “Pray continually”
That’s the whole verse. And that’s the third food – the “Pray-Continually” Food.
Now in case you don’t know what it means to pray continually, let’s break it down. First pray. What does it mean to pray? Praying is just talking to God. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It doesn’t have to be long. It doesn’t have to be before lunch or during church. It could be as simple as…
- “Good morning, God.”
- Or “God, I’m having a bad day.”
- Or “God, help me not to punch that guy that’s bugging me!”
- Or “Thanks, God, for the Pepsi I just got.”
That’s prayer. Now that you know what it means to pray, what does ‘continually’ mean? All the time. Always. Without stopping.
Think about eating… since that’s what we’ve been talking about.
How many of you ate some food yesterday? How many of you have eaten food today? How many of you will eat food tomorrow? That’s eating continually. And God wants us to “pray continually”. We should talk to him this morning, this afternoon, and tonight – then tomorrow do it again.
One of the coolest things about God is that anyone can talk to Him at anytime and He’ll always listen. He’s never to busy to hear what you have to say.
So eat the third food – the “Pray-Continually” Food.
Recap the three foods. You guys aren’t babies anymore – the more you eat these three Christian foods, the more you will get to know God, and the more you will grow up to be a strong Christian who really loves God.