I'm Ready For My 2 Second Nose Shot

How does the Bible begin? With God ruling. How does the Bible end? With God ruling. God is the main character of history- everything began and everything will end with him ruling. Francis Chan says it like this in his book Crazy Love- if you were a character in God’s movie you would be an extra and all we would see of you in the movie would be 2 seconds of your nose. God is the central character of history around whom everything and everyone else revolves and when we put ourselves in his position as ruler, when we believe that our own desires should take precedence over his, we are committing idolatry. AMEN

Idolatry occurs when we choose to replace God on the throne of our lives with anything else by putting our hope and faith in that thing instead of God. Or it can be as innocent as prefering time doing something else besides what you know God desires and requires of you.

If your child complains about doing anything that has to do with growing closer to God (ie, reading the Bible, prayer, devotion time, church, small group time) ask them what they would rather do instead. Help them take the value of what they want to do out to its natural conclusion. For instance if they would rather play video games, daydream about them being able to play as much as they want. What does this create? They don't exercise - run that out to its conclusion, they don't interact with humans, then there is what they miss out on when they missed the teaching moments from God. What would happen if they choose the God thing over the video game? Scenario that out. You could easily draw from your own experiences about times you have learned something by your willingness to obey God that had God's perfect outcome.

Kids learn better when they are not in the heat of the moment. Don't wait to have this talk in the middle of the "Get ready for church" argument Sunday morning. Come up with a time when, as a family, you can play a make believe game. Find a way to have fun with it.

I would love to hear from creative people how they may have played this out. We can share with each other and find fun creative ways to share God's truth with our children. You can just comment on the faceboook post or put something on here.