Your sins are really forgiven

Below you will find a demonstration video, in which Matthijs demonstrates an experiment that is both very simple and spectacular. Using iodine, starch and sodium thiosulphate, he shows how you can easily illustrate the story of the conversion of Zacchaeus yourself.

This idea is part of a complete Sunday school lesson on the Bible story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10. 

This idea will help the children in your Sunday school lesson, youth ministry, Bible lesson, VBS, kidmin, children’s church or children’s ministry to reflect on this powerful Bible passage.

What do you need:

What do you do:

Use this fun object lesson to teach on the Bible verse in Isaiah 43:25

In Isaiah 43:25 we read "But I wipe away your sins because of who I am. And so, I will forget the wrongs you have done."

Do you know UV Reactive Putty? You can use this as an object lesson. You can write with the included UV pen in the putty and you''ll see it change in colour. This means that you can write with the UV pen in the putty. You can write for example the things that you have done wrong in the putty and it will disappear after a minute.

This creates a very easy link to the Bible verse of Isaiah 43.25. Our sins will disappear very quickly from the putty, just as God has promised that He will wipe away our sins!

You can buy this UV Reactive putty here through Amazon.com and here through Amazon.co.uk

Have fun with it!

How careful can we lower our paralyzed friend to Jesus?

The four friends have to work together to help the paralysed man get into the house through the roof. They had to lower him down very carefully at Jesus’ feet. Very carefully, so that nothing gets broken!
This game is a fun way of encouraging children to work together..

Theme:

The paralyzed man healed by Jesus, the story of the man through the roof 

What do you need:

- an egg (hardboiled or not!!)
- a plastic bag
- string
- an A4 piece of paper
- an elastic band
- glue
- cellotape
- empty toilet rolls

A complete programme for your Sunday school

This idea is part of a complete Sunday school / kids ministry programme about the story of the man lowered through the roof.

Idea 529.    How to tell the story of Jesus healing the paralyzed man with four pieces of cardboard
Idea 530.    Is it a duck or a rabbit? - an objectlesson
Idea 531.    Bubble fight - a cool science experiment
Idea 532.    Never without my denture - a YouTube video
Idea 533.    It’s hard working together! - a creative way to have a group discussion
Idea 534.    Reaching your goal - a fun indoor game!
Idea 535.    Make a body - a fun indoor game!
Idea 536.    Create your own story sticks - a craft activity
Idea 537.    Make a parachute for the egg - a fun indoor game!
Idea 538.    The fifth friend in the story - a creative prayer idea

The game:

Divide the children into teams and give each team a raw or hardboiled egg (depending on how messy you mind things getting!

The children have to find a way of getting the egg safely to the ground when one of the leaders throws it out of a first floor window (if this is possible), or drops it from a height. They might make a parachute or something else with the materials provided, to help get the egg down safely. Which egg will survive the fall and stay whole?

Give each team all the materials listed above, and they can get thinking and building. The team(s) whose egg stays whole has won. You can give them 10 – 15 minutes to make their creations before throwing them out of the window/dropping them from a height.

Create your own story sticks so you can tell the story of the paralyzed man

If you have used the four ‘story sticks’ to tell the story of the paralysed man, then it’s a great idea to have the children make their own story sticks so they can practice telling the story at home.

You can do this with strips of cardboard and lolly sticks, or wooden sticks with small nuts and bolts. Wooden lolly sticks work well too – if you make holes in them beforehand the children can make them with split pens.

Theme:

The paralyzed man healed by Jesus, the story of the man through the roof 

A complete programme for your Sunday school

This idea is part of a complete Sunday school / kids ministry programme about the story of the man lowered through the roof.

Idea 529.    How to tell the story of Jesus healing the paralyzed man with four pieces of cardboard
Idea 530.    Is it a duck or a rabbit? - an objectlesson
Idea 531.    Bubble fight - a cool science experiment
Idea 532.    Never without my denture - a YouTube video
Idea 533.    It’s hard working together! - a creative way to have a group discussion
Idea 534.    Reaching your goal - a fun indoor game!
Idea 535.    Make a body - a fun indoor game!
Idea 536.    Create your own story sticks - a craft activity
Idea 537.    Make a parachute for the egg - a fun indoor game!
Idea 538.    The fifth friend in the story - a creative prayer idea

What do you need for each child:

- four strips of card and three split pens OR wooden lolly sticks and split pens OR…
- four thin pieces of wood, and nuts and bolts.

Method:

Attach the four strips of card or wood together in the following way.

When the children have done this (they can of course decorate them before putting them together), they can practice telling the story. Here you can see most of the forms that you need to make to tell the story:

Fig. 1 The legs of the paralysed man

Fig. 2 The window of the house where Jesus was

Fig. 3 The paralysed man’s bed, or the flat roof of the house

Fig. 4 The house where Jesus was

Fig. 5 The stairs behind the house

Fig. 6  The letter M for the paralyzes Man or maybe his name Mark / Matthew

Fig. 7 The letter W to express the frustration of the Pharisees saying: "What?!"

It’s also fun to help the children practise the numbers 1 – 4.

An easy to do gospel illussion on Adam, sin and forgiveness from Rick Lenski 

This Gospel illusion is from Rick Lenski and can be used in your children's ministry, Sunday school or kidmin. You don't have to be a Christian magician to do this trick. 

Verse:

Genesis 3:8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.

Goal:

Adam and Eve sinned and tried to hide from God, but God knows all and sees all.

What do you need:

- Wonder Box Magic Trick 

Wonder Box:  This box will rattle at will.

Any children’s worker can tell the parable of the Prodigal Son using  the Gospel magic trick of the Dean’s Box

For this you can use the Dean’s box magic trick. I bought mine very cheaply through Alibaba Express. The only problem was that it didn’t come with any explanation as to how the trick works. If you choose yours through Alibaba Express you can send me an email and I will send you a video in which I explain how the trick works. It looks great and it is very easy to do!

Ask two children to come forward as volunteers. Give them each a coloured rope to inspect. The yellow rope symbolises the father The red rope symbolises the son The red wooden box symbolises the house of the father.

The father reconciles himself with his son and they are united! The ropes are stuck together.

But how is this possible?

To explain this you need an energy stick from idea 198. You ask your two volunteers to take hold of the silver ending on the energy stick with one hand. Ask if you are allowed to touch their noses and when you do the energy stick will come alive. This will give a laugh. Especially when they are allowed to touch your nose with their other hand. You explain how the energy stick works with a small current of electricity that we cannot see or feel, but flows through us. It connects us. This is the same with Jesus. You cannot see or feel him, but he connects us with God.

Put the ropes back in the box, tie them on the top to the energy stick, pull the ropes and they are back together again. Amazing!

Make sure your two volunteers get a big round of applause before they leave the stage.

Watch the demonstration video

You can see me doing a full demonstration of this story and magic trick in the video below.

How can you introduce the theme of 'the law' to children and teenagers? 

When we look at Jesus in the Bible, he seems to have a knack for stretching the law beyond what the lawmakers of his time thought was appropriate. In their eyes Jesus was a lawbreaker.

Breaking the rules to bless someone else

- a short introduction to a Bible story, a Sunday school lesson, a RE lesson
- a longer reflection on certain Bible stories and /or Biblical themes

Several Biblical themes in this commercial:

Talking about the law, how far can you go?, the Good Samaritan, Jesus and the law, Jesus the lawbreaker, Jesus and the sabbath, dealing with boundaries

An ideal object lesson for baptisms

You show a large silver bowl that is empty. When you turn it upside down nothing comes out. When you pick it up again and start tip it up, water will pour out of it!

Something from nothing, liquid from mid-air! This can be repeated again and again, with the vase continually filling with water.

Being able to produce water from nothing time after time makes this trick ideal for telling different Bible stories, such as:

- Moses getting water from a rock (Num 20:11)
- the widow's endless jar of oil  (2 Kings 4:4)
- Jesus being baptised (Matt 3:13). 

It is an ideal object lesson for baptisms.

You can also colour the water with red food dye and use it to symbolise the blood of Jesus that was shed for all.

Where to buy

You can buy your own sets of Lota Bowls here on Amazon. 

Rocky Raccoon and the ZigZag trick

We are always looking for new ways to tell Bible stories. One of these ways is through the use of Rocky the spring puppet. 

Rocky is very easy to bring him to life. Spring animals are puppets that consist of a large spring covered with fur. You hold the spring raccoon in one hand, moving the head with your thumb and first finger. It gives the animal a very realistic effective, and it's not uncommon for people to mistake it for a live animal!

In the video below we will show you how you use Rocky and the ZigZag trick tol tell the Bible story of Jesus healing the paralysed man who was lowered through a hole in the roof made by his four friends.

Themes: 

Jesus has the power to forgive sins, Jesus forgives sins, Jesus heals the paralysed man, finding new ways to bring people to Jesus, perseverance, don't give up, friendship, Jesus puts us on our feet

Buy your own spring puppet:

There are several places where you can buy your own spring puppet. You can buy them for example on Amazon. 

If you are looking for the ZigZag trick that we use 'to cut Rocky into three parts' have a search on Google.

Such an easy, but powerful object lesson

This is a simple object lesson which uses a big pencil to discuss five of the beautiful aspects of living life with God. It will help the children in your Sunday school lesson, youth ministry, Bible lesson, VBS, kidmin, children’s church or children’s ministry to reflect on this following themes: outside / inside, God’s leadership, God’s correcting presence in our lives, forgiveness, bearing fruit.  

What do you need:

- a big pencil

What do you do:

There are a lot of things a pencil can teach you. You will need a large pencil.

1. There is a hand that directs the pencil:
   Just as a pencil, we only are able to create the most beautiful things when directed by someone’s hand, Gods hand. Thankfully, God wants nothing more but to hold us and lead us.
   
   
2. A pencil needs to be sharpened:
   God wants to sharpen us. With his Spirit he wants to work in our life and shape us more and more into his image.
   
   
3. A pencil trace can be erased:
   When we make a mistake and do things we regret, we can ask God to forgive us and he will erase all our sins.
   
   
4. A pencil is all about the inside:
   There is black lead inside the pencil. In the Bible (1 Samuel 16:7) there is a text that states that where people look at outward appearance, God looks at the core, the heart. He knows that our real purpose and talent lies on the inside, just like a pencil.
   
   
5. A pencil leaves a trace:
   If we lay our lives in Gods hand, our life will leave an incredible trace. Through us, God can create the most beautiful picture of himself.

        Source: Paolo Coelha (2009) Like a river. Amsterdam Singel Pockets.

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Jonah waits in vain for the destruction of Nineveh

Jonah has finally done what God asked of him. After he got spat out by the huge fish, he went to the town of Nineveh. He told the people in the city that God would destroy the city unless they repented, and then he went to sit on a hill just outside the city to watch the show. He’s quite looking forward to it - what a show it’s going to be!

In the meantime in the city of Nineveh, the inhabitants are repenting. God sees this, and spares the city.

Jonah doesn’t realise this, and waits....and waits.....and waits..
It’s getting too hot. But what’s this?

During the night God makes a large bush grow, so that Jonah can sit under it.
What a blessing! But what’s this?

During the night God sends a worm that eats the bush and causes it to die.
Jonah is furious!

And then he gets the lesson.....

Themes:

Jonah is waiting for the destruction of Nineveh, Jonah and the miracle tree, God sent a worm, Gods goodness and compassion

Video:

In the video below we show you how you can illustrate this story using the worm mix.

Before you try this yourself, it’s helpful to watch the introduction video in which we show you how to prepare the worm mix.

Most of these ideas are members only. To give you an indication of the quality and content of our material we have made a number of ideas available for free - see below.

To get access all the ideas you can become a memberfor only $25 per year. Click on the button on the right for more information.