TFTeen Sunday - 3 Steps to grow in your spiritual life

TFTeen Spiritual Growth Sunday (15.01.12)

3 Steps to grow in your spiritual life

I was meditating on the word that the Holy Spirit passed on to the church on Wednesday and I began thinking about our juniors, the following message is directed at them as well because how many of them have no idea what having a spiritual life means as well as how to have a strong spiritual life and through these 3 Sundays we are going to teach them the 3 steps to grow spiritually and to stay strong through the Parable of the lost coin.

BIBLE MEDITATION: - Luke 15 : 8

“Oh what woman , having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?”

Many of our juniors’ spiritual lives at the moment is very weak, but why? For many different reasons but our aim in these 3 Sundays is to teach them the secret to be strong spiritually and to be closer to God.

BEGIN MEETING: - opening prayer –

 Be real with your juniors! and ask them – “what does your spiritual life mean?” Ask “who can tell me the importance of having a strong spiritual life” – etc then briefly explain to them why we always talk about having a strong spiritual life, the importance of having a strong spiritual life. – that its the foundation of everything in their lives.

Then explain to them that in the next 3 Sundays we are going to be having 3 special Sundays called the 3 Sundays of the Lost coin – 3 steps to growing your spiritual lives. Where each week we will be giving them a step and a task in order for them to get stronger and have a strong spiritual life, then be frank, those who listen and put into practice what we speak about will see the benefits of it but those who don’t will remain in the same place so its up to them to choose.

STEP 1: SHE LIGHTS A LAMP – Start of first with the activity before going in to the message!

ACTIVITY: 

Find a big empty box – the bigger the better – try to get the box to be as big as possible to make the activity work better and the task to be as effective as possible, now fill the box with many different things – clothes, newspaper, pens, pencils, etc – the aim is for the box to be full of junk cut out a hole in the box big enough for them to stick in their hand, cello tape the 5p coin on top (but on the inside of the box)

 Then seal the box and bring it to the lesson with you, on the day hold 9, 5p coins in your hands, if not 5p, 1p (I’m sure you can find 9, 1p coins lying around somewhere) but 5p will be more effective as it represents the silver coins, now hold up the box in front of them and say you had 10 silver coins which mean soooo much to you but one of them got lost inside of this big box, then ask who is brave enough to put their hand inside the box to try to find it – then they can take it in turns to put their hand in to search  to make it interesting you can put some strange things in there like an orange (obviously things that won’t rot because you need to keep this for the next 2 Sundays) then they can keep searching (of course the 5p is stuck on the lid so they wont find it easily unless they are smart about it) but don’t reveal this yet we will keep this until the last week – so let them keep trying – everyone will want to have a go – try to pick someone who never really takes part in the meetings to try. Then after no success, call them together to sit down and go into the message:

Message: - don’t just read the passage to them- make it come alive for them, and make them visualise it as you speak – i.e “ Lord Jesus one day told this story about a lady .......” etc

Then carry on what does this story mean for us today? In the tfteen there are many juniors who’s spiritual lives are like this lost coin, they have something so precious but one day it gets lost, or worst yet they were given the opportunity to have a strong spiritual life but because they don’t take care of it or do not value it – they end up losing it – in their house! Now for lady to lose the coin in the house means she wasn’t taking care of it, and many of them are not taking care of the coin (spiritual lives) – in the story she had to clean up but first she had to do something important – (ask them to guess what she had to do first?) – answer - she had to light a lamp.

This is step #1  for you – the coin is your spiritual life – what are the things that can cause you to loose your coin? Then give examples – lies, bad company/wrong influences, giving more attention to things of the world – hours on facebok-bb ping chat, video games – not taking time to pray, read bible, listening to music that talks about wrong things, just because the beat is good doesn’t mean the words that they are saying is good, etc etc – all of these things can cause you to loose your coin,

But the first step to find it and to keep it is to light a lamp – or in other words she had to bring light into her house – this means putting away what is dark/bad and starting to do what is good/light

Task- give them all an A4 piece of paper – on one side they will write light and the other side write down darkness – on the side that says darkness they must write down all the things they can think of that they have been doing that is wrong, on the side that says light, they will write down all the good things they will start to do, - e.g – stop swearing, pray more – respect parents etc – then at home they will look at this paper each day and remember what they need to stop & start doing – encourage them to pray about it each day.

Wrap it up! – explain to them that the reason why we loose the coin is because at times it can be difficult to keep it, and also to find it again can be hard so we need help – that’s why God sent us the Holy Spirit – who is our Helper – explain briefly – then seek the Holy Spirit with your juniors!