Date: 4 & 5 July 2015 GKidz Timothy Club Worship & Offering Lesson 1 Let Everything Praise God! Key Verse: Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Psalm 150:6 (NIrV) Bible Text: 2 Samuel 6:16-23 Lesson Objectives: Children will learn that: 1. We can praise and worship God, by singing, clapping, dancing, and lifting up of our hands 2. We can choose to not care about what others think when we worship God 3. We can be honest with God about our feelings NOTE TO LEADERS Series Overview Before the June school holidays, our GKidz children got started on a journey on discovering more about God through reading His Word. We also want to encourage our children to not only have the spiritual discipline of reading the Bible, but to also begin developing a lifestyle of worship. Date Lesson Lesson Focus Family Devotion Focus 4/5 Start of Passionate Worship Lesson 1 Let Everything Praise God! July Challenge 11/12 Share how we can bless others Lesson 2 Our Praise is Powerful! July when we worship God 18/19 We Praise God Through Our Decide to Give to God as a Lesson 3 July Giving! Family Leaders Prayer & Preparation: Before going any deeper into the lesson, take a moment to reflect on this thought not only are you a leader to the next generation, but you are also a priest! Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of 1
priests and a holy nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites. Exodus 19:5-6 (NIV) But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 1 Peter 2:9 (NIV) You carry a priestly anointing the moment you chose to recognize Jesus as your Lord and Saviour. In the times of the Bible, only the High Priest could enter the presence of God. How times have changed! Because we have been washed clean by the blood of the Lamb, we now have direct access to the Father and can enter His Presence boldly. The Lord has equipped and empowered each one of us to be stewards of His Presence, to declare praises to Him and create an atmosphere where His children can encounter Him in a fresh, powerful way. Over the next three weeks, would you allow the Lord to use you to create a meeting place between Him and His children? Would you cry out to the Lord to sensitize your heart to His Spirit? Do you believe that as you carry His Presence, signs and wonders will follow? If your answer is yes, then we need to prepare our hearts first. a) WORSHIP - Spend time worshipping the Lord on your own during the week. - Wait on Him and allow His presence to refresh you. - Allow this song to minister to you: http://bit.ly/1zcbczi b) PRAY - Pray for yourself. Repent of your sins and allow the love of Christ to fill you. - Intercede for each of your children by name during the week. - Declare that hearts will be open, the intellect will yield and the spirit man would arise. - Ask the Holy Spirit to give you words of knowledge that you can release to your children. Come ready to share your reflections during your leaders briefing time! PLATFORM TEACHING (20 MINUTES) (Note to Platform Teacher: the worship team will be on standby to support you during this segment of platform teaching. The worship leader will interact with you in the second half of this platform teaching) Start by asking the children if they have any favourite songs to sing in GKidz Share your favourite song to sing in GKidz you may get the worship team to play the song, so you can get the children to sing along with you 2
Platform Teacher (PT): Some of us really love to sing! And I can tell that many of you love to sing songs of praise and worship here at GKidz. (Give some examples of your observation of children worshipping during the worship that just ended) Well, from today and over the next three weeks, we are going to learn more about worship! Can anyone tell me what worship means? (allow children to respond) Worship means (Slide) to tell and show how much something, or someone means to us. So (Slide) when we worship God, we tell Him how much He means to us, and how valuable His love is to us. Let s check out what the Bible has to say about praise and worship In Psalm 150:6 it says (Slide) Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Can we all repeat this together? This is what I want everyone to do, (demonstrate) take your hand put it near your mouth and nose like this. Can you feel your breath? If you are breathing, that means we can and should praise the Lord! There are many ways we can praise and worship God! STRUCTURED EXPERIENCE: 4 WAYS TO WORSHIP GOD Note to Platform Teacher / Worship Leader: WL should be ready to support and lead the children in live demonstration once PT has taught each way to worship God. Please use the song We Bring The Sacrifice of Praise Platform Teacher (PT) to say: One of the ways we can worship God is by singing (Slide) The Bible tells us in Psalm 96 to Sing to the Lord. All you people of the earth, sing to the Lord. All of us have beautiful voices so let s use this song to sing a song of praise and worship to God! (WL and PT to lead the children in singing the song 1-2 times, whilst seated) PT to WL: Don t you think the children really sang their worship to God? PT: Well done children! I think we can explore another way of praising and worshipping God, and that is by clapping our hands! (Slide) Psalm 47:1 says to Clap your hands, all you nations (WL and PT to get the children to stand. Get the children to warm up by shaking their hands, legs, other body parts etc, before leading them to clap to the beat of the song. You can start by just clapping to the beat) PT: Another way we can praise and worship God is by dancing! Psalm 149:3 says (Slide) Let them praise His name with dancing All of us can dance! 3
(WL and PT to get the children to do the actions for this song, once or twice through) PT: And the fourth way we can praise and worship God is by lifting up of our hands! Psalm 134:2 (Slide) says Lift up your hands in the temple and praise the Lord. (WL and PT to get the children to lift up their hands and sing the song once through) Over the next few weeks, we are going to learn more about worship and how powerful our worship can be. Today, we are going to find out more about how we can worship God! Before we go into our small groups, let me say a prayer for all of us. Dear God, we thank You for the many ways we can tell You how much You mean to us, whether by using our voices, our hands, our bodies, or even by music and singing! I pray that as we learn more about worship, we will be able to experience Your presence in a real and powerful way. In Jesus name we pray, Amen! SMALL GROUP TIME (55 MINUTES) A. Connect (5 minutes) Activity: What s Your V.I.T? (Very Important Thing) Begin by stating to the children that each one of us has something in our lives that is important to us. It could be your toy, your favorite book, or even your soft toy that you sleep with every night. Give the children 30 seconds to think of what their V.I.T. is. After 30 seconds, go round and get the children to share what is their V.I.T. After everyone has shared, let the children know that what they had just done was to describe how worthy that particular object was to them. Similarly, the way we tell God how much He means to us is through our worship! B. Rapid Recap (5 minutes) Begin by going through the memory verse for this series: Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Psalm 150:6 (NIrV) 4
Give them 1 minute to memorize the verse. Once the time is up, get them to recite the verse back to you. Remind the children of the four ways they can use to praise and worship God: 1) Singing 2) Clapping of hands 3) Dancing 4) Lifting up of hands Leader to say: Today, we are going to learn about worship from the life of David. Do you know who David is? (Answer: He was king of Israel) David was not only king of Israel, he was also a man who loved to worship God! When David worshipped God, he did not care about what others thought of him! C. Into The Word (30 minutes) Props Needed: Picture of King David dancing, feeling cards, lyric sheets (GKidz to provide) Gather the children around and read 2 Samuel 6:16-23 aloud to them. Use the picture provided to help you illustrate the story. When you finish reading the story, get the children to use the feeling cards to answer the following questions: 1) How did David feel when he was leaping and dancing around in worship to God, in the streets? 2) How did David s wife, Michal, feel when she saw David worshipping God in the streets? Leader to say: King David knew that when he worshipped God, he did not have to care about what other people thought of his worship to God. He wanted to give God his best! David chose to focus on God when he worshipped. It was easy for him to get distracted if he was not focused on God. But David was not like that. He was totally focused on God when he worshipped! All of us don t have to worry about what other people think when we worship God! All we need to do is focus on God and we will not get distracted! (Get them all to immediately apply what they have just learnt by singing out the lyrics of We Bring The Sacrifice of Praise, even though it is noisy and other people might be looking at them. Encourage them to focus on God as they sing out their worship.) 5
Using the feeling cards provided, ask the children to describe how they felt when. 1) They started school earlier in the week after the June holidays 2) They came to GKidz today 3) They are treated to ice cream by their parents Leader to say: We experience different feelings at different times of the day. We will never be always happy, or always sad. When we worship God, we can tell God how we feel Just like how you told me how you felt when you started school this week, or how you would feel if you got to eat ice-cream. You can also tell God how you are feeling when you worship Him! And you know what, we can worship God whether we are feeling happy or feeling sad. We can tell God how we feel! When we choose to worship God when we are happy, He will rejoice and celebrate with us. When we choose to worship God when we are sad, He will fill our hearts with His love, and will remove our sadness! (Apply immediately by singing We Bring The Sacrifice of Praise with their feelings. For those children who are feeling sad, ask God to fill your hearts with thanksgiving and gratefulness. For those who are feeling normal, encourage them to worship God with feelings of joy.) E. Application (15 minutes) Run through the key verse, Psalm 150:6, with the children again before facilitating the activity below. Activity: Passionate Worship Challenge Logistics Needed: Passionate Worship Challenge booklet (GKidz will provide) Tell the children that in order for us to be worshippers, it is not enough to just know but to do as well. Let them know that you want them to take up a personal Passionate Worship Challenge. In order for them to participate, they need to commit to spending at least 5 minutes for at least one day this week. They can do so by using this format: 1 st minute: Worshipping God with a worship song they like to sing. If they don t have a song in mind, do give them some options that are found in the booklet. They can get their parents to help them access the YouTube links so they can sing to God! 6
2 nd minute: Being honest to God with your feelings. Tell God how you feel today! 3 rd minute: Pray for God s love to fill your heart. Ask the Lord to take away all of the burdens that s weighing you down. 4 th minute: Sing to the Lord another song of worship and praise! 5 th minute: Write down how you feel as you worshipped God and what He told you as you worshipped Him. After walking them through the steps above, lead them in the worship challenge by taking them through each step. End the small group time by praying for them. F. Family Devotion Focus Let the children know that they can complete the Passionate Worship Challenge with their parents. Encourage them to see this as not another assignment from GKidz, but to see it as an opportunity to know God more personally and to experience His presence right in their homes! Similarly, connect with the parents and encourage them to journey with their child as they seek to learn more about who God is in their lives through worship. The Challenge can be completed during the Family Altar Time as well, and parents can use the questions in the booklet to facilitate discussion after worship! References How To Worship A King, Zach Neese, 2012 Hillsong Kids BIG Curriculum Supernatural - Passionate Worship, 2011 7