Sunday at KidSpring… (December 20, 2009)
This was our fourth week pretending to be the live studio audience of the Reindeer Radio Show where we sing along with some cool Christmas tunes and learn lots of good news from God’s word.
And it was also our fourth week as the live studio audience of the North Pole News where the headlines are hilarious and the news is just what we Need to Know.
Today’s Headline (Need to Know): God Has a Plan for Me!
Traveling over the holidays can be fun, but it can also be inconvenient and frustrating. This week we learned how Mary and Joseph had to take a trip just before the first Christmas—an inconvenient and frustrating trip they were not planning to take (Luke 2:1-5, 7c).
As they were preparing for Jesus to be born, Mary and Joseph received the unexpected news that they were going to have to travel to their hometown of Bethlehem, to be counted by the king. After traveling for three long days on foot and by donkey they arrived in Bethlehem to find that all the hotels were full—the only place for them to stay was in a barn full of animals and hay!
See Mary and Joseph did not plan on traveling to Bethlehem, and they did not plan on sleeping in a barn, but amazingly, this was all a part of God’s awesome plan. Kids in ImagiNation, Jump Street & Shockwave learned that seven hundred years earlier, the prophet, Micah, had told us how God had planned to use the unimportant town of Bethlehem as the place for our Savior to be born (Micah 5:2 NIrV). Because God wanted Jesus to be born here, He planned long ago to send Mary and Joseph there around the time Jesus was to be born.
Even though the journey was long and their bed was not in a hotel, everything that happened was a part of God’s plan for Mary, Joseph and Jesus. In the same way, God has a plan for you! God has many great plans for us, but his greatest plan for us is that we would be best friends with Jesus. God sent Jesus at Christmastime to be our best friend.
Preschoolers learned that when Jesus is our best friend He saves us from doing wrong things and fixes our friendship with God.
And kids in ImagiNation, Jump Street & Shockwave learned that when we are best friends with Jesus our friendship with God is fixed and we can live in heaven with him one day. Sending Jesus was God’s great plan to fix our friendship with him!
Here are a few things you can do this week to remind your child that God has a plan for him or her:
As your child is curious about the presents under the Christmas tree, ask him or her the following questions:
- Who is this gift for?
- Does this person know we are giving them this gift? (Hopefully not!)
- Just like they don’t know that they are getting this gift, we may not always know what God has planned for us.
- But do you think this person will think this present is great? (Yes!)
- In the same way we can trust that God’s plans for us are going to be great!
As you are preparing holiday meals, have your child help you follow the recipes and taste the outcome. Tell your child that following the recipe, or plan, makes what you are cooking turn out great, and if we follow God’s plan and have Jesus as our best friend, God will make sure our life turns out great!
Check out www.NewSpring.cc for the Christmas service times at your campus this week, and invite friends, family and strangers to come worship with you! This week’s Christmas services will be the only church services held this week as NewSpring will not have services on December 27, 2009.
Preschool parents, keep working with your child to memorize this series’ Remember Verse. Here is the verse and the motions we do along with it:
Elementary school parents encourage your child to memorize the following verse Here is the first part of the verse we have been learning: