It’s the night before the class you have volunteered to teach for the next few months. It’s filled with beautiful children who come into your room still half asleep. You walk in and sigh. You have to keep fifteen children engaged for the next hour with the story of Noah – the same story they have heard dozens of times even in their short lives. Their eyes begin to glaze over as you start to tell the story and frankly you’re rather bored yourself.
Sound familiar? This scene is played out all over the world in churches and faith based programs. Our kids aren’t excited about the Bible and we can’t figure out what to do about it. There must be some new trick or visual aid that will get them excited – perhaps a new Bible computer game will do the trick.
The problem is every trick and gadget in the world to get kids interested in the Bible won’t work if you don’t know the secret to getting kids excited – I mean really excited about the Bible. Ready? The trick is simple. You have to be excited about God’s words yourself.
Now I know every Christian alive will say they are thrilled about God’s plans and the promise of eternal life in heaven. They will claim they are excited about their sins being forgiven. It’s not that they aren’t telling the truth, it’s just that most Christians have forgotten the pure overwhelming joy in having God’s words given to us to help us live the best possible life and then get to spend eternity in God’s presence in heaven!
Think about it this way. The bible is like dozens of people over thousands of years being told to create a piece of a puzzle. Now they aren’t exactly told all of the details of the finished puzzle and may have had no previous pieces (or only a few) to look at before creating their own. Yet somehow with different materials, in different cultures, over different time periods in all sorts of circumstances these people all completed one or more pieces for the puzzle. When the last piece was made and the final puzzle assembled, it created the most amazing piece of art you have ever seen – with all of the pieces fitting perfectly – even ones made hundreds, even thousands of years apart.
That my friends is the amazing wonder of the Bible. With the help of the Holy Spirit, dozens of writers over thousands of years created pieces of the puzzle – books of the Bible – that showed mankind who God is and what He wants for us and from us. All of those pieces fit perfectly together. Do you know how amazing that is?
Need more help getting excited about God’s Word? Read books by Lee Strobel, get an archaeology Bible and learn all of the amazing ways things fell into place, watch as someone’s life is totally transformed because of reading and obeying God’s Words. Really feel the wonder, the joy and the awesomeness of the scriptures. Then, share it with your students. You may find boredom leaves your classroom forever!