Scripture: Genesis 12, 15 and 20
Learning Objectives:
- Students will review the story of Abram.
- Students will learn God wants us to follow Him wherever He leads us.
- Students will learn that sometimes we won’t know exactly where God is leading us, but we need to take the steps God has shown us.
- Students will participate in an activity to reinforce the principles learned in the story of Abram.
Guiding Question: How should you follow God’s instructions when they don’t make sense to you?
Materials: ingredients to make a snack, instruction cards
Procedure: Review the story of Abram, focusing especially on God telling Abram to leave his homeland and go to a place God would show him. Discuss with the students the questions Abram may have had in his mind. Ask the students how God gives us instructions today. Remind students God will never ask them to do anything that goes against the Bible or its commands and principles.
Tell students that you are going to give them a chance to see what Abram might have felt like on a very small level. Tell the students you are going to take them someplace very special, but you aren’t going to give them any details other than that. Tell the students they will be given instructions along the way and they must decide if they are willing to follow them even though they don’t know exactly where the instructions are taking them. Tell them the reward at the end of their journey will be worth all of the possible trouble to get there.
Hand them cards at various points in the journey. Make sure at least some of them seem silly or just don’t make sense. (Ex. The kids will assume they are headed to the kitchen to make a snack, but have them head to a specific car in the parking lot and when they get there someone will be holding a bag with an ingredient they need to make the snack.) Consider having some of the journey involve some sort of task or moral dilemma. You want your instructions to give them a feeling for what it must be like to go on a journey far away from home, knowing you may move there, but not knowing or totally understanding where “there” will be.
Once you reach the destination and assemble your snack, discuss the experiences your students had and compare those to some of the ones Abram experienced. What would have been the toughest thing if they had been Abram?
Additional Question: What other people in the Bible had God send them on journeys and they didn’t know everything about where they were going or what would happen until they followed God and arrived?
Supplemental Activity: Have more advanced students research the idea of others in the Bible following God’s directions without knowing what the outcome would be. Have them share their findings and what those who were obedient to God had in common.