How can we follow God as He leads us in life? Includes a lesson, 2 games, and a craft.
Needed: a copy of a road map for each student, pencils or crayons, blindfolds, drawing paper
Intro Game: Map Quest
Give each student or pair of students a road map. Help them find your city or state and then point out a location close by. Ask, If I asked you how to get from where we are to this other location, what would you tell me? Draw the way using the roads on your maps.
(Do the exercise a couple of more times, choosing different locations. Then, take the maps away.) Now, without looking, if I asked you how to get from here to (another location), what would you tell me?
It’s a little harder to tell directions if you don’t have the map, isn’t it?
But when you’re riding in a car, you don’t need to know how to get somewhere, do you? When you’re riding in a car, who knows how to get where you’re going?
Your parents or grandparents or someone else a little older than you knows where to go. Sometimes, a GPS helps them know where to go.
That’s kind of how it was for Abraham in our story today.
Lesson
Ask students, Can any of you think of a hard thing that God might ask you to do? Use your imaginations.
What if God told you to leave your family and all your friends and go live in another country? Would you do it? How would you feel about it?
Well, God told the person in our Bible story today to do exactly that.
Summarize Genesis 12 with this Bible story, asking the included questions as you read.
God said to Abram, “Leave your country and your people and your father’s family and go to the land I will show you.”
Do you think Abram was scared to go to a new place?
Do you think he was sad to have to leave his family?
Do you think maybe he was a little bit excited, too, to see the place where God was taking him?
Did Abraham know where he was going?
No. God just told Abraham to leave his country and go somewhere God would show him. Abraham didn’t have a map of where he was going. He didn’t know how to get there. But who did know how to get there?
God knew where He was taking Abraham and He made sure Abraham and his family arrived there safely.
It’s kind of like God was the driver in the car and Abraham and his family were the passengers. They didn’t know how to get where they were going, but God did.
It’s the same way for us in life. We don’t everything that’s going to happen to us or all the places we’ll go, but God does. And as long as we keep trusting in God like Abraham and his family did, God will be right beside us, taking us where we need to go in life. God will be like our driver if we keep trusting in Him.
God told Abraham, “I will bless you and I will be with you and will make you into a great nation.”
What is God promising to do for Abram? (To bless him, or reward him.)
Do you think God can bless and reward us if we listen to Him and do what He tells us? (Yes.)
So Abram left, as God had told him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left his own country and he took his wife, Sarai, his nephew, Lot, and everything that they had and moved to the country of Canaan.
When they arrived in Canaan, God promised Abram, “I will give this whole country to your children and their children forever.” So Abram built an altar there and made sacrifices to God on it to thank God for everything God had done for him.
Do you think it’s important to thank God when He does something good for us? (Yes.)
What are some ways that we can thank God?
We can thank God by praying to Him. We can do something special for God. We can give God an extra offering out of the money that we get, etc.
Prayer
Father God, You know everything about us. You know everything that will happen to us. You know what we should do and where we should go in life. We pray that You will help us to always trust in You to lead us, just like Abraham did. Help us to be like Your passengers and to trust You as our driver. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Game: Blindfold Challenge
This a classic game to teach kids what it was like for Abraham to trust God even though he didn’t know where God was leading him.
Have the students pair up in a safe area. One of the students will put on a blindfold. The other will give them verbal directions of where to go. When I used this game, I had the children lead each other to another room in the church. You could also take the kids outside to walk a path around your property, or set up a course for them to follow in your classroom.
Once they get to the ending location, have them switch. The one giving directions will now take their blindfolded partner to a third location or back to the classroom via a different route.
When the second student reaches their location, remind them that Abraham didn’t know where he was going. He had to trust God to lead him. We have to trust God to lead us in our lives too because we don’t know what will happen in the future.
Craft: Drawing Your Life’s Roadmap
Have students draw a road map for the events in their lives. Some locations could include their house, their school, their friends’ houses, their church, a relative’s house, or the home of a parent they don’t normally live with. Encourage the students to add any location that they visit often or that is meaningful to them.
Then, on their map, have them draw themselves in a car but with an empty driver’s seat. Explain that God is in the driver’s seat and that He is with us wherever we go.
This lesson is included in my book, Father Abraham: Children Sunday School Lessons on Genesis 12-50.