Own Your Faith - Class #2

The second class of "Own Your Faith" was such a tremendous blessing for me and for the kids too. I am not hung up over the amount of kids that showed up, honestly (only two this time - Bridgette and Chris again). I have been so inspired to keep conversing with them and teaching them about the Bible and what faith really means.

After debriefing for a bit about their day at school and what the best parts of their separate journeys were, I asked them a simple question about their favorite fairy tales. They named a couple - Chris even mentioned a myth he had learned about in his mythology class that day (Hercules). Then I asked them what a fairy tale actually was, what it was meant to do. We came up with the conclusion that fairy tales are stories that could never happen but still deliver a message for little kids to learn. My next question, as I placed my finger on top of my worn black leather Bible, was why is the Bible not a fairy tale?

Bridgette shrugged her shoulders and said as simply profound as any teenager ever could: "Because it really happened."

I smiled at her and knew then that she remembered the first lesson I taught them when the class began. The Bible is not simply a book you read and put back on the shelf. You read about the lives of real people that walked this earth and the God that intervened into their lives, desiring relationship with the men and women He made.

Then we dived in. Our character this week was Abraham. We had left off with Noah last time, and instead of reading the geneological listing of his offspring, I segued into the lesson with the message that God allowed all these generations to exist after Noah and the flood and you don't see Him selecting another man to carry out His mission on this earth. And then all of a sudden God decided to choose Abraham (then named Abram) out of his whole family along with his barren wife.

I asked them what they thought about that - the ability for God to choose a seemingly insignificant person out of a family and use him or her in such a tremendous way. I told them that they, like Abraham, were called by God to fulfill their own special missions on this earth.

After getting introduced to Abraham (Abram) and reading of God's designation for him to travel to another place away from his family and all he had ever known, we read and talked about God's promise to give Abraham and Sarah a son in their old age. Because we had already determined that the stories we were reading really happened and were true, we dissected what that had to mean to Abraham and Sarah to produce a son in their later years. I kept highlighting their ages - when God first gave the promise and when the child was finally born. Abraham was 100 and Sarah was 90 when their son Isaac was born.

And the kids got stuck there for a minute because after all, as I said over and over, 100 is still 100. Old is still old. I had the kids imagine a 90 year old woman giving birth to a child. That rocked their boats and got their minds to spinning. Those two kids really contemplated what a miracle that had to have been. We talked about the power of God to do the impossible in really difficult circumstances, and they really started to get it.

The next landmark we stopped to look at was the story of Abraham's willingness to obey God again and sacrifice his son. Chris said, "You mean to tell me the son that God promised, the son a 100 year old man was given, God told commanded that father to kill him?! No way! He didn't kill that boy, did he?"

I didn't answer his question; just told him we would find out. I laughed at his expression, his words, the way Bridgette shook her head in disbelief as she poked her nose into the pages of her Bible to see for herself if what I had said was true. The ironic thing was that the minister that spoke this past Sunday came from the same Bible passage (Genesis 22) and talked about the sacrifice of true worship. We began to dissect this passage indepthly as the kids contemplated what God was really asking Abraham to do to this promised child and Abraham's decision to obey.

They read for themselves, not waiting for me to read with them. They wanted to know the answers. And when they reached the part of the true miracle, I knew it. Chris sat back in his chair, smiling and breathing a sigh of relief that Isaac ( the promised seed) was spared. We talked about how God waited until just the moment Abraham was about to kill his son and then stopped him. God waited to see how far his obedience would take him.

This class was amazing, with just these two teens. They asked so many questions, I gave so many analogies and modern day as well as personal applications to the Words we were reading. And I could see the light bulbs go on. I believe they learned a little more about what faith in God really means. The disconnection between real life and "church life" was reconnected just a little bit when we began to talk about what Christianity has to mean.

I told them we as Christians believe in a God that can do the impossible, that has loved us so much that He gave up His Son in much the same way Abraham was about to, and that commands us to show that same measure of love to a dying world - to the people around us that are depressed, lonely, scared, isolated, and hopeless. That is our call.

I brought it home that way after talking about my own mistakes in this area. I told them how God taught me this same lesson the week before when I took a tour of a morgue in Macomb County and heard the story of one of the deceased men in that morgue that committed suicide, I could tell from the tears in Bridgette's eyes and the solemn look on Chris' face that I had touched them in some way. I can't wait to see the end result. I can't wait to see the Word of God germinate in their own lives.