Faith like a Child

Things that the kids have asked in Bible in schools

Once the speaker had gone by a 30 foot yacht to Fiji from NZ and hit a very terrible storm but at no time did he feel unsure but felt happy and knew God had a purpose for them and knew the boat was to be delivered to Fiji. There was no GPS in those days, had to use map, the horizon and the sun but if there was no sun it’s a struggle to know the direction you are taking. You might use the compass but that is no help if there is current. One day the sun finally came through after many days without the sun and they realized they had to make a sharp right hand turn if they were to make it into Suva (Fiji) harbor or they would end up in Japan. To have a map is not enough, you need the sun and to know it off by heart is not enough because it doesn’t tell you where you are up to. The map is there to direct you but you need more than the map in order to get to your destination. The bible is there to direct you to heaven but you need more than the bible to get you there...you need Jesus (the sun). You could know the Bible off by heart but you will never get to heaven, Jesus is the only way to heaven. He is the life that brings us into the presence of the father. The Bible points us to Jesus, hope in you, the only hope and the only glory.

John 5:39-40, “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life”

During the speakers time doing Bible is schools, he has had the following questions:

1. “Can we believe in the greek gods as well as the God of heaven?”

The speaker answered, “say you were 22 years old and you loved a man and he loved you, and one day he said, ‘I really love you and I want to marry you, would you marry me?’ and you were about to say yes but he says, ‘I have a girlsfriend in Wanganui and one in Te Puke, and I don’t want to give them up’. Hopefully you would say, ‘no, I want all of you or none of you’. You have to love the Lord with all your heart and you shall have no other God’s before me. He is to be pre-eminent and not prominent, Lord of all or not at all.

Mathew 22:37: Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”

2. What is God really like?

We read about Jesus as a carpenter, He did amazing things on earth. Does God look like Jesus, the man that came to earth? Jesus is God and is far greater than the Jesus we see in the gospels. He came to earth as a man to do what His father wanted with the power of the Holy Spirit. He was limited to explain things to humans while He is God. It would be like explaining our world to the ant world. You have to become an ant and then speak in the ant language. How to explain things that they can’t understand or have never seen? The ants would think you were crazy and would want you to leave and finally push you out. How hard it must be for Jesus to lay aside his glory to become a human and to explain the things of God to people who can’t understand and won’t accept.

Our expectation of God is limited to how people see God. Some people see Him as the child in manger, some on the cross, others see Him as risen. By Him all things were created and for Him and He is before all things and by Him all things exist. God is far greater than our wildest imaginations - don’t limit God to Jesus the human being because He is far more wonderful.

Colossians 1:16-17, “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together”.

Romans 11:36, “For from him and through him and for him are all things.To him be the glory forever! Amen.”

3. Does god really know who I am and where I live?

One day the speaker was going to Thames with a friend who brought a GPS. The GPS was a women’s voice and she said turn left, and the speaker found it hard to listen to a woman and he was determined not to. He was being told to turn right, turn left but he kept resisting because he was sure he knew the best way. Then the speaker realised he was wrong, so reluctantly, he turned around and followed what the GPS said and she was right. Therefore, if man can make a machine that knows where you are, don’t you think God who gives us the ability to make such machines, then of course God can know where we are. God knows everything.

One day the speaker picked up a dying sparrow and it suddenly died in front of him and the speaker remembered a verse that God knows when a sparrow dies which means God knows how fast I’m driving and where I’m going.

Psalm 139:1-4, “You have searched me, LORD, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely”

4. Does god know and remember the things we do wrong?

It would be like owing $20 to someone and you never pay it but eventually your conscience wakes up and you feel you should pay even though the person has forgotten. But when you go to pay, your uncle has already paid the account. Once you discovered your account was paid for you, you would thank your uncle. Jesus Christ has paid our debt completely and He is just waiting for us to say thank you which means we now owe our lives to Jesus. We are now in debt to Jesus, we have been bought with a price, we are not our own and so therefore we must glorify Jesus.

I Corinthians 6:19-20, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies”

5. When you die, is that the end?

Everyone of us is eternal beings, you will be just as alive in your spirit in 2000 years as you are now; your body will die but you will live on. You either die and be with Jesus and spend life with God or you will spend your life without God to suffer in your sins. It’s only our pride that stops us accepting God’s sacrifice on our behalf. Jesus did not become a sinner but He took the place of us, took the responsibility for our sins. Death is not the end for us because the wrath of God was appeased by Jesus’ death and through His gift of grace. Being risen proves that his death was accepted by God as the price for our sin. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins.

“Steak on your plate while you wait, it’s pie in the sky when you die”

1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness”

6. What is the church?

If you build a church from polystyrene and put plastic people in it, then move the church building to one side; which one is the church? The people or the building? Jesus lives in our hearts if we have asked us to, so therefore, church is the people not the building. If you go to an empty building, you can’t hear people praising God, but where there are people, we can hear praises regardless of a building. Church is people.

Ephesians 2:19-22, “ Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”