Faith - Hebrews 11:1

Idea 1

Take the ideas from this video - What is faith? and make it into your own lesson.

You could make cookies together and talk about faith.
You could make a lego house and talk about faith.
You could do a painting and talk about faith.
You could make slime and talk about faith.
Then have a conversation with the kids about how we can have faith in God. We can’t see him at the beginning, but we know He is there. As we start looking for him we can see Him and feel Him more and more in our daily lives.

Idea 2

Play the feather game with the kids.

Give each of the kids a feather and let them play a game where they need to keep their feather up in the air for as long as possible without using their hands.
Once the game is over, ask the kids, what was it that was keeping their feathers up in the air? They should say it was their breath. Then tell them that you couldn’t see their breath.
Ask them what was the evidence that you were using your breath?
Then ask them “Are there any other things in our lives that are invisible but we know they exist?”
Explain that a lot of people say God doesn’t exist because they can’t see Him, but we can see evidence of Him and feel Him every day. We see him in creation, in other people, in what we give and do for others, we can pray, in reading the bible.
Ask the kids if they have any other ideas of how we know God exists.

Idea 3

Play some of the games found on this page.

Idea 4

Tell some stories from your own life when you had faith.

Idea 5

Here are some suggestions of things to tell kids about faith from “What’s in the bible”

Write each of these ideas on a popsicle stick and hide them around the room.
Let the kids go on a hunt for the popsicle sticks. When they find out read what it says to them, and ask them what they think it means.
When you are done, ask the kid to hide the popsicle stick again so someone else can have a chance to find it. Keep going to lots of kids can find different popsicle sticks and have mini conversations about what each one means.

Idea 6

Become faith detectives.

Ask the kids to go around and find different evidence for God existing even though we cannot see Him.
Set up the room with some plants (or go outside), bible, maybe someone willing to tell some stories about Jesus etc.

Idea 7

Ask all the kids to stand up and get them moving…

Say the following

If you read bible stories tap your head.
If you pray with the family jump up and down.
If you think about Jesus when you go for a walk pretend you are a turtle that is stuck on its back.
If you ask Jesus to help you do things spin around.
If you believe in God wave your hands in the air.
If you …..

Idea 8

God can do impossible things. Ask the kids to name a bunch of things that are impossible to do. You can give them some examples like flying, walking through walls etc.

Then tell them that you are going to give them an impossible task.
Give each of the kids a Hershey’s kiss (put it in front of them) and ask them to each it, but with one exception - they can’t use their hands.
Watch and see what happens.
After this is over, say something like God is the only one who can do impossible things. It says in the bible that he can do the impossible (Matt 19:26). So when really hard things happen in our lives we can have faith and pray because we know that God can do impossible things.

Idea 9

Do the trust fall with the kids.

Have a kid stand up on a table or higher surface with their back to the group.
Get the group to stand in two lines with their hands linked ready to catch the kid who is on the table. (make sure there are a few stronger people in the middle and someone at the end to protect the persons head)
Ask the kid on the table to fall backwards into the arms of all the catchers. They need to trust that they will be caught.
Talk about trusting God to catch us when we fall. Psalm 91:11,12

Idea 10

Ask some people to come in and share their testimony of how they starting believing in Jesus.

Idea 11

Talk about faith with the kids

We have faith in a lot of things every sings day. We have faith that the light will turn on when we flip the switch, that a chair will hold us when we sit down.
Make a list of all the things we have faith in, or give the kids magazines and let them cut out pictures of things we have faith in.
Talk about God, how do we have faith in God? How do we know God is there when we can’t see him? How do we know God will keep his promises?

Idea 12

Set up a race for the kids

Set up a challenge for the kids in groups, where each person needs to do different things, for example - run into the washroom, turn all your clothes inside out and come out, drink a full can of pop, run around the church building, piggy back someone across a room, throw a marshmallow in the air and catch it in your mouth, etc.
Do all of these activities one after the other kind of like a race.
Talk about what helped them to do the race well, and what was hard about the races.
Compare our lives to a race towards God. What will help us run the race well, and what will make the race harder?

Idea 13

Talk about places we can find God, so we know He exists.

In creation
In other people (we are made in his image)
In what we do and give for others
In praying and talking to God
In spending time with other people who are growing in their faith