Materials Needed: Lego Packs, which consist of 5 Legos put together in certain pattern, as well as 5 other Legos that are the same shape and size, but NOT put together.
FOR THE TEACHER ONLY: Last week we learned about WHO the Holy Spirit was and some history about Him. Today we will teach the children a little about the purpose of the Holy Spirit, and what He does. Again, this is not EVERTHING the Holy Spirit does, as that would take WAY longer than this series would allow. We are giving the children an introduction to the Holy Spirit so that they can build on this as they get older and learn more about Him through what Scripture says. Our goal is to reference what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit so that they learn to look to Scripture rather than people’s opinion when it come the topic of the Holy Spirit. Have fun with this lesson.
FOR EVERYONE: Welcome, everyone to week 2 of our Holy Spirit series! We learned last week about who the Holy Spirit was, and today we are going to learn about what the Holy Spirit does, and His purpose.
Before we get into that, let’s review a little from last week:
True or False: The Holy Spirit is part of God.
ANSWER: TRUE!
Q: How long has the Holy Spirit been around?
ANSWER: SINCE THE BEGINNING!
True or False: The Holy Spirit does NOT want to lead you.
ANSWER: FALSE. The Holy Spirit definitely wants to lead you.
True or False: The Holy Spirit will MAKE YOU follow where He is leading.
ANSWER: FALSE. You have the choice of following the Holy Spirit’s guidance.
Last Review Question: The Holy Spirit is SO powerful, that He was able to make Jesus’ followers do what to help spread the message of Jesus around the world?
Answer: Speak in other languages.
NICE!!! Good memory from last week!
Okay, so we know a little about WHO the Holy Spirit is, but what does He do? That’s what we are talking about today.
Just like last week, let’s start by seeing what Jesus said about what the Holy Spirit does.
John 14:26 says “the Father will send the Friend in my name to help you (everybody say “help you”….kids repeat it). The Friend is the Holy Spirit.
So what does the Holy Spirit do? He helps you. How does He help you?
It says right after that. “He will teach you all things.”
Like math? No. Not math. That would be cool, though.
It says “He will remind you of everything I have said to you.”
So the Holy Spirit helps us by reminding us of what Jesus talked about. Like we talked about last week, Jesus was our example on HOW to live. Jesus didn’t tell us specifics of things like what we should be when we grow up, what kind of car we should get, or what to order for dinner.
He DID give us a lot of details about how to make our decisions.
For example, even though Jesus didn’t tell us which friends to choose at school, it says Jesus prayed before choosing his closest friends, teaching us that we should pray before our decisions.
Jesus didn’t tell us what conversations to have when we are with our friends, but did tell us to love not just our friends, but your enemies as well, so we know from this that when we talk to our friends, we shouldn’t say mean things about others.
So we can apply what Jesus said to how we live our life and then make our decisions. But how are we supposed to remember what Jesus said?
First, we need to read it. It’s hard to know what Jesus said about how to live if we don’t take the time to read the Bible. Even just reading a few verses a day can help us hear what God says to us.
Second, the Holy Spirit steps in and HELPS us remember what you read, so you can do what Jesus said. It says “He will remind you of everything I have said to you.”
So that’s one way the Holy Spirit helps us.
Next, the Holy Spirit helps us by giving us power. Everybody say “POWER”, and make muscles… NICE!
It says in Galatians 5:16 “So I say, live by the Holy Spirit’s power. Then you will not do what your desires controlled by sin want you to do.”
If we just did what we felt like doing all the time, we would get into a lot of trouble…right? What if you just ate cake, cookies and ice cream every meal, watched tv or played games ALL DAY, EVERY DAY, stopped going to school, said anything, even if it wasn’t true, took whatever you wanted from the store without paying, and said whatever you felt like saying to everyone? At first that sounds amazing, but you know DEEP DOWN that if you did that, a lot of bad things would happen. You would get so sick, lose friends, people would get mad at you, and you would go to jail. So doing whatever we feel like doing can result in bad things happening, right?
Even if we did these things some of the time, it could still cause you to lose friends, people may not trust you, your grades at school could go down, and you would feel bad about those decisions.
This is where the Holy Spirit gives us power. He gives us the POWER to do what God wants us to do, not the things we feel like doing, because sometimes what we feel like doing is wrong.
It says in Romans 8:4 “The power of sin should no longer control the way we live. The Holy Spirit should control the way we live.”
What if we feel like doing the same thing God wants us to do? Great!!! That’s wonderful. Go for it.
It’s when we need to do something different than what we feel like doing that the Holy Spirit will give us the power that we don’t have to do the right thing. Does that make sense?
Another way the Holy Spirit helps us is with praying.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever prayed.
Now raise your hand if you’ve ever prayed, but then didn’t know what to say.
Everyone has at some point. And it still happens sometimes.
Romans 8:26 says “In the same way, the Holy Spirit helps us when we are weak. We don’t know what we should pray for. But the Spirit himself prays for us. He prays through groans too deep for words.”
Another version says it like this, “God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans.”
So we don’t have to worry about not knowing what to say to God. Whether you’re crying, sighing, or even moaning, the Holy Spirit knows what you mean. The Holy Spirit will help you pray, and He will know what you mean even when you don’t have the words to say.
Another purpose of the Holy Spirit is to provide us with proof that we are God’s child.
If I were to ask you for proof of who your parents were, there would be a document or piece of paper somewhere that shows who you are and who your parents are. This may be a birth certificate, adoption certificate, or even another form.
If you asked for proof that someone is married, they may also have a marriage document or paper, and they also may have a ring that shows they have a wife or a husband. There’s a number of physical things that prove we belong to someone else. Does that make sense?
In the Bible, there were a number of ways to prove that you were a part of a family. Jesus tells the story in Luke chapter 15 about a son who wanted to get away from his family, and then makes a lot of bad decisions. He later really wants to come back to the family, even if he can just be a servant. The dad receives him back, not as a servant though, but as his son, and gives him a few things, one of which was a ring. This ring was a symbol that showed that he was part of that family.
(DEFINITELY FOR THE TEACHER ONLY) NOT FOR TEACHING KIDS: The Old Testament in the Bible showed us many physical things that helped us understand what happened on a spiritual level. For instance, Song of Solomon talks about the amount of love God has for his people and compares that to a relationship of a man and his wife. (A physical sign that represents something spiritual.) The Tabernacle that the people of Israel worshiped in and that was moved when the nation of Israel moved was a physical sign that God wanted to live WITH us, and not away from us. (Again, something physical that represented something spiritual.) There was also a physical sign, or proof, that let Israel know that they were God’s people. This was that the males were circumcised at 8 days old (Genesis 17:10-14). The New Testament in the Bible then explains what the PHYSICAL things of the Old Testament represented spiritually, because God is a spirit. From the love God has for us (shown through what Jesus did), to how God lives with us (Jesus telling us He is with us always), and that a physical sign is not what really sets you apart as God’s child. It’s a spiritual sign, the Holy Spirit. This is the spiritual proof we are God’s child.
FOR EVERYONE: When we decide to follow Jesus, we become part of God’s family, and God gives us proof that we are His, which is so cool.
We know Jesus was God’s Son, because in 1 Timothy 3:16 it says “Jesus came as a human being. The Holy Spirit proved that he was the Son of God.”
So the Holy Spirit is the way we know Jesus was God’s Son, right? (((Right)))
Can you see the Holy Spirit? No. But this is what proved that Jesus was the Son of God. It also proves that YOU are God’s child when YOU believe in Jesus.
Ephesians 1:13 says “When you believed, he stamped you with an official mark. That official mark is the Holy Spirit that he promised.”
Kings had a way of stamping certain things so people would know that something came from them, like a scroll. They would take wax, melt it, then put it on the scroll and push their stamp against it, making a mark that everyone knew was the king’s.
It’s the same way with God. He “stamps” you once you believed in Jesus with the Holy Spirit. This proves that you are His child.
Here are some other verses in the Bible that tells us that the Holy Spirit is the proof that we are God’s children:
Ephesians 4:30 “The Holy Spirit is the proof that you belong to God. And the Spirit is the proof that God will set you completely free.”
1 John 4:13 “Here’s how we know that we are joined to him and he to us. He has given us his Holy Spirit.”
2 Corinthians 1:22 “He put his Spirit in our hearts and marked us as his own. We can now be sure that he will give us everything he promised us.”
So the way God marks you when you decide to follow Jesus is by giving you the Holy Spirit.
The last thing we’ll talk about today that the Holy Spirit does is connects us back to God.
In the beginning of the Bible in Genesis, Adam and Eve were created and had a close relationship with God, with God even talking to them and walking around them in the Garden of Eden. He told them they could eat anything in the Garden, except from 1 tree. (Everyone gets a choice to follow God or not.) He told them in Genesis 2:17 that WHEN they would eat from that tree, they would die. Later they were tempted by the Devil to eat from that tree. Do you think they decided to eat from that tree?
They did!
Did they immediately die?
No, they didn’t. They lived a long time after that. Then what did God mean when He said that WHEN they would eat from that tree, they would die?
Death is a symbol for separation. That’s why it is so sad when someone dies or a pet dies, because we are then separated from them and we miss them.
When Adam and Eve ate from that tree they weren’t supposed to, they were separated from having that close relationship with God from that point on, which was so sad. God didn’t hang out with them or talk to them like He did before, because they chose to not follow God’s direction. Because of that decision, everyone from that point on would not have that kind of close relationship with God.
We were created to have that relationship with God, which is why we miss it. Everyone needs to be saved from that separation from God.
That’s where our belief and trust in Jesus comes in. Jesus lived the perfect life with NO sin, and died on the cross, being the ultimate sacrifice for all of our sins. All we have to do is believe and trust in Him.
The Holy Spirit then steps in and takes care of the rest! It says in 2 Thessalonians 2:13 “Salvation comes through the Holy Spirit’s work. He makes people holy. It also comes through believing the truth.”
We have to believe in the truth, which is Jesus as our Savior, and then the Holy Spirit saves us from being separated from God any longer. How cool is that! So it’s the Holy Spirit that makes us good enough to be with God again, not us. Can we be good enough to be saved from that separation?
No.
Galatians 3:2 says “Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law? Or did you receive the Spirit by believing what you heard?”
This means that it’s not about you obeying rules that gets you a relationship with God…it’s by believing in Jesus as the Savior of the World. We cannot be good enough to earn that. The Holy Spirit is what connects you again with God when you trust in Jesus.
Does that make sense?
Okay, before we do a fun activity to show how the Holy Spirit helps us, let do a little review.
REVIEW TIME
Question: True or False: One of the things the Holy Spirit does is helps you.
Answer: TRUE
Question: Which one of these is NOT something the Holy Spirit helps you with: Helps you with praying, helps you remember what Jesus said in the Bible, helps you with math homework, or helps connect you back to a relationship with God?
Answer: Homework. (that would be nice, though)
Question: Fill in the Blank: The way you know you are God’s child is that you were officially stamped with a mark. That mark is the ________ _____________.
Answer: Holy Spirit
Question: True or False: If we do enough good things, then we can have a relationship with God.
Answer: False. Nobody is good enough to have a relationship with God. We have to believe in Jesus and then the Holy Spirit makes us good enough to have a relationship with God.
Great job everyone! Now let’s play a game that will help us understand how God helps you.