New hearts

That's what I'll be teaching the Kids Club kids about next Wednesday - how God gives us a new heart. The passage I'm basing our story on next week is Jeremiah 31:31-33 which is about God's promise of a new covenant for His people where He will write His law onto their hearts. We've just finished an Exodus program so it follows on quite nicely.

I was really conscious about what words to use in the story I wrote because in kids ministry you have to be so careful about the vocabulary you use. Imagine if a child went home after Kids Club crying to his mum, "God is cutting me up and taking my old heart out and putting a new one in there! WAAAAAHHHHHH!"?! Ha.

Anyway, I ended up writing a story about a girl who loved to fix things - if anything was broken, she'd try to fix it and her friends would bring all sorts of things to her to fix. But she realised there were things she wanted to fix but couldn't, like when her friends had a fight or when her brother broke his leg. The story concludes with her wanting her heart to be fixed most of all because she tries to obey God and do what He wants but she keeps failing and doing what she wants instead. She learns that it is only when she puts her trust in Jesus that God will fix her heart and change it. He will make it new and help her to live His way instead of her own way.

What do you think? I would love your thoughts! I still have time to change my story..

I'm still mulling over the whole theme of the new covenant which makes me fall in love with Jesus all over again. Isn't God gracious in the way He gives me new awe for Him through my kids ministry preparation? I need it because even though I try to read the Bible in my own quiet times, sometimes it doesn't feel like I'm really getting into the Word as much as I'd like to be.

When I was reading Jeremiah last night, God reminded me that the Law has never been done away with. God still has the same standards of righteousness that He expected from the Israelites when He first gave them the Law at Mt Sinai. It makes me understand more fully what Jesus meant when He said, "I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it" (Mt. 5:17). We can attain that perfection that God needs us to have in order to be in relationship with Him because Jesus makes it possible through His death and resurrection. What beautiful, wonderful news that is for us!

If it feels like that for us, imagine what it must've been like for the Jews back then who were constantly offering up guilt and sin offerings to cover for their sin! To realise that Jesus has done it once and for all and they can finally meet that perfect standard of righteousness that God requires of His people!

I wonder how I can show that to the kids next week?