Kids & Learning How to Repent

Today our lesson was on sin and what it means to repent. I think this is such an important part of a child's spiritual development, because, well, sinning is pretty much inevitable (Romans 3:23). Teaching children how to handle their sin could very well make a difference on how well they follow Jesus now and for the rest of their lives.

In Kingdom Kids we defined sin as "falling short of God's best design". We can sin by making the wrong choice, and sometimes we sin by mistake. The kids all readily recognized their own sins, which on a side note is a necessary realization that precludes trusting Jesus for salvation, so that is a great place for them to be. 

Next, I introduced the word REPENT, simply defined as "turning direction".  This opened our discussion further to what it meant to 'follow Jesus' and when we sin, we begin to go 'crooked and off the path'.  In order to avoid getting too far off the path and away from Jesus we needed to "Repent"... or in other words "Stop, Drop, & Roll". 

Stop: When we do wrong, stop as soon as we recognize it.

Drop: Drop to our knees and pray. Ask God to forgive you and to help you do what's right.

Roll: Roll right back on over to the path of following Jesus.

The kids enjoyed practicing this and we learned many lessons through interacting with it.  Mr. Brian became "Jesus".  He stood across the room with his eyes on us, and each child had an opportunity to walk towards "Jesus" and then sin and trail across the room the other direction.  Some things we learned:

• One bad choice can often lead to another one, so we need to try to stop always as soon as possible. 

• If we keep going off the path too far, we can run into a hard wall. One of us ran into a couple of hard walls before deciding to repent and change direction back to Jesus.

• Jesus was always there. He always loved us, and never turned away. He always welcomed us back after we repented and we could never stray too far away that we couldn't turn around and find Jesus watching and welcoming us to him. 

• A simple prayer is all that is needed, and everyone could do it in their own words.

Teaching and guiding our children with a healthy perspective on sin and repentance helps avoid the "performance trap"; where they are doing right behaviors in an effort to please adults (and God). While we want our children to embrace right behaviors, we want them to do it from their heart. For from the heart are the issues of life (Prov. 4: 23).