Acts 19

We had a great morning with the kids examing the reality of the Holy Spirit in our lives and whether we see Him as active and moving or just a passive presence. 

We introduced the kids to Finny, the fish. Finny lives in a small fish tank with rocks at the bottom and a fake plant in the middle. We told the kids to pretend that the fish tank was like us. Then we asked them what was like the Holy Spirit-the rocks, the fake plant or the fish. The answer was the fish, which is alive and moving around, affecting everything around it. The Holy Spirit is the same way, alive and moving. Sometimes though, we can treat the Holy Spirit like He's a rock; there, but not doing anything.   

 Chapter 19 of Acts is a busy one, full of little stories. For each story, we asked the kids if the people in the story were treating the Holy Spirit like he was a rock or the fish.

We started with the story of Paul finding a group of believers who had repented from their sin but had never received the Holy Spirit.  They weren't immersed in the life of Jesus.  We often have the same problem.  We've repented from sin but often haven't dove deeply in the Holy Spirit, allowing Him to be our new life.

Story number two showed how the Holy Spirit was using Paul to heal many including using cloth Paul had touched. 

 In the third story, several people who had heard about Paul and what he was doing wanted to mimic him. They wanted to be famous too and heal people and look good. They tried to cast out a demon, vaguely calling on "Paul's God". But the demon simply scoffed at them and chased them away. These people were treating God like he was a rock.  In the fourth story, a man who had been selling idols and scrolls of Artemis, the local goddess, had heard aboug Paul and God and decided to destroy all of his wares, to follow God. He destroyed thousands of dollars worth of merchandise. He treated God like a fish. 

 In the final story, several people were upset that Paul was discouraging the worship of Artemis. They began a riot, wanting to kill Paul. But a clerk silenced the crowd and told them that Paul had done nothing wrong and if anything wrong had happpened, then the court would take care of it.

 We ended with the puppets. Andrew the lizard told Max the T-Rex and Pigalette the pig that they were his best friends and had to stay with him all the time. They agreed happily and Andrew started to play basketball. Max and Pigalette asked to play too but Andrew shushed them and said they couldn't play. Any time one of them tried to talk, Andrew shushed them and the other two started to get upset. When they wanted to leave, Andrew insisted they had to stay because they were best friends. Karlin came in and explained that that's not what best friends do. Best friends talk together and hang out and do things. And sometimes, we treat God the same way. We know He's there all the time and we want him to stay with us, but we keep wanting to be in control and don't want God to do anything. We treat God like he's a rock that just sits there. Andrew apologized to his friends and then all of them learned the memory verse.