standingup

Intro

This session was written by someone who doesn't want any credit for it! The original session was aimed for a wide age range, so some of this may not be suitable for all young people. Check through it and just see what you can and can't use - as ever!!

Standing As Christians

Purpose - This session we will be looking how we can stand as Christians and what it means to be a Christian. Is a Christian something you should be just on a church in front of your pastor?!

Let’s have a quick prayer and give this session to God..

Bible Reading

Daniel 3 - this may seem a bit long, but it's such an exciting story. If people don't get excited about this kind of stuff in the Bible, they need help!

Game

Of wink murder for a bit of fun!!

Can anyone tell me what a Christian is? Answers on flipchart

• Someone who attends church
• Someone who believes in God
• Someone who prays
• Someone who reads their Bible
• Someone who listens to God
• Someone who obeys what God says.

So if I asked you to prove you are a Christian how would you prove it? – There is no set way that you can prove it is there?! There are people that do good things and are nice and have good morals who aren’t Christian, so how do we separate ourselves? That is something to think about…

Jesus says:

• Matthew 7.16-17 – by their fruit you shall know them
• Galatians 5.22-24 – fruit of Spirit
• John 14.15 & John 14.23-24 – if you love Jesus, you’ll obey him
• Romans 10 – we have to accept Jesus as well !

In the Bible there are three men in one story who set themselves apart and stood up for being Christians. These men are Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego – better known in this video as Rack, Shack and Benny!

PS. Does anyone know their real names of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego? Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah (Daniel 1.6)

Veggie Tales - Rack, Shack & Benny

Show the whole episode (bear in mind there is a Sing-A-Long bit in the middle, lasting about 2 minutes). The episode itself lasts around 25 minutes. You may want to split showing the video to each half of the episode (either side of the singing bit).

The Bible says in Daniel 3.16-18:

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.

Now that’s standing up for God! Imagine how scared they must have felt before they were thrown into the fire and yet they still had faith in God to stand up for him that he would save him! AND even if they didn’t get saved they still would praise God’s name – now that’s amazing – even if God didn’t stand in and help then they would just trust that it’s his way and that it’s going to be ok. Sometimes it's scary, but the rewards are worth it. For Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, they received a promotion (verse 49). This may not always happen, but God sees and notices and will reward us one day, trust!

Game

Now we are going to play a game. Everyone is going to be given five £5 notes (make up the money, or use Monopoly money etc). What people have to do is not say 'yes' or 'no'. So, people walk around the room, asking each other questions, trying to catch out the other person into saying, 'yes' or 'no'. If the person you speak to says 'yes' or 'no', they have to give up one of their £5 notes to you. The winner is the person that can get the most amount of money in 5-7 mins ish! To win, you need to find other ways of saying yes or no!

(In this game you need to stand up for not saying yes or no or you will lose out on the prize!)

So, we have been talking about people that stood up for God and what it means to stand up for God but how does that apply to our lives?

Break into groups of 3 or 4

Come up with ways that we can practically stand out as Christians within our settings in home and school.

Maybe we could:

• Be kind
• Respect people
• Obey what Jesus says and obey The Bible
• Show love for people
• Honour our parents
• Be helpful
• Tell our friends about God
• Let your light shine (maybe you want to turn off the lights and then turn on a light, or a torch to demonstrate how a little light will brighten up a whole room)

These are a few of the many ways we can do show we love God..

As the last part of this session, we are going to be creative and we are going to all come up with one way that we are going to try and stand up as Christians. For me it would be to tell my friends more about God. Give everyone a rock, or a pack of seeds, or something they can take home and look at it each day and remember what you say and put it into action.

Let us close in prayer – we should be praying for strength to stand and support one another – let’s pass a Bible around, whoever has the Bible in hand prays. If you don't want to pray, pass the Bible on to the next person.