Take Them to the Cross

"So, why did He do that? Why did the Cross have to happen?"

It was asked so sincerely, and for the first time all evening, every
child in the room was quiet. And I thought, Okay, Lord, we'll go with
this...

This past Wednesday evening, our children's director was out sick, and she had asked me to fill in with the story for the 1st - 6th graders. We are going to be talking about missions with the kids over the next few months, but we don't have our curriculum just yet, so my plan was to find a Bible story to share. Last week I taught the kids about Philip and the man from Ethiopia. This week, I prayed, Lord, what do you want me to tell the kids about? And I was impressed to "Take them to the Cross." Well, for whatever reason (you may pick from pride, foolishness, audacity, distractedness, or any combination), I decided, "I think I will do the story of the Samaritan Woman."

We usually have anywhere from 5 to 8 kids on Wednesday nights in grades 1-6. Most of them are on the younger end. This past Wednesday night, we had...16. This is amazing in and of itself. And 5 of them were 5th and 6th graders. I have at this point completely dismissed and forgotten anything about a lesson on the Cross...really, y'all, I'm just not thinking in that direction at all. And so I open my Bible to the story of the Samaritan Woman and I will have you know IT WAS NOT THERE! (Well, it wasn't in John 12, where I was looking for it LOL.) So while I am flipping through the New Testament and my concordance in a desperate attempt to find this woman, I began asking the kids questions about last week's lesson.

"What is a missionary?" I asked.

"A person who tells people about God," they answered.

Nope, I wanted them to be specific. Not just God. (The kids I teach hear a lot about God. They hear, "ohmygod" and "god*#$%" etc. Of the 16 kids present, only three of them had parents who were in prayer meeting. The rest were dropped off by parents or picked up by our church van. ) I wanted them to say Jesus. I went on to explain that Jesus is the only way, reminding them that the Scriptures that Philip explained to the Ethiopian man were about Christ's death on the Cross.

That's when Tyree asked, "So, why did He do that? Why did that happen?" And then that same impression, "Take them to the Cross," was repeated in my heart.

Ohhhhhhhh.

So I did. I even drew pictures on the board to explain how Christ is sinful man's connection to a holy God. And then, I went over the simplicity of this free gift and how easy it was to ask Jesus into your heart. Overwhelmed by the presence of God and the rapt attention of these 16 children, many of whom I had never seen before, I prayed the sinner's prayer and invited any of them who wanted to, to pray it with me. I told them that if they asked Jesus into their heart, I wanted to know, and I hoped they would tell me.

And one did.

One heart. One life. One future.

"We humans make plans, but the LORD has the final word" (Proverbs 16:1). I am so thankful for that!