Elijah the Prophet

In small GROUP, we have been studying Elijah, the Prophet. You can read about him in the books of 1 Kings and 2 Kings. God used Elijah to call the people of Israel back to the worship of the one and only God. Elijah clashed with King Ahab and his wife Queen Jezebel, who had brought worship of the false gods Baal and Asherah into Israel.

We watched the animated movie, Testament: The Bible in Animation - Elijah. It is very dramatic and faithful to the Biblical text. It shows the contest on Mt. Carmel, where Elijah challenged Jezebel's priests of Baal to a contest to prove which god was real - Baal or the God of Israel. The movie uses Mendelssohn's "Elijah" oratorio at key dramatic moments.

Rock, Paper, Swords!

For our first Sunday of the school year we talked about Swords and Rocks.



The Bible refers to itself as the "Sword of the Spirit" (Ephesians 6:17) We talked about how we can use the Bible to fight evil and cut down the weeds in our life. Like a Medieval Knight with a sword, we have a powerful weapon in the Bible.



During the second service we talked about how to put our faith in the proper place in our lives. Lisa B. came up with a great lesson on how Jesus' Spirit can soak into our lives. We put blocks of sponges into a jar until it was full. Each sponge-block represented something that takes up our time -- soccer practice, homework, playing with friends, going to school. When our jar was full and couldn't hold any more, we asked, "Where was God?" Instead of making God into another activity we have to cram into our full life, we said that God, through the Holy Spirit soaks into everything else. We got out a pitcher and poured about a half gallon of water into the jar crammed full of sponges -- and it all fit! God's Spirit will soak into everything we do -- not just our time at church.

Then we got out another, bigger jar. We borrowed this lesson from Stephen Covey. Click here for the whole story. In this lesson we learned that we have to make God a priority in our lives, and then everything will fit together!