Listening for God?

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Our Cool Disciples (both the Saturday’s Cool and the Sunday’s Cool varieties) are learning this month about Jesus’ visit to Mary and Martha’s home. In this story Jesus is teaching us that the best choice is to spend time listening to him. The question becomes: How do we teach our children to spend time listening to Jesus?

The next time you are at the family dinner table (or wherever your family is gathered together) talk about listening. If you’d like to print out this Family Faith Companion discussion guide, click here.

First up, play some listening games:

• Have everyone remain silent for one minute. When the time is up, ask everyone to say what sounds they heard.
• Read a well-known Bible story, except change some of the details. See who notices.
• Tap out a rhythm and see if everyone can repeat it. Make it harder. Can everyone still follow along? Try it again.
• Have two people sit on the floor back-to-back. Give both people 5 toothpicks. Ask one person to layout the toothpicks in a pattern while describing to the other person what they are doing. (Example: Put one toothpick down so that a pointed end is facing you.) Do the two designs match up?

Debrief and extend the Bible learning:

• What helped you to listen?
• What made it hard to listen?
• Jesus taught Martha something about listening. Let’s read the story to review. Read about it in Luke 10:38-42.
• What did Jesus mean when he said that Mary had chosen what is better? (She chose to listen to Jesus, to spend time with him.)
• What can you do in your daily life to make that same sort of choice?
• What does it mean to listen to Jesus?

Perhaps listening for Jesus doesn’t only happen with our ears. God made us different kinds of listeners. Some of us hear Jesus speaking to us when we see a pretty sunset. Some of us hear Jesus when we laugh at a funny joke or when we are reading the Bible.

How were you made to best listen for Jesus?


Photo credits:
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Baby wearing large headphones via photopin by Jo Jakeman, who licensed this photo on Flickr under a Creative Commons License.