What is the Lord like? How does He can we follow His example? Includes a lesson and craft activity.
Needed: drawing paper and markers or crayons
Intro Craft Activity
Give each student a piece of paper and some crayons and instruct them to draw a person as best as they can.
When finished, allow students to show their drawings to the class, and compliment them on their work.
Lesson
Ask, How did you know how to draw a person? (Suggest that we know how to draw people because we are people and because we’ve seen lots of people.)
Well, we were drawing people, but God made real people. Does anyone remember who the first two people were that God made? (Adam and Eve.)
Read Genesis 1:26-27 (quoted here in the NIV) – “Then God said, ‘Let Us make humans in Our image, in Our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created humans in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.”
Who is God talking to when He says, “Let Us make man in Our image, in Our likeness…”? (He’s talking to Jesus and the Holy Spirit.)
God made us to be like Himself and like Jesus and like the Holy Spirit. We knew how to draw a person because we are people and we knew how to draw someone like ourselves. In the same way, God knew how to make us because He made us to be like Himself.
If God made us to be like Himself, let’s think about what it means to be like God. What is God like? How would you describe Him?
(Lead students in thinking of different terms they could use to describe God. God’s general attributes are that He is Spirit, He is eternal, He is everywhere, He knows everything, He can do anything, He is holy, He always loves, He always does what is right, He is merciful, He is generous, He is peaceful, He is creative, etc.)
(Help students see that we are like God in some ways, but not in others. For example, God is a Spirit and we have a spirit, but God is powerful enough to do anything He wants, and we are not.)
What about love? Does God love? (Yes.)
Do you think God wants us to love? (Yes.)
One way that God wants us to be like Him is to always love Him and to love other people. If we love God and other people, we will be like God.
What about doing what is right? Does God always do what is right? (Yes.)
Do you think God could do something that’s wrong? Could God sin?
Sure He could. He could do something wrong if He wanted to. But the great thing about God is that He never wants to do anything wrong. He always wants and does the right thing.
Do you think God wants you to do the right things? (He does.)
If we will love God and love other people and do the right things that God wants us to do, then we will be like God and will be doing the things He made us to do.
Closing Prayer
God, You made us to be like You. Help us to be like You by always loving You and other people and by always do what is right. Amen.
This lesson is included in my book, Created: Children Sunday School Lessons for Genesis 1-11.