More Than “ABCs”: Sharing God’s Love in After School Ministry

Since our first week together in LifeWise Pandora-Gilboa, we have been chronologically going through the Bible starting in Genesis. From the creation of the world, creation of man, sin entering the world, Cain and Abel and then Noah and the Flood, we have discussed God’s goodness and our part in His plan, surrounding our lessons on our “Big Picture Question” of Why Did God Create the World and realizing that God created the world and everything in it (us included) for His glory! We have also been learning the words to the song “My God” by Go Fish because it revamps the old school “My God is So Big” song and gospel truth to the lyrics that is so vital for these kids to be memorizing and taking with them.

Here are some of my favorite lyrics from the song that I love to hear them sing:

“Though we are sinners
He still gave us worth
God sent his son to live here on the earth
He healed the sick
He made blind men see
He let the lame walk and he set the world free
He died on a cross and he rose from the grave
He conquered sin
He is mighty to save
He went to heaven and he’s coming back
God’s word is true but if it’s attacked
I’ll look you in the eye and say
My God is so big and so strong and so mighty
There’s nothing my God cannot do”

After our lesson on Noah and a very deep discussion with my first grade class about the gravity of sin and how sin leads to death apart from Jesus, Ella came up to me with tears in her eyes and asked if that story meant that God had sinned. She reminded me that killing is a sin and Cain had been punished for that in our story just the week before, so how could God turn around and kill everyone!? I told her that I was thankful that she was thinking about God’s Word so deeply and that it is painful to think about death and destruction in that way. I reminded her also of our story of Adam and Eve in the garden and how they’d been banned from the garden after they had sinned. That’s because God is perfect and cannot be in the presence of sin. His anger was righteous because His anger was directed at the wickedness and sin of the world and not because of selfish desires or non-eternal things like our sin. We then talked about our Big Picture Question and how the people at that time were not glorifying God with their lives in any way…which was the reason He created the world!

I prayed with Ella that God would continue to make His Word clear in her heart and thanked her for her question.

By: Annie Gill

Annie Gill is one of the teachers at LifeWise Academy Pandora-Gilboa currently being held at Pandora Missionary Church in Pandora, Ohio, until their new location is ready. This ministry began on October 19, 2020, hosting its first class with approximately 90 students. This ministry was funded in part with the region’s Catalyst Grant program.

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