OBJECT LESSON GOAL:
It is difficult to hold onto grudges and be effective doing anything else.
SCRIPTURE REFERENCE:
Leviticus 19:18 - “Thou shall not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the LORD.”
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
Twenty-four (or more) yellow tennis balls with sad faces drawn on them in a bucket or box with the name “JESUS” written on the back side. (Rather than writing the name, stick on letters work well and also can be easily removed after the lesson if you would like)
MESSAGE:
Did you know that when you find yourself in trouble or if someone does something to hurt you and it makes you mad or even things happen that makes you feel sad, that these feelings can keep you from being able to do anything? Well I want to talk about that today. I need a helper who can help me demonstrate this. (Select a helper and have them stand next to you)
(To helper) Now what I need you to do is jump up and down ten times. (Have them do this) You didn’t have any trouble doing that at all. But let’s say that something happened and you were carrying the weight of that guilt around with you, meaning that you are thinking about it a lot. Let’s say someone calls you a name and it hurt your feelings. (Bring out bucket keeping the back with the name “Jesus” from being in view of the audience and remove a sad faced ball) We will use this ball with a sad face on it to represent how you feel. Let’s call it “a Grudge Ball.” So hold on to this (Give the helper helper the ball) Now let’s say that you have a car and you find out that somebody didn’t put away a shopping cart at the grocery store and it scratched your car. (Give them another ball) Hold on to another grudge ball please. Now lets say you wanted a part in the school play, a big part, but the teacher only gave you a small part and that makes you mad. Here is another grudge ball for you (Give them another ball to hold)
(Turn to audience) How about the rest of you, what are some of the things that could happen that would make you sad or mad? (As different things are said, repeat them and hand another grudge ball to the person to hold. Eventually it will start being hard to hold all the balls. When you get to the point of them starting to drop the balls, help them by stacking them, putting them under their chin, under their arms, etc.)
Well, that is a lot of grudges to hold on to. (To person helping) Okay, you’ve got a lot of things to hold on to, so now let me ask you, do you think you can jump up and down ten times and not drop any of the balls? (Answer should be no) So you are saying that holding on to grudges keeps you from being able to do what you could do if you didn’t have a grudge?
Getting rid of grudges is not always easy, but I have a suggestion, (Turn bucket around to reveal the name “Jesus”) and that is to give your troubles to Jesus. If we give our trouble to Him, He is faithful to help us get through it. Sure we may have to forgive someone, but did you know they may not even know they hurt us? But we’ve been carrying that around for a long time. So lets give some of our grudges back to Jesus and see if that makes it easier on our helper to be able to jump. (Start taking the balls back and putting them in the bucket...naming each) So let’s remove the grudge ball of when someone called you a name that hurt your feelings and just give that to Jesus. And lets take that grudge you’ve been carrying in anger because of the scratch on your car and give it to Jesus. And let’s take away that grudge you feel because you didn’t get the part you wanted in the play (To the audience) and do what with it? (They will respond, “give it to Jesus.” Remove a few more balls naming the grudge they represent and each time asking the audience “and what do we do with it?” so they keep saying “give it to Jesus”) (To helper) Now can you jump up and down ten times? (Let them if they feel like it) Let’s give our helper a big hand. (Have them return to their seat) You see, when we give our troubles to Jesus, it sure makes our lives a lot easier. In Leviticus chapter 19 verse 18 it says, “Thou shall not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the LORD.” When Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment, He said to love God and then He followed it up by saying love your neighbor. He was telling them that you can’t do the first if you don’t do the other. Those are some good words to live by. So don’t be carrying around any grudges, give them all to Jesus.