What is the Purpose of Sunday School?
Sunday school is a place
where we learn about the Bible but it is not for knowledge about God but
the ultimate objective is to know God as He speaks to us through the Bible. God Word (the Bible) is alive:
"For the word of God is living and active and sharper than
any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of
both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the
heart" Hebrews 4:12
What is a Delicious Sunday School Lesson?
I like to eat and I
always use food for illustrations and beside God’s Word is our spiritual
food. For me a delicious Sunday School
lesson is not with tons of knowledge or deep theology. A delicious Sunday School lesson is where God
speaks directly to us via His Word. I still remember on particular lesson
30 some years ago on II Chronicles 1 about when God ask King Salomon what did
he want and King Salomon just ask for wisdom to rule the country instead of
asking thing for himself. It was just a simple story and yet I remember
this very well and practice this myself all these years.
Secret source for a Delicious Sunday School Lesson
The secret source is – Prayer,
Prayer and Prayer
Both Sunday School
teachers and students have to pray earnestly for the lesson. One verse particular talked to me:
"My
message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in
demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not rest on
the wisdom of men but on the power of God" I Corinthian 2:4
This
verse shows me that when we teach Sunday School, we should not to rely on human
wisdom and to use persuasive words in our lesson. Often time we would look up
tons of commentaries and try to make the lesson as deep as possible. While this
is a good thing to do but it should not be the main preparation for a Sunday
School lesson. This same verse also tells me that the objective of the Sunday
School lesson is to build up faith and that the faith should be toward God and
not toward the teacher or any other person.
This verse tells us that when we teach or preach it should be able to demonstrate the Spirit and God's Power. There is one thing we can do so that we will be able to demonstrate the Spirit and God's Power.
This verse tells us that when we teach or preach it should be able to demonstrate the Spirit and God's Power. There is one thing we can do so that we will be able to demonstrate the Spirit and God's Power.
This one thing is
prayer. How many hours have we prayed for the lessons?
But what are we to pray about?
We should pray that God will
speak directly to us from the passage that we are to teach and that God will
also speak directly to the students. Our job as a Sunday School teacher is just to facilitate God's speaking directly to the students. When we teach we are the prophet of God and our job is to speak for Him so we must let God's Word speak to us first before teaching the lesson. It is not easy and and takes time and it is much difficult than digging into the various commentaries. But this is a spiritual battle that we need to fight every lesson.
God Speaking to us directly - Rhema
Sunday School is all about God speaking to us directly through His Word and this is what we called - Rhema. I have another post that talks about this and will not repeat what Rhema is here.
So let's put in the secret source for this coming Sunday's lesson so that it will be delicious.