Children’s work - Tough but rewarding

On Friday night, yours truely had to speak to the children in Port Lincoln, which for those of you that don’t know, isn’t the easiest thing for me to do. Children’s work has never been an area that I’ve felt completely comfortable with, and most of the time when the children’s work was on in Ballymoney, I was in the door-to-door outreach team.

However, I was asked to help out by speaking to the children occasionally and I obliged. It just so happened though, that Friday night was ‘Shoe Night’. On this occasion, the children all bring in shoes that are either very strange, or are nicely decorated. I should have taken the camera as some of them were quite funny.

Anyway, as I have already mentioned in the past, the children’s work in Port Lincoln is split into two meetings. The younger group meet from 5-6:30pm and the older group from 7-9pm, and I had to speak at both.

As it was ‘Shoe Night’, I figured I ought to speak on the topic ‘Walking With God’, and use a shoe as an object lesson.

My text was Eph 5:8-10, particularly high-lighting the phrase, “walk as children of light.”

I used parts of the shoe I had to bring out five points: the tongue, eyelet, lace, sole and stitching and glue, with a verse to emphasize and teach each point.

The tongue is pretty obvious, as is the eyelet and the sole. For the lace I spoke about pride because if you don’t tie your lace you trip and fall, and the bible says, “pride cometh before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

The ‘Stitching and Glue’ hold the shoe together, and I used this to illustrate how there are two things that are vital to keep the Christian ‘together’, prayer and the Bible.

When I spoke to the young one’s I felt that it was a bit of a disaster to be honest. It wasn’t that it went all wrong, I just felt like I was plowing concrete (getting nowhere). This resulted in me being quite upset and feeling very frustrated, and when it came to the older meeting all I could do was cast myself on the Lord and beg for help.

As always, the Lord heard and answered in a manner that was “exceeding abundant…” After the meeting, two of the children stayed behind to get saved, a boy of 11 and a girl of 9. They seemed very clear about what they wanted to do, and I tried to help them understand what they were seeking to do, but they’ve been attending the meetings for a considerable period of time and they seemed to know what they were doing.

All we can do now is continue to pray for them, that the Lord will bear witness to them and give them assurance and strength to live for Him.

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• Lock Children’s Bible Club
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