FAITH

For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, Move from here to there, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.’"

Matthew 17:19-20

Today for our opening game we had a couple volunteers, one was instructed to close their eyes, with no peeking, and the other was to talk them through an obstacle course of chairs. They had to trust their partner to lead them through without bashing their shin's.

How many of you have played Mario on Nintendo 64? We started out our lesson by talking about video games, we used Mario as an example. How he will walk right up to the edge of a cliff and look down at the bottomless pit, and surf across red hot lava on the back of a turtle shell. No matter what we are trying to get Mario to do, or how many times he has fallen off the turtle into the lava, he never once has turned around and looked at me and said,"Hey, you aren't very good at this; maybe you should try something simpler so I don't get burned" Or ,"No way!, not me, take Luigi, but don't take me in there." Mario always goes where I tell him to.
Mario has complete faith in me; he never asks why, when, how come or how long.
We talked about how we should be like Mario when it comes to having faith in God. Because unlike me, God is not only good at the game, but He is the creator of it. He knows exactly what is waiting for me around the corner.

We also did a couple experiments on miracles. For our first experiment a volunteer came up and peeled and sliced up a banana. A second volunteer came up to peel and cut the second banana, however as she unpeeled her's she found that it was sliced already inside the peel! Was this a miracle? No it was a trick, but a pretty cool one the kids couldn't figure it out. If you want to know the trick you can ask one of the kids, (I let them in on my secret.)

Seeing or hearing of miracles builds our hope and trust in God.

Our second experiment; we placed a piece of cardboard on top of a cup of water and flipped the cup upside down. Amazing! The water doesn't spill out, it suctions to the card board. To test their faith in the water not spilling out we even had couple kids walk underneath the cup. We decided this wasn't very miraculous. So we tried it again only this time without the card board, I poured a small amount of the water into a second cup, (didn't want to get them to wet, just incase). A brave volunteer came forward and when tipping the cup over his head only a few dribbles came out. He lacked faith that he wasn't going to get REALLY wet. Was this a miracle? Again, no it was a trick. (There was a piece of sponge in the bottom of the cup.)

In the Bible there are many miracles that are real, not just tricks.

The Bible defines faith as; ‘being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.’ Hebrews 11:1”

Although these signs build our hope and trust, we need to always have faith in God, knowing that he has things under control.

If you belief in the miracles in the Bible, that is faith. Faith is essential in your relationship with Christ. We need to have faith in the cross, and faith that God will be with us everday of our life, no matter what we are going through.