I love Fall, it reminds me why I still live in Indiana. No, we don’t have beautiful mountains to gaze upon or oceans beaches to walk on, but we do have four seasons in which God does some mighty handiwork. We are given beautiful pictures of His majesty as we enter into each season. Pretty amazing when you think about it. I hope I will always be in awe of his glorious creation.
Speaking of his creations, we are experiencing some major overcrowding of His little creations in the 3-5yr room in PL. We have not been able to complete parts of our teaching times due to too many kiddos in the second hour. We have averaged 19 kids in the second service and only 10 in the first service. Our 4th through 12th grade classes only meet the second service so if you do not have a child or teenager in those grades we would like you to consider attending the first service to help us out. God is growing Riverside at a pretty quick pace and along with that blessing come some changes to accommodate our limited space. We greatly appreciate your help and understandiung as we continue to multiply.
Continuing with our sequential view of God’s story from the Bible, the 3-5yr. kids will learn about Moses this month. God spoke to him through a burning bush and gave Moses and the Israelites the Ten Commandments. Kids will also hear how God told Moses to send 12 spies into the Promised Land after Moses led the Israelites there.
Our K-1st grade class will be introduced to the Psalms. Kids will learn that the book of Psalms is a collection of poems, songs, and prayers to God and it is different than any other book in the Bible. Through these lessons, children will grow in their understanding of how great God is and how much He loves us. They will discover that God created us and knows us, He hears us when we pray, and He cares for us like a shepherd cares for his sheep. In the last lesson of this month, kids will celebrate how great and loving our God is. As they look at the Psalms, children will understand that their feelings do not affect God’s love for them. Whether they feel happy, sad, angry, or scared, God knows how they feel, He listens to their prayers, He takes care of them, and He promises to love them.
CONTACT is the Theme of the 2nd-3rd grade teaching time this month. The kids will hear about the attributes of God. They will learn that God is all knowing, God is everywhere, God is King and ruler over all, God is eternal, and God is holy and perfect. Children will learn these attributes through the stories of David in the Old Testament. By learning about these attributes, they will come to understand that in a big universe, God wants to have CONTACT with them.
The 4th-5th graders will explore pressing issues that challenge Christianity. Kids will begin to develop a defense for their faith as they learn to defend Christianity against evolution, witchcraft and the supernatural and other religions. The goal is to show that all truth is God’s truth, which comes from the Bible. In lesson 8, kids will be presented with the truth of the salvation message of Grace. They will be given an opportunity to choose to accept God’s grace and believe in Jesus.
I encourage you, parents, to be in the Word with your children. For those of you with kids from 3 yrs. through 1st grade, we have sent home a take home activity that relates to what they learned in PL that Sunday. I encourage you to do the activity as a family. For those who are older, there are many good family devotionals to use at home. Our desire for our families at RCC is for them to study God’s Word and pray together as a family. We have given all your children Bibles and have given you guidelines on different types of prayer we have been practicing in PL, so please take advantage of this opportunity to grow in the likeness of Christ with your family. Deuteronomy 11:18-20 says, “Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land that the Lord swore to give your forefathers, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth”.
Partnering with you,
Dar Muehlhausen