An Amazing Race: Week 9

Lying and Wanting

This resource provides you with a lesson plan, drama scripts, songs, activities to teach this lesson effectively, with opportunities for the children to be active in the learning process. You will be provided with lesson plans and extra materials for either a "stand alone teaching experience" or if you are teaching this as part of a whole module. Choose the resources that best suit your situation.

Aim: To teach the children that lying only ends up destroying people. To teach that children that we need to learn to be happy with what we have.

Bible Text: Various .... 1 Sam 18 : 1-18, 1 Sam 19 : 1-25, 1 Sam 23 : 7-29, 1 Sam 31: 1-11

Background Notes: In the Ninth commandment, God tells us not to lie. This one challenges us all, because it’s something that can be done easily. Lying comes in all shapes and sizes. It can be exaggeration, boasting, ... Show More In the Ninth commandment, God tells us not to lie. This one challenges us all, because it’s something that can be done easily. Lying comes in all shapes and sizes. It can be exaggeration, boasting, excuses, white lies, little lies - we can try to get around it all we like but God says our “yes “ should be “yes and our “no” should be “no” (James 5:12), everything else in between is lying. If God is truth, then untruth or dishonesty is something He hates and is utterly disgusting to him. Even if the lie doesn’t hurt anyone, it is not a good thing to get into the practice of because it grows. People today are looking for people of integrity, people who mean what they say and say what they mean. People like this will stand out and will be rewarded for this in life. It may seem that liars get away with things but they don’t. Jacob may have thought that he ended up getting the blessing from his father by lying, but in the end it didn’t mean as much as what he lost. In fact the whole family lost out because of the lies that were told. They were split up and separated for a long time. The kids will experience this in the race today.
The tenth and final commandment is about desperately wanting what you don’t have. Never in history have people been as pushed to possess as we are today. Advertising everywhere tells us about all the things we must have. The desire to possess is so strong in Western Civilization that it has become a curse and we’ve lost sight of commandment number ten and therefore, we as a nation are in big trouble. We have forgotten that all that we have was given to us by God in the first place. If we are motivated by coveting things that we don’t have, we will never be happy in life. God knew our weakness and knew that this commandment would cut right to the bone, but He also knew that “things” will never bring happiness. Only by putting God first will it bring happiness. Saul’s desire to have what David had, destroyed him. He got to the end of his life and was so unhappy that he killed himself. So many years he wasted wanting what someone else had. He was a King who had all that money could buy and all the power you could want, but he still wasn’t happy. There is more to life than “things” and God wants us to put our energies into the things that count, which takes us back to commandment Number One.

You Will Need: TEACHING TIME: Visuals for Rambling
THE AMAZING RACE: Disguises and Blindfold, Envelopes with pictures in them, Costumes for drama, Various forms of transport, Clues made up for each team, People to run each challenge, Flags