Tyler Klein: Week 9

A. Time Spent this week: 2.5 hours total (S.S.=1 Worship= 1.5)
B. My Class this week:

1. Conclusion of Suffering.
Phil was teaching this week, and he started the lesson off by trying to bring everyone in the class back to what we were talking about the last week. Suffering wasn’t completely finished up after Mike threw out the idea that the kids don’t really suffer, so Phil tied it off by bringing up the fact that there are many different kinds of suffering, and that although we may not deal with the physical types in the US we still run into other types. He also went into detail about how you need to know where something comes from to completely understand it. He asked where it came from, and the kids responded with things that make them suffering, as well as sin and the devil, which were what Phil was looking for, because those two things are the cause of all suffering here on earth. That way we understand that it isn’t God who subjects us to suffering, but rather ourselves and our own sinful choices, stemming from the garden of eden.
2. James 5:12-18 on prayer
After suffering was done, Phil took everyone to James 5:12-18 to talk about prayer for the rest of the lesson. After reading the verses he asked everyone if it’s true that God answers prayer. Being the church kids that they are, everyone answered yes. Phil then hit them with the question, “How do you know?” I think they knew it was coming, but they still didn’t have a ton of answers. They know God does, but not many kids had experiences of it. Phil shared his own example of how a woman who had miscarried a time ago was now pregnant again, answering his semester long prayer for healing in the situation. With that we looked at the examples of what James said we should be praying about, if God does answer pray. There were many examples, like you should pray in troubled times, for healing, etc.

3. Does whether or not you pray change things?
He asked this loaded question and related it to sports, when Christians on two different teams may be praying for a win, and only one of them will. Does God care in those situations. This got a lot of the teens a little excited, because they all knew the right answer, that God doesn’t necessarily take sides, but they just didn’t know how to explain it. After this Phil took the discussion towards what we can pray for each other about, and how there is a need to confess things to one another so we can pray together about things. We discussed the accountability in that situation with prayer, as well as looking at five scriptures on what our motives should be when praying (they should be pure).
4. Challenge & Dismissal
It was a couple minutes past ten, and Phil gave everyone his challenge, to become uncomfortable in the way we pray. Before this he had everyone talking about how there is a sad uncomfortability about praying in public. He was completely right when he said that in order to grow we must be stretched, so he asked everyone to ask someone they know during the week if they could pray with them or for them. Simple but very effective in the lives of self-conscious teenagers.

C. My Questions for the week

1. Since we had snacks this week, what is a good way to keep them from becoming a distraction?
2. Should we have had snacks right at the beginning of the time instead of during Phil’s lesson? I thought it was going really well, and the cake could have been a distraction bomb. I know Tony was in there, but wasn’t it a bad idea to eat when we did, 5 minutes into Phil’s teaching time?