Explaining sin to adults can be difficult…much less kids.

So to make things a little more interesting, why not use an object lesson?

When you have a difficult subject, like sin, an object lesson can be the perfect conduit for explaining something difficult in a simple way.

The following is a bit of a magic trick and if you’ve been following me for any length of time you know that I’m a fan!

I think magic tricks are cool because they have an element of surprise to them and the kids are almost always impressed.

And I mean come on who doesn’t want the kids to be at least a little impressed.

So the idea here is that you break the toothpick and then it is magically restored again.

The narration can go something like this:

When we sin or do something that God doesn’t like, we break our relationship with God. In other words when we do something wrong our connection to God is broken. No matter how much good afterwards we can never do enough to make up for what we have done wrong.

It’s kind of like this toothpick. I’m going to put it in this napkin and roll it up.

I want you to feel the toothpick in the napkin to make sure it’s there.

Now I want you to break the toothpick for me.

Just like this toothpick is now broken when we sin our relationship with God is broken.

But God has made a way for us to fix our relationship with Him.

God sent Jesus, His Son, to come to this earth to die for our sins.

Because Jesus died on the cross for what we have done wrong we are allowed to have a relationship with God again. Our relationship with Him is fixed.

And just like the toothpick was once broken it is now completely whole again.

When we accept Jesus into our heart and ask Him to forgive our sins we fix our relationship with God just like we fixed this toothpick.

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