Object Lesson for Kids - the Hand of God at Work Within Us

Object Lesson for Kids - the
Hand of God at Work Within Us
www.CreativeYouthIdeas.com
www.CreativeObjectLessons.com

Finding one’s identity, purpose, and meaning in life are
common struggles that every youth faces. They are
seeking an answer to the question, “Why am I here?” In
their search for purpose, they may try to find fulfillment in
a variety of things, some good, some bad. But our purpose
cannot be found in things.

Our identity is found by filling the emptiness in our lives
with Christ. When God’s Hand is at work in our lives,
only then will we find true meaning and purpose.
Gloves are a great object lesson to remind youth of this
spiritual truth and a simplified version of this lesson
makes a great Children’s Sermon.

GLOVES
Resources
Collect a variety of gloves. Here are some of the possible
gloves you could choose from:
• baseball glove
• welder’s glove
• leather gloves

• Winter gloves or mittens
• boxing gloves
• work gloves
• Surgical gloves
• Food preparation gloves
• Kitchen gloves
• Gardening Gloves

• Fingerless Gloves
• White Gloves
• Cycling Gloves
• Fur gloves
• Sequined gloves
• Goal Keeper’s Gloves

• Catcher’s Glove
• Golf Glove
• Driving Gloves
• Scuba Gloves
• Ski Gloves
• Washing Mitt
• Wheelchair Gloves

You might also have on hand a variety of items to fill the
gloves with. Here are some possibilities: marbles, golf
balls, M&Ms, skittles, coins, sand, water, salt, beans,
paper clips, sticks, straws, pencils, ice, jello, baby
powder, etc. The possibilities are endless. These can be
symbolic or simply for fun.

Marbles could represent gems, golf balls can represent
sports, paper clips – work, M&M’s sweets or desires,
coins – wealth, aspirin or beer – drugs, condoms – sex.
You can also add a wacky game to this object lesson by
planning to divide the youth into teams and providing a
rubber glove for each team

Preparation
• Display the gloves in a way that all the youth can see them.
• Have the items to fill the gloves readily available but
hidden from sight. Have them hidden in such a way that
you only need to reveal one at a time. Suspense and
curiosity are great tools for teaching as the youth will be
trying to guess what you will fill the gloves with next.

Wacky Game – Optional
• Divide the youth into teams and give each team a
rubber kitchen glove.
• The youth must select one team member to put the
rubber glove on over his (or her) head and pull it
down over their nose and inflate it using air from his
nose.

Once the glove is filled with air so that it is inflated and
stands up on top of the youth’s head, they must run to
you while crowing like a rooster.
• It is not only hilarious, but it is also fun for the youth. If
you want to make it last a little longer, have it as a relay
race between the teams of youth.

What to Do
• Begin by showing the youth the various other types of
gloves, and then ask the youth to identify the various
types of gloves, the purpose for each, and who might use
each of them?
• Explain that the empty gloves are like the lives of youth.
Both youth and adults try to fill the emptiness in their
lives with different things.

• Demonstrate by filling the gloves with various objects. As
you go through each collection of items, ask the youth,
“Is this what the glove is intended to be used for?”
• After you go through the items, ask the youth what the
emptiness in the glove is supposed to be filled with? Of
course the answer is someone’s hand.
• Ask the youth, what can the glove do by itself? Of course
the answer is nothing.

Take It to the Next Level
Make it Spiritual
(Note you might share some of the things you tried to fill
your life with before you accepted Christ as you share the
following information: Every person tries to fill their glove
(or life) with different things: like money, sports, drugs, sex,
work, food, money, friends, family, or even church to find
meaning.

While some things are obviously bad, others aren’t
necessarily bad things, but simply not what the glove
(life) was created for. In fact some of the things are
good in the right context, but become bad when they
become the primary goal for our existence.

Explain that those things don’t allow the glove to be used
the way it was created to be used.
You can use the example of alcohol as something that
may seem fulfilling for a while, but in the end leaves you
even emptier than before. (You can fill up a specially
prepared rubber glove that has been slit at the finger tips
so that all the liquid drains out.)

At the very end of your examples, put your hand in the glove,
and show how it is now useful and can fulfill its intended
purpose. Explain that a glove can do all sorts of things – pick
up a book, wave good-bye, scratch my head, play golf, work,
pat someone on the back. By itself, it can do nothing. But if I
put my hand in the glove… [put it on]… this glove can do
almost anything I want.

Different gloves are created with a different intended
purpose. But a glove can do nothing once the hand as
been removed. It is the same with our lives, in an of
ourselves we can do nothing of lasting significance, but
with God in us all things become possible.

Blaise Pascal said that we have all been created with a
God-shaped vacuum that only he can fill. We will only find
true meaning and purpose when we let the hand of God
work in our lives to accomplish his will here on earth.
Make it Personal
What are some of the purposes that God has for
Christians?

Make it Practical
The easiest way to find that purpose, is to yield to God.
What is an area of your life that God has been speaking to
you about yielding to him?
Ask God to use you this week in a way that glorifies him
and gives you a clearer understanding of his purpose for
your life.

Scripture References
Ephesians 2:8-10
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—
and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not
by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s
handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Philippians 4:13
“I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”
Colossians 1:27
“To them God has chosen to make known among the
Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ
in you, the hope of glory.”

Philippians 2:13
“for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to
fulfill his good purpose.”
2 Corinthians 3:5
“Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything
for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.”

Ephesians 3:19-20
“and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that
you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of
God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more
than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that
is at work within us,”

MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”
200 page e-book that explains everything you
need to know when planning your very own
object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed
object lesson ideas and another 200 object
lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms
and Names / Descriptions of God.
Learn More…
Creative Object Lessons
www.creativeobjectlessons.com

Object Lesson for Kids - the Hand of God at Work Within Us

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