Blessed Are The Poor In Spirit - Zip Prayers

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5 v 3

Being poor in spirit is all about knowing you need God - the opposite is being arrogant, ‘full of yourself’, and thinking you can do things on your own and in your own way.

In this prayer activity, the zip represents where we are with God.

Zips pull things close together, so a completely closed zip means we are close to Him and fully reliant on Him. (Remember the ‘Frog’ bracelets!)

If the Zip is completely open - then that means are fully reliant on ourselves and God doesn’t get a look in.

Using the zip, think about how you rely on God.

There are lots of degrees of this - you may believe in God but still live as though you can do life without Him - so your zip could be at any point in between.

POST SUMMER UPDATE: How did it go?

Because this was a bit of a tenuous link I was doubtful that all would get it, but they seemed to. Whilst I was talking about it on camp and summarising the talk with the zip, something occurred to me. Zips on jeans have a ‘lock’ mechanism - if the tab is pushed all the way down, it locks the zip at the top. So I used this to talk about staying close to God and recognising how much we need to stay close to God. 

How do you lock your “Spiritual” zip? Keep talking to Him and reading the Bible are just two things you can do!

I took great care in explaining this activity - and all, with a couple of exceptions, seemed to get it. 

The couple of exceptions were children who were over tired and grumpy. The first night on camps and conferences are always bad for children! But even they got it by the middle of the week.

On camp, there was an added bonus……

We had a some children who were bordering on ADHD. Having told the campers to keep the zip in their Bibles, I noticed that for the rest of the week they would sit and fiddle with it during the ‘talky’ bits in the meetings thus helping them to listen. I also noticed a few leaders doing the same during the day - it appeared to be a good stress reliever too!

For the conference, I was worried if our 5 and 6 year olds would get it, but on chatting to parents it seems the children managed to explain it to them word for word!

There is always the problem of zips left behind - but I hope that getting dressed in the morning and ready for bed at night will bring this teaching to mind.

This had the unusual novelty factor of using a trouser fly zip to teach about God!

(Do Check out the other prayer activities, and the introductory blog to this series)

Beatitude Prayer Activities

Those who follow me on Twitter or Facebook will have seen my comments on purchasing strange things for creative prayer activities.

When we teach, we like to do a creative prayer that causes the children to stop and think about what they have heard and pray about how they can apply the teaching in their own lives.

We like these activities to be memorable, either using things the children will come across regularly or are so outrageous - they'll just recall them in those quiet moments when their minds wander.

I'm going to put some of them on here - just to spark a few ideas with folk who are (like me) keen to encourage both prayer and the application of Bible truth.

On camp this year we'll be looking at the Beatitudes. 

It's been tough preparing as I believe we often dumb down what these verses mean - turning them into a very light weight idea with wishy washy terminology. It's been tough because I want the children to have to full picture - not the 'pretty' version I was given as a child.

In our desire to make them understandable to children we have been guilty in watering them down by using words that culturally mean different things today - we've made them 'nice' rather than revolutionary.

The fact is - these words are hard hitting, active words that tell us how to live a Godly life. They are counter cultural and when applied will cause a revolution. There is nothing weak about them - they show strength in every area of our lives.

I'm up for starting a God revolution...... what about you? Care to join me?

Note: I won't be sharing them in order - I'm writing them up in the order the props arrive in the post!

Enjoy :o)