we had our churches first anual Kids Fest this past Friday and it was awesome. God is really at work in our children we had 5 Kids accept Jesus into thier heart. This was the message that was Given.


He’s After Your Heart Kids Fest 2006

Introduction
So has everyone had a good time so far? I’m Glad; lets thank all the parents and volunteers that made this possible and especially Mrs. Sharon for letting us have kids fest at quite possibly the most fun place on earth. What to talk about. What to talk about. When I was preparing for tonight I was wandering what did God want me to say. I knew we were going to have some boys and girls here that had never heard about Jesus before and much less the Bible, and I thought what am I going to say? I was being real quite and I heard my heart beating. Now have you ever been so quite at night you can hear your own heat beat? that’s what my answer was. It was the beating of a heart. I thought God what are you saying to me? And in my spirit he said this is my heart and it beats for them. So let’s talk a little bit about what that means.

Your heart
Now we all have felt our own heart beat right? I mean our heart is in our chest just beating away. You can feel it if you put your hand over your chest like this. And if it didn’t do that thing it does it would be a bad thing for us. Now have you ever been in an exciting situation. Like riding a ride at Six Flags or American Adventures or just jumping here at jumping party. Your heart beats crazy fast right? But it feels great and that’s why we keep jumping and why we want to ride the rides again. So our hearts beat fast because we like doing that stuff. Now what about your spiritual heart? Yes I said spiritual heart; we have one of those to. Have you ever felt it beat? You can really feel it when you are praying and getting close to God. So we have two hearts: 1. A heart that beats in your chest and 2. A spiritual heart we can’t see but we can feel. Now what about Gods heart? What about the heart of Jesus?

The heart of God
Jesus has a heart. He had a heart that beat in his chest just like you and me. And I am certain that if Jesus rode on a rollercoaster and was able to jump here at jumping party his heart would just race in his chest just like ours does. Now Jesus has a spiritual heart too. Do you ever think that he felt his spiritual heart beat? I think so. The bible says so. The bible talks about Jesus praying intently on a lot of occasions. What would it be like to have the heart of Jesus, just for one day even? Think about that. Put your hand on your chest again and lets be quite one more time. What if the heart you felt beating was that of Gods. And what if when our spiritual heart beat it was beating for God? Would we act different? I am quite certain that we would.
The beating of our hearts and His . . .
What makes Gods heart flutter? Because we know what makes ours flutter. Its things like jumping and seeing our friends and for some of you it’s seeing a Spiderman or batman movie. But what makes Gods heart go (thump, thump, thump)? Do you know what it is? God’s heart beats for you. Not just because he is happy to see you or you told him a good story but, because he loves you. He loves you more than the whole sky and all that is in it. Have you ever been outside at night and looked up and tried to count the stars? We can never quite count them all can we? I mean there are so many stars and God created every single one. All of them are different and shine bright for him but he loves them the same. Is anyone’s heart beating a little bit quicker now, I know mine is. Wow God loves us more than the stars. More than the moon, more than the clouds and more than the sun. His heart beats for us.

Call
Lets all stand. Everybody put your hand over your heart and let’s close our eyes. Let’s be really quite now. God speaks to us when were quiet. If you feel Gods love right now I want you to whisper his name to him. Just say Jesus. Just keep whispering it to him quietly. If you are here tonight and maybe you don’t know Jesus. It’s ok because he has known you for a long time. If you are one of those people I just talked to and you feel him tugging on your heart, just whisper his name Jesus, and say here I am. Heads bowed and eyes closed If you want to give your heart to Jesus tonight I want you to raise your hand and some of the volunteer staff will come and pray with you

Truth





I have been thinking alot about Truth lately. And let me prefece this by the original audience for this message are children, so while reading this it may seem a little simple for all my friendly nieghborhood Theologians out there. I also want to say that I HaVe Terrible SpeLlinG so I pre Apologize.

At what cost are we willing to take to tell the truth? And further how can God in the person of Jesus be truth? These are questions that floated around in my head this past week as I was Preparing a message for the childrens church at my church. To answer these questions I started with why do we lie? And I couldn't really come up with a good excuse. (and I stress the word excuse) We lie about a whole number of things be they important and unimportant. From a reason for not wanting to hang out with someone to things such as where we were last night. And none of it really makes sense or jives shall I say. What does a lie do for us? It covers up something that we are shameful of. And might I say we are mostly ok with a lie as long as we are not caught, because the minute we are caught we tell another. WHATS WRONG WITH THE TRUTH?
The answer is nothing, but it does cost us something. ( we will come back to that thought) So truth, what is it? Truth is just "what Happened". It's telling what happened. It just is. Those three statements set off a whirlwind in my head. In John 14:1-6 Jesus tells Thomas " I am the way the truth and the life" now that statement is so loaded that we could stay there all day, but the Truth thing jumped at me. Now in context Jesus was telling Thomas that he was the way to the father, but the Truth statment speaks much more. He says "I am" which is a form of to be, which describes God ...... the TRUTH........ here we have the living embodiment of Truth. The Statement I made earlier "Truth just is" holds here. Another scripture that jumped at me was

John1:14

14The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only,[d] who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

So God who "just is" spoke and we have Truth, in full form walking on this earth, ministering to people and sacrificing himself to show the way out of the lie. Now for a brief moment I would like to revist the subject of the "lie".

A lie is something that is fabricated and the dictionary definition is "a statement that deviates from or perverts the truth". I think it is a safe statement to make that lies hurt people. "during Kids Church I used two swords to llustrate this." (one sword was black and grey and had a snake theme going on, while the other was gold and White.) The sword looks scary and sharp but is just really a cheesey perversion of the real sword(gold and white). The sword of deception is a sword that we give all the power to, while the sword of truth stands on its own. The funny thing about the sword of deception is that in the presence of truth it cannot stand, and the same holds for us if we lie. In III John 4 it says " I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth" and even though John is the speaker and is talking to someone else I believe this virtue to be true of God. Earlier I said the truth does cost us something. The truth costs us ourselves. With that said , I strongly believe that this generation has been sold a bill of goods that is a Perversion of the truth. We look for truth in things that are meerly smoke and mirrors when it comes to the real truth. When we obtain what it is that we think is the truth we find we are still lacking and that the lie does not stand. "truth" be told we are all searching for truth and we can find that truth in the person of Jesus. The question is will you tell the truth to others once you have found it?