Lesson 47 - Elementary

Memory Verse

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above"  (James 1:17).

Notes

Giving Thanks

God expects us to be thankful to Him for all His blessings. If we have thanks in our hearts we also have love. God wants us to love Him, for He loved us so much that he sent Jesus to die for us and take away our sins. How thankful we should be to Jesus for the awful suffering He went through for us! He did it to keep us from suffering. We should never forget to thank Him with all our hearts for His goodness and love.

Thanks unto the Lord

Sometimes we remember to thank our parents and our friends for kind things they do for us, but perhaps we forget that every good thing we have comes from God. Unless He gave them to us we should not have them. He gives us the sunshine and the rain, which makes things grow, and He gives us food. He gives us the air we breathe. He gives us health, or heals us if we are sick. He gives us parents to love and care for us. He gives us kind friends to be with us and help to make us happy.

The Best Gift

Most of all, and best of all, He gave us Jesus to take away our sins and to show us how to live so that we may make Heaven our Home forever and ever. Heaven is a beautiful place – no sickness there, no sorrow, no dying. Jesus tells us that He has gone to prepare a place for us, and where He is we may be with Him always.

Jesus takes good care of us while we are here on earth and love Him and do the things he tells us to do. We should always remember to thank Him.

Learning to Pray

A group of children who had never learned to pray were told by a teacher that they should talk to God as they would talk to a kind father. They should tell God what they wanted just as they would tell their own loving father. The children did that for two days. Then the teacher said that they would do it for one more day. But a little girl who had never learned to pray but had learned to say "Thank you” to her parents and others, said, "We asked God for something, and I think it would be nice to say 'Thank you' to God.” That little girl was right; too often we forget to say, "Thank you, God, for all the things You give us.” We should thank Him for Jesus, for His death on the Cross, for the Bible, for our church, for our Sunday School, for Christian parents, for His love, for His care of us, and for every other good thing He has given us.

Unthankfulness

In the Bible we read that one day as Jesus entered into a village, He was met by ten men who were sick with leprosy. When they saw Jesus, they asked Him to have mercy upon them. Jesus told them to go show themselves to the priests; and as they obeyed Jesus' command, they were healed. However, only one of the ten men came back to Jesus and fell down at His feet and thanked Him for this healing. Jesus then said, "Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine?” Wouldn't you think that all ten should have come back to thank Jesus?

From the East and from the West

We are to be thankful to God that He loves all people -– people who live in the North, the South, the East, the West. The colour of their skin or the country from which they come makes no difference to God. He wants them to ask Him to forgive their sins and make them His children.

There is a beautiful picture of Jesus with children of many countries. He is holding one in His arms, but He loves them all. And Jesus wants to forgive their sins and have them live with Him in His Home in His beautiful Heaven.

God does everything just right, and we must never forget to thank Him, to love Him, and to do what He tell us to do.

"Jesus loves the little children,

All the children of the world;

Read and yellow, black and white,

They are precious in His sight;

Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

Questions

1. Does Jesus help people who are in trouble? [PS:107:13]; [PS:50:15].

2. Does Jesus want us to praise Him in Church? [PS:107:32].

3. Does God remember the poor? [PS:107:41].

4. How many daily blessings can you name which we receive from the Lord?

5. Does Jesus want us to be thankful for all things? [EPH:5:20].