Teaching kids how to be THANKFUL

Thanksgiving Day is just around the corner and it brings traditions many of us share.  Things like, a huge turkey dinner, family time with relatives, shopping on Black Friday and last but not least football.  These are all great things, but these things are not what Thanksgiving is all about?

Thanksgiving Day began as a day of celebrating the harvest and other blessings of the past year.

The New England colonists were accustomed to regularly celebrating “Thanksgivings,” days of prayer thanking God for blessings they had received.

Interesting thing about God – even though He is the almighty and all powerful God, and even though He can do anything, the only thing He won’t do is make you serve Him.

He wants you to love Him because you want to. He wants you by your own free will.  Just like He won’t make you serve Him, it is your choice, it is also your choice to thank Him for what He has done for you.

Let’s take a look at a Bible story in Luke 17:11-19.

¹¹ Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. ¹² As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance ¹³ and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”
¹⁴ When He saw them, He said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed.
¹⁵ One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. ¹⁶ He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked Him—and he was a Samaritan.
¹⁷ Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? ¹⁸ Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” ¹⁹ Then He said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”

All ten lepers were healed, but only one chose to go back and thank the Lord.  Only one realized his life was changed and the least he could do would be to say “Thank You.”

Choosing to be thankful is something that we can cultivate in our life.  Our being thankful doesn’t just happen.  We choose to be thankful.

Psalm 9:1

“I will give thanks to You, Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all Your wonderful deeds.”

Have you ever noticed that you don’t have to plant weeds in your garden, they just grow.  However, if you want to have flowers or vegetables (things that are productive), you have to plant them and cultivate them.

It is the same idea with choosing to cultivate thankfulness in our life.  You simply start by telling the Lord you are thankful. 

Where you start is your choice.  You may say to yourself, “I don’t really know what to say to the Lord.”

Start with thanking Him for giving His life for you.  It can also be as simple as you have a warm bed and food to eat.

How do we teach kids it is their choice to be thankful? 

The key word is “choice”.  Many times kids don’t think that they have any control over their life and they don’t have choices they can make on their own.  That is a lie.  They make choices everyday of their life.

I have a great object lesson that lets you teach kids how they can choose to be thankful.  The best thing is that it is free.

Click here to get your free Object Lesson, Thankfulness: It’s Your Choice.

Blessings,

Debbie Harper
& The Super Church Team