Hope Lives

I've just started 'Hope Lives: A Journey of Restoration' (by Amber Van Schooneveld). I'm really looking forward to the five week journey I have just embarked upon.

But really, more then being excited about MY journey, I'm excited about the journey I'll be taking others on. Along with purchasing the book, I've purchased 'Hope Lives: Children's Ministry Kit'.

Take your children on a five-week journey - one that gives them God's perspective on poverty and equips them to respond with heartfelt compassion. Hope Lives empowers your children to understand and impact their world...to share home with the hopeless. Children experience five adventures straight from the Bible and then apply what they discover through prayer, service, and commitment.

This curriculum isn't about guilting children into helping those in need, rather giving them a Biblical look of what Jesus calls us to do as Christians to do. I think its easy for us to say 'Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress...' (James 1:27), but how easy is it for us to actually live this out? It's easy to sign a check to give yourself that 'warm, fuzzy feeling' knowing that you're helping someone, but is it really a sacrifice?

In Matthew 19:16-24, Jesus tells the rich young man to sell EVERYTHING and give it to the poor! Hello, he was rich! You want him to sell his iPhone, his new 2000 sq. foot home, his wife's Coach purse...
I have a long ways to go...
As I'm sure nearly all of us living in first world nations do.

I'm actually really looking forward to this journey. Not only for what I think it will do in me by changing my thinking, but also for what it will do in the children that I have the privilege to teach and lead.

Check out other 'Hope Lives' resources here: group.com/hopelives