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    Wild Truth Bible Lessons--Pictures of God 2: 12 More Wild Bible Studies on the Character of a Wild God--and What It Means for Your Junior Highers and Middle Schoolers
    Wild Truth Bible Lessons--Pictures of God 2: 12 More Wild Bible Studies on the Character of a Wild God--and What It Means for Your Junior Highers and Middle Schoolers
    Wild Truth Bible Lessons--Pictures of God 2: 12 More Wild Bible Studies on the Character of a Wild God--and What It Means for Your Junior Highers and Middle Schoolers
    Ebook227 pages1 hour

    Wild Truth Bible Lessons--Pictures of God 2: 12 More Wild Bible Studies on the Character of a Wild God--and What It Means for Your Junior Highers and Middle Schoolers

    By Mark Oestreicher

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    About this ebook

    The Bible is a photo album, brimming with self-portraits of a God who wants to be known. God has put these pictures in the Bible to reveal his character. By examining them, we discover who God is and why he’s worth knowing better. And we discover something else: who he wants us to be. He wants us to copy his picture into our own character. Wild Truth Bible Lessons--Pictures of God 2 is a guide to 12 God-pictures taken straight from the Photo Album. They are active Bible lessons for junior high and middle school Sunday school classes or youth group meetings, each one based on one of the 50 pictures of God and presented energetically, relevantly, and scripturally in the companion student book Wild Truth Journal: Pictures of God. The lessons are loaded with off-the-wall and easy-to-do discussion starters, video ideas, scripts, games with a point. And, of course, Bible passages and studies that springboard junior highers from the abstract into the concrete as (open Bibles in hand) they explore the nature of God in a lively, relevant way, and then begin practicing in their own lives the traits of God.Here’s how the lessons are organized: * Picture Prep grabs your group’s attention to prepare them for what’s ahead.* Action Shot takes your students into the Bible to catch God in the act of revealing his character.* Self-Portrait explores the given aspect of God’s character…how it makes God just that much more awesome...and why it’s a very good trait for us to have, too.* Print It! challenges your students to print God’s picture into their own lives by living out his character in an immediately practical way.12 lessons
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherZondervan
    Release dateJun 1, 2010
    ISBN9780310867555
    Wild Truth Bible Lessons--Pictures of God 2: 12 More Wild Bible Studies on the Character of a Wild God--and What It Means for Your Junior Highers and Middle Schoolers
    Author

    Mark Oestreicher

    Mark Oestreicher (Marko) is a veteran youth worker and former president of Youth Specialties. The author of dozens of books, including Youth Ministry 3.0 and Middle School Ministry, Marko is a sought after speaker, writer and consultant.  Marko leads The Youth Cartel, providing a variety of resources, coaching and consultation to youth workers, churches and ministries. Marko lives in San Diego with his wife Jeannie and two teenage children, Liesl and Max.  www.whyismarko.com.

    Read more from Mark Oestreicher

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      Book preview

      Wild Truth Bible Lessons--Pictures of God 2 - Mark Oestreicher

      0310223660_content_0001_001

      Check out these great Wild Truth books for

      your junior highers and middle schoolers!

      Wild Truth Journal for Junior Highers

      with companion curriculum

      Wild Truth Bible Lessons

      Wild Truth Bible Lessons 2

      Wild Truth Journal—Pictures of God

      with companion curriculum

      Wild Truth Bible Lessons—Pictures of God

      Wild Truth Bible Lessons—Pictures of God 2

      0310223660_content_0003_002

      YOUTH SPECIALTIES

      Wild Truth Bible Lessons—Pictures of God 2: 12 more wild Bible studies on the character of a wild God—and what it means for your junior highers and middle schoolers

      Copyright © 2001 by Youth Specialties

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

      ePub Edition August 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-86755-5

      Youth Specialties products, 300 S. Pierce St., El Cajon, CA 92020, are published by

      Zondervan, 5300 Patterson Ave. S.E., Grand Rapids, MI 49530.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data

      Oestreicher, Mark.

            Wild truth Bible lessons—pictures of God 2 : 12 more wild Bible studies on the

      character of a wild God—and what it means for your junior highers and middle schoolers

      / Mark Oestreicher.

          p. cm.

      ISBN-13: 978-0-310-22366-5

      1. God—Biblical teaching. 2. Christian education of teenagers. I. Title.

      BS544 .O47 2001

      268’.433—dc21

      00-043878

      Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version (North America Edition). Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan.

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

      Edited by Lorna McFarland Hartman

      Illustrations by Krieg Barrie

      01 02 03 04 05 06 • 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      For my sisters, Lori and Lisa. What a blessing you are. I’m proud to be

      your little brother.

      Contents

      Cover Page

      Title Page

      Copyright Page

      Acknowledgments

      What God looks like

      God is like a dreamer.

      Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Dream big about how God can use you.

      God is like light.

      I am the Light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.You can bring light into the darkness.

      God is like life

      I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies. God gives life, and you can share it with others.

      God is like rain.

      He will be like rain falling on a mown lawn, like showers watering the earth.God can use you like rain—to nourish, clean, refresh, and cool others.

      God is like a lamb.

      Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! Be like Jesus by giving a part of yourself—your time, talents, gifts, money—for others.

      God is like a dad.

      How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!You receive unconditional love from the Father; now pass it along!

      God is like bread.

      I am the bread of life. You can help others satisfy their hunger for God.

      God is like a team captain.

      But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God.God has included you on his team, and he wants you to include others, too.

      God is like a best friend.

      Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.You can share with others what God has shared with you.

      God is like a guide.

      I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them.You can trust God to lead you the right way.

      God is like a king.

      I am the Lord, your Holy One, Israel’s Creator, your King.God has all the good qualities of a king, and you can, too.

      God is like a human.

      The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.When God became human, he made a difference in the world. Now you can make a difference in the world.

      About the Publisher

      Share Your Thoughts

      Acknowledgments

      As always, I thank my amazing wife, Jeannie, and the world’s best kids, Liesl and Max, for all your support and encouragement.

      Thanks to the killer product department at YS—great coworkers and great friends.

      Thanks to my friend Laura Gross for all her help with this project.

      And thanks to the fine people at the Bethel West Seminary library where I spent my writing days. Your ignoring my illegal thermos of coffee made this project possible.

      What God Looks Like

      Ever stop to wonder why there are no original portraits of God in the Bible? When the Almighty made those spectacular Old Testament appearances, didn’t anyone stop and say, This would look great as a painting? Maybe they were too busy holding on for dear life. But surely someone among Jesus’ followers knew how to sketch a likeness of him. Unfortunately, we have no drawings to prove it.

      Raised on faded filmstrips and flickering TV images, I’m accustomed to seeing really important stuff, like the anatomy of a molecule and whether Gilligan will ever get off the island. It seems to me that details about God—who he is, what he looks like, what he did—rank highest among what most deserves a picture.

      God agrees. But instead of using sketches and paintings, he chose another powerful medium to convey his image: words. The Bible is a word-picture book of God. Each word-picture reveals something important about God’s character so we might get to know him better. And catch a glimpse of what we’ll look like someday…if we let him do his work on us.

      This book is a guide to a dozen pictures of God. It’s designed to help you reveal these pictures to your junior high students so they can get to know God better and become more like him. Here’s how the lessons are organized:

      0 Picture Prep

      Grabs your students’ attention to prepare them for what’s ahead.

      1 Action shot

      Takes your group into the Bible to catch God in the act of revealing his character.

      2 Self-Portrait

      Explores what this character would look like in young teen skin.

      3 Print It!

      Challenges your students to print God’s picture into their own lives by living out his character in an immediately practical way.

      Within each of the above lesson segments, you’ll find games, activities, dramatic pieces, handouts, and options. Don’t try to use everything: You know your students best, so use just what you know will work for them, and adapt or discard the rest.

      This is the sixth book in the Wild Truth line, so if you like this one, be sure to check out the others. All are designed to help you develop godly character in the lives of junior high students. If you’re looking for a great way to expand your lessons beyond the classroom, check out Wild Truth Journal: Pictures of God. This junior high devotional contains short lessons based on 50 God-pictures, including the dozen covered here. On their own, students can continue their discovery and emulation of God’s character, even after you’ve run out of lessons from this book. And for 12 more God-picture lessons, pick up a copy of Wild Truth Bible Lessons: Pictures of God.

      All the books in the Wild Truth line are written by my friend Mark Oestreicher, the oldest junior higher I know. Mark’s refreshing perspective and quirky sense of humor betray his long and passionate commitment to reaching this age group with the wild truth about God.

      May you revel in this Wild Truth yourself while sharing it with your students.

      Todd Temple

      10 TO 20 Press

      Lesson 1

      God is like a DREAMER

      Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this.

      —Psalm 37:4-5

      0310223660_content_0011_004

      Goals

      STUDENTS WILL—

      • Learn the difference between helpful and hurtful dreaming.

      • Understand that God is a dreamer, dreamed up dreaming, and wants to give us our dreams.

      • Dream about how God might use them.

      0 Picture Prep

      Dream of a land…

      Have students get into groups of three or four. Ask them to imagine an island where there are no influences from the outside world, unless they want them. As a group, they have to dream up

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