Last night we had family night and learned about how sin will blind us to God’s truth. God will show us what we need to change when we ask Him to. James particularly focused on the sin of treating your sister and/or brother wrongly. He used the verse 1 John 2:10-11. ” Whoever loves his brother(sister) lives in light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. But whoever hates his brother(sister) is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.”
We talked about how people who are blind can’t see and need to have help to know where to go. And that we can also be spiritually blind, (we begin to do things that we know we shouldn’t do and no longer feel bad about doing them), and need to ask for help from God. Sometimes when we sin and keep on sinning, God let’s us become blind to His plan for us.
James asked if not showing love to eveyone or when we fight with people, including your sister or brother, could blind you to what God wants you to do.
Then we used the visuals to help. We used small brass safety pins and mixed them with dry rice in a pie plate. Look at the pins in this pan of rice. Can you see them?
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| The pins are easy to see! |
The pins represent sin. Right now I want you to pick up rice but not pick up any pins.
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| Easy right? |
Now we are going to cover your eyes and I want you to pick up only the rice. (It is very hard to distinguish the rice from the pins when you can’t see!)
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| James really made sure Ella couldn’t see! |
After they picked up a few handfuls we let them ‘see’ all the pins they picked up with the rice. They both were really upset that they had picked up ‘sins.’
Was it easy to tell the rice from the pins when you couldn’t see? It’s the same way with sin in our lives. When we are blinded to sin, we can no longer tell the difference and it’s very easy to allow sin to creep into our lives, just the way the pins crept into our hands. When we could see, we could see the ‘sin’ and remove it. How do we do this in our own lives when we have become blinded?
Psalm 139:23-24 “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there be any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
We need to pray, asking God to remove the blinders on our eyes and to show us anything we need to change. We then prayed together and asked for the Holy Spirit to reveal the sin in our lives. This family night was admittedly a harder concept to grasp for them, but we believe His Word will not return void and we have already experienced multiple times in their daily lives where we can point back to our object lesson from past family nights!
the paquettes 