Children, yours or the neighbor’s, respond to stories. They are wonderful tools for leading little hearts to Jesus! Here’s my story for them:
There is a God who is absolutely perfect — so perfect that He could never ever do anything wrong, nor could He ever have anyone, like me, be where He is with even one “‘tiny” (in our eyes) sin on them. Sin is actually an archery term in Greek that means “to miss the mark” — anything that does not hit the “bull’s eye” of the target of God’s perfection is sin. [You could illustrate this with a sketch of a target.] “ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” But this God is not only totally perfect (holy — never once missing the bull’s-eye of the target), but also full of love. He loved us so much that He wanted us to be His very own children, to live in us, and He wanted us to live with Him forever! Well, this created a problem because any bad stuff (sin) in us is a huge wall that separates us from Him. So God came up with an amazing plan. There was only one way that He could solve this huge problem of my badness not being able to be with His goodness. This is what He did. God has a Son whose name is Jesus. He is just like His Father, and could never ever do anything wrong, either. God loves Jesus with all His heart, but God also loved us ... God decided to do something very hard. He sent His perfect Son, Jesus, to become a person and live here on earth with everyone else. Jesus grew up to be a man, and still He never did even one tiny thing wrong! Then God did something that I will never understand. He took my sins, all the bad stuff that I’ve ever done, and piled them on His Son Jesus, and then He punished Jesus for every one of those sins! The punishment for each one of my sins is death, and that’s what God gave to Jesus instead of me. Jesus bled and died for me! God was so satisfied with what Jesus did that He brought Him back to life again, and He is now living in heaven! God always sees the scars in the body of His Son Jesus that paid for the punishment of all my sins! This is the most precious love gift that God could ever give! It is proof of how much He loves us! Now when God sees me, and sees if I sin, He also looks at the awful punishment that His Son Jesus endured for my sins, and He forgives me — because it wouldn’t be fair to punish both of us. Now, since my sins have been punished in Jesus, God sees me all clean and forgiven. The huge sin-wall has been removed because Jesus took it away when He was punished for my sin! Can you imagine that He would do that for me? What He did for me makes me love Him with all my heart. Now He is my best Friend! We enjoy each other’s company each day, and He has promised that I will live with Him forever.
In the Bible, His letter to us, He says that He wants to do this for you, too! You need to be willing to admit you are a sinner and receive His love gift, and you can be His child too. You will never, for the rest of your life, lose His love, and He’ll continue to teach you more and more how amazing it is to belong to Him. Then, at just the right time, He’ll take you to His home to live with Him forever.
It is wonderful to tell children about God’s love. He’ll give you the words for each child, because He knows the need of each heart. We need to remember that it is our privilege to tell the story and it is God who makes it alive in them. Every little seed of God’s Word that you sow, God can use to produce life. It all depends on Him. Our only responsibility is to tell what we have seen and heard of Him, and live out Christ in us — He does the rest.