Gentleness
Heat salt, then heat chocolate and melt it to a heart shape. Discussion point: God’s Spirit softens our hearts with His love, helping us be kind and gentle.
In this lesson, kids will change solids to liquids to learn about the importance of allowing God to shape a gentle attitude in their heart.
You will need solid chocolate, a teaspoon of salt, aluminum foil, scissors, a desk lamp and a stir stick such as a wooden skewer or a drinking straw.
Directions
- Cut two squares of tin foil approximately 10 cm wide. Fold the edges up on all sides, pinching the corners to make two small square dishes.
- Put some chocolate into one foil dish; put the salt into the other dish.
- As the adult supervising the experiment, you need to adjust the lamp until it is about 2 cm above the boxes. Turn the lamp on.
- While you are watching and waiting, tell a story about gentleness or review a story from the Bible stories section of this lesson. After five minutes, turn the lamp off and put it aside so no one will accidentally get burned.
- Use the stir stick to see if there have been any changes in the substances. As you stir the chocolate, mould it into a heart shape. Try to do the same with the salt.
- Tell your children that after it has cooled, they can taste your experiment. As the substances cool, read Zechariah 7:11-12, Hebrews 3:7-10 and Luke 6:45 (see below).
- Prior to sampling the substances, explain to your children that when we refuse to allow God to soften our hearts and put His love in them, we are like the salt that was not changed by God’s Holy Spirit (represented by the lamp). But when we listen to God’s directions in the Bible and allow Him to put His love in our hearts, we are like the chocolate. God softens our hearts with His love, and we are kind and gentle with our words and actions.
- Sample the substances, then pray, asking God to send His Holy Spirit to put His love in your hearts and to help you to speak with words that are sweet like the chocolate.
Relevant Scripture
Zechariah 7:11-12 “But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the Lord Almighty had sent by His Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the Lord Almighty was very angry.”
Hebrews 3:7-10 “So, as the Holy Spirit says: ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried Me and for forty years saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, “Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known My ways.” ’ ”
Luke 6:45 “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.”
- Acceptance
- Adaptability
- Attentiveness
- Christmas
- Compassion
- Confidence
- Consideration
- Contentedness
- Cooperation
- Courage
- Courtesy
- Discernment
- Easter
- Faithfulness
- Forgiveness
- Generosity
- Gentleness
- Gratitude
- Harmony
- Honesty
- Humility
- Joy
- Kindness
- Obedience
- Patience
- Perseverance
- Respect
- Responsibility
- Reverence
- Righteousness
- Self-control
- Thanksgiving
