Everyday object lessons

Idea from Zig Ziglar
Its human nature to follow what your friends, pastors, leaders, parents DO more than what they say. That’s why your actions are so much more important than talking. Here is a little game that illustrates this perfectly. Have your class or audience do this: “I want you to follow what I say here. Hold your hands up in front of you…….now when I say go – clap them together……Let’s start…….ONE……..TWO……..THREE (you clap your hands together)……..GO!” Your audience is going to clap their hands together when you do – not when you say GO. So then you can point out to them that they followed what you did. They did not follow what you said!

This lesson is on service. The teacher used ice cream scoops to teach an object lesson. He had two sizes of ice cream scoops and asked “If I were serving up some ice cream, which scoop would you want me to use?” Of course, everyone wanted the big scoop. He then explained that when we serve others, we are offering service to Christ and expressing our love and commitment to him. Holding up the two scoops, he asked “Would you like to serve Christ just a little or a whole lot?”

Source: From a book by Robert Folgrum
Gather a small mirror and a bright flashlight. Turn the light off in the room. Have one person hold the flashlight up and shine it down on the mirror. (You’ll have to experiment to find the best way to do this) The person with the mirror’s task is to see if they can reflect the light into the darkest corner of the room. Let two or three people try this and see if they can light up a dark corner.

The story that goes with this would be that Christ or God represents the flashlight, and we are the mirror. The light or the power to bring light to the dark places does not originate with the mirror, it only reflects it into many different places.

That is our mission, our meaning in life, to reflect God’s light, or love into all of the dark places that we can.

Expound on this message in whatever way fits best and of course there are skads of scriptures that would be appropriate.

Source: Kristi Ott
The object for this lesson is a can of the cheese that squeezes out. Or you could use any other object that squeezes out of the top like toothpaste or whipped cream or something like that. I would just choose the cheese because you can eat it up at the end of the lesson. Here is the story: Demonstrate how easy it is to squeeze out the contents from the can, then pick a volunteer and ask them to try to put the cheese back into the can. Of course it is impossible. The moral to the story is that angry or sarcastic words or derogatory names can so easily escape our mouth and then the damage is done and we have sinned. It is much more difficult and maybe impossible to fix the damage or repent for the idle or angry words.

If you take a magnet and pass is over the top of some metal shavings, the will jump up and cling to the magnet. The magnet doesn’t have to physically touch the shavings, just come close. We should always take care to be found with honorable people of character because your reputation is like those metal shavings. If you are around rebellious, shady people, their reputation will eventually stick to you. Even if you never actually do anything bad yourself, by hanging around dishonest or evil friends, that is the reputation you draw to yourself like a magnet.

Watch what happens when you drop a rock into a still pond. You will notice a single ring that will then radiate outwards into more and more rings. This is what happens with a good deed. The good feeling that both people have, those who do the good deed, and those who receive, radiate outward and affects more and more people around them.

This object lesson will take several days. Take a stalk of celery and split it up the center about half way up the stalk. Put one side in a glass of red-colored water and the other side in blue-colored water. After a few days the celery stalk will draw up the colored water and the celery will be tinted red or blue. There could be many different moral to this story, but here is one: See how easily this stalk of celery took on the color of water in which it was sitting? Small children are just like that stalk of celery. They take on all the characteristics of the family around them. Is your home colored with anger, yelling, sarcasm, and criticizm? Then this is what the children will learn to be like. Or is your home colored with patience, cooperation, soft-tones and laughter? Children will reflect and become like the examples they receive at home.