God Can Always Be Trusted (Kids Creek)
I’m the Kids Creek director here at Riverwood, which really just means I write the lessons each week and schedule people. It is the volunteers who make Kids Creek go, and your kids showing up is what makes it actually happen. So if you bring children here, thank you.
Today we are going to run a real lesson — the same one the kids would get — so this is for everyone. Adults included.
Why We Start with a Bible in Hand
In Kids Creek we always have Bibles, and one of our priorities is teaching children how to navigate them. Digital Bibles count too.
The Bible matters because it is God’s word, and God’s word is powerful and always true. If we want to hear God speaking to us, if we want to know what He wants for our lives, we open our Bibles and read.
One thing we learn as we study is that God makes promises to His people, and God always keeps His word. Every promise God has made has either already come true or will come true one day. Today we look at a time God spoke through the prophet Jeremiah and promised something remarkable — a way for sins to be forgiven, a promise fulfilled in His Son.
What Are You Excited For?
We always open with an introduction question — something that gets you thinking and then steers toward the lesson. Today’s was simple: what is something you have been really excited for?
The answers ranged widely. Vacations and trips. A honeymoon. Ziplining for the first time. A birthday. The start of school. Time with family. Somebody said they were excited for church, which I loved.
Then the second half of the question: why? Because it will be fun. Because you are anticipating something genuinely good. Because there will be food — food certainly excites me. Because you get to see your church family, or make new friends.
That is what excitement is: anticipation of something good coming.
Hopeful or Discouraging?
Kids Creek runs on games and object lessons, because children do not learn best sitting still. I love Erin’s preaching, but that is not how kids take things in.
So our first game was simple. Index cards, each with a statement on it. Read it out and decide: hopeful, or discouraging?
Winning a tournament — hopeful, because winning feels good. Getting an A on a test — hopeful, because your hard work paid off. A promotion at work — hopeful, same reason. Leading someone to Jesus — there is not much more hopeful than that.
And the other side. A speeding ticket. Your favorite video game breaking. Your best friend moving far away — because we hate saying goodbye to people we love. Losing something precious.
Here is the point. We hope for certain things, and it is good when they come. But a lot of the time things do not go our way — and no matter what we face, we can always hope in God’s word and in God’s promises.
The Big Picture Question
We carry one big picture question across a whole unit, four or five weeks at a time. This one was: Can God be trusted?
The world often tells us something sounds good when it isn’t actually true. We cannot always trust what we read in books, see on television, or learn on the internet. So can God be trusted?
Yes. God cannot lie or ever be wrong, so we can trust whatever He has said.
When God said He would save His people from exile, He did it. When God said He would send Jesus to save us, He did it.
God Speaks, and It Happens
How did God create the world? He spoke it into existence. Let there be light — and there was light. Let there be animals, and there were animals. Stars, moon, sun, trees, plants, water. Spoken, and there it was.
So God’s words are powerful enough to create something out of nothing. Which means His words can be trusted — just as His word made all created things, so He will fulfill what He has said.
In the Old Testament, God’s word came to His people through prophets, who told them how to live and what God was going to do. Sometimes the people listened. Sometimes they didn’t — just like us.
Jeremiah’s Message of Hope
Jeremiah was a prophet to Judah from the reign of King Josiah, through the invasion by their enemies, and during the exile in Babylon. He warned the people about God’s judgment on their sin. But even though they had disobeyed, God had not abandoned them. His love never stopped, and He had a good plan for them.
Through Jeremiah, God said that when He restored His people to their land, He would be the God of all the families of Israel and they would be His people. They had been divided; He would bring them back together. They had suffered; He said they would make music again and dance with joy. He had scattered them, and He would gather them and watch over them the way a shepherd guards his flock.
God said He would turn their mourning into joy, comfort them, and bring happiness out of grief. His people would be satisfied with His goodness. There is hope for your future.
Jeremiah also told them God had a plan to change their hearts — a new and better covenant, so they could be saved from their sins. It would not be like the old covenant, where the people had God’s commands in writing, disobeyed them, and had to make sacrifices every year. In the new covenant God would write His law on their hearts, giving them the power to obey. And He said: I will forgive their wrongdoing and never again remember their sin.
That word brought hope because it was true. God can always be trusted. Jeremiah described a day when God would forgive sin and change hearts — and Jesus’ death and resurrection is what provides that forgiveness. Through Jesus we have new hearts and life with God forever.
Talking It Over
God’s people were in a genuinely difficult place. God, being good, judged their sin and sent them into exile in Babylon. Were they afraid? Of course. They were captives. They did not know how long it would last. They were far from home.
But they could still trust that God was with them, and trust His promise that one day He would set them free. That is why He sent Jeremiah — to give them hope. He would bring them back. They would be joyful again. They would sing and dance. Their sadness would turn to joy, their sin would be washed away forever, and His law would be written on their hearts.
Even after all the times the people sinned against Him, He was still making a way for them to be with Him forever. And who did God send to make every one of those promises come true? Jesus — the classic Sunday school answer, and the right one. He lived a perfect, sinless life, died for your sins on a cross, and rose again. Only through Him do we have true hope and a true future with God.
Opposite Pictionary
Next we played Pictionary — with a twist. In opposite Pictionary, you draw what is on the card, and everyone else has to guess the opposite. Draw “in,” and the answer is “out.”
So a drawing of someone happy got the answer “sad.” A large gift got “small.” Daytime got “night.” Someone lifting a barbell got “weak.” You do not have to be a good artist to play, and some of the guesses were impressive leaps.
Sometimes the opposite word turned out to be better than the original, and sometimes worse. And that is the connection: God promised His people that something better was coming. A new covenant that would wash their sins away. Since God cannot lie or ever be wrong, we can trust whatever He has said — and that promise came true in Jesus, who alone can save us and give us new hearts.
Three Questions Worth Sitting With
We always make room for group discussion, because what the kids come up with often impresses me.
Why can we trust the Bible? Because it is true. Because it is the good news of Jesus. Because God is real, so His word is real and true and perfect. One answer I especially liked: because it is verifiable and testable — we can see these things borne out in real life. God spoke through His people and His prophets, they wrote it down, and through His Son we have access to Him and to His word.
How does God write His laws on our hearts? Not literally with a pen. Through the Holy Spirit. Through Jesus dying for us. By convicting us of sin. When you put your faith in Jesus Christ, He gives you a new heart — new desires, new passions, a new want to follow Him and be more like Him. We only receive that new heart through faith in Jesus, and it is because of Him and the Holy Spirit in us that we can now obey God and love Him rightly.
Until Jesus returns, we will never obey perfectly. Every one of us is a sinner. But Jesus obeyed perfectly and died on the cross so that one day we can join Him with brand new bodies and brand new hearts.
How can you share the hope of Jesus with others? By talking about Him. And who needs to hear? Everyone. Everyone needs to know that Jesus can wash their sins away. Invite people to church. Invite them to read the Bible with you. Tell them the gospel. Tell them how Jesus has changed you. Often it is just one or two sentences that get somebody thinking — He changed her life; maybe He could change mine. God wants to draw everyone to Himself. There is not one person He does not want to call son or daughter.
Out with the Old
Then a relay race, because nobody wants to sit still for an hour.
Two teams. Each person starts holding a dirty brown square marked old — that is your heart before you know Jesus and put your faith in Him. One at a time you race up, trade your old heart for a new one, and race back so the next person can go.
It was close, and enthusiastic, and at least one competitor took their shoes off for speed.
Because that is the story: God promised a new and better covenant, and promised to write His laws on the hearts of His people. If you know Christ as your savior, He has written His law right on your heart.
Finding Jeremiah 17:7
Getting into our Bibles matters enormously to me, so it matters in Kids Creek. We have Bibles in the classrooms and we open them nearly every week.
Our goal is not primarily memorization. It is to get children active in the word — able to navigate a Bible, able to recognize I have heard that verse before, able to see how it connects to the last few weeks and how it applies to their own lives. So we repeat a verse across four or five sessions.
So we walked through it together the way we do with the kids. Find Jeremiah — Old Testament, so the front part of your Bible. Put your finger on it. Then find the big 17, usually bolded, so turn a few pages. Then the tricky part: navigate down to the little 7.
But blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence. — Jeremiah 17:7 (NLT)
We use the New Living Translation in Kids Creek because it reads easily for children — though when kids bring their own Bibles in other translations, we always let them read from those. It is good to compare translations and see which makes a point clearest.
God tells us right here that we are blessed when we trust Him, when we make Him our hope and our confidence. When we trust Him, He makes our hearts glad. God always does what is right, and in Jesus we have a future full of hope.
We finished by scrambling the verse into pieces and racing to put it back in order — then reading it aloud to prove it was right. In Kids Creek we would mix it up and run it again so everyone who wanted a turn got one.
How We Close
We want kids who know how to navigate a Bible, who know God’s word, and who can point someone else to Scripture that might meet a need or lift them up — because God tells us His word should be written on our hearts.
And we always pray at the end. I want children to grow confident praying out loud, so I start, they add whatever they want, and I close.
Let me also encourage you toward the Tuesday prayer hour. I went last week, and simply sitting for an hour to pray was genuinely good for me. I do not get that at home — there is always a washer to change or a snack to fetch or a lawn to mow. Come for the hour, or half an hour on your way to work, or fifteen minutes. It made a difference for me, and I think it would for you.
We thank God that He is a God we can trust. That He loved us enough to give us His Son, who willingly died for our sins. That He gives us new hearts, so we do not have to stay stuck in our old ways. That He loves us every day and wants good for us — disciplining us when we need it, lifting us when we need it. He is the one true God, His word is true, and we can be confident we will meet Him one day.
