During the lesson, the information for you to know is written in regular type, and what we suggest speaking or reading aloud to children is in bold. All resources for this lesson, including the Teacher Guide, Student Page, Family Connection Card, and other resources can be downloaded in a ZIP file by clicking on the following link:
In some lessons you will find "resource articles." These are articles written by experts from around the world to help equip you for your work with children and adolescents. Share them with parents or guardians if you consider it appropriate.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.
Isaiah 55:8
God is the source of all wisdom, and His thoughts are beyond our comprehension. As His image-bearers, we are blessed with amazing brains that we can use to reason, create, problem-solve, and imagine. When we ask for God’s wisdom and direction, He promises to guide us to serve others and to bring honour to Him. However, when we seek to solve our problems relying solely on our own thinking, our thoughts are often selfish and our solutions may lack significance. But God has redeemed our souls, and He also redeems our minds so we can use our intelligence for His purposes. He invites us to use our reason and creativity to contribute to His work!
Using your God-given intelligence well takes prayer and practice. Ask God where He would like you to exercise your creativity and problem-solving abilities to serve your family and your community. Ask Him to help you to discover new abilities. As you learn to seek God’s guidance in your thinking, He will help you to understand His ways and follow them. Accept God’s invitation to reason with Him and learn what it means to love Him with all your heart, with all your strength, with all your soul—and with all your mind.
Encourage the students to ask their family members, “How do you recognize truth?” They can then share that God’s truth is found in the Bible, and His wisdom is greater than human understanding.
Teacher Tip: If possible, email or text the Family Connection Card to the families of your students.
Greet the teens as they arrive. Ask them to share about ways they were able to show God’s love to others in the past week. Invite 2–3 students to share their stories with the class. When you are ready to begin class, have all of the students stand, and explain the rules of the game to them.
I will say 2 different objects and point to a different part of our area for each object. After I say each pair of objects, you will decide which of those objects you are more like and why. You will not say your answer out loud. Instead, you will go to the side of the room that I point to for that object. Then, when everyone has chosen, I will ask a few in each group to share why they chose that item and in what way they are like it.
Read the pairs of objects from the list or think of your own objects to share. Point to different sides of the space as you say each object in the pair. After each pair, give the teens a moment to choose a side. Then ask 2–3 teens in each group to share why they chose that object. Repeat this process for each pair of objects.
Have the class return to their usual seats for discussion. Allow 2–3 teens to share their answers to the following questions.
Was it hard to decide which object you were most like? Why or why not?
What types of thinking did we need to make these decisions?
These questions encouraged you to be a problem solver and a creative thinker. Obviously, you are not really like any of those objects. When I told you to choose, you had to think about the objects and yourself in different ways to find similarities. While we all think all the time, learning to think creatively to help solve problems is a skill we need to learn and practice.
Creative thinking and problem-solving were helpful skills in doing this activity, and they are also helpful in our lives. We all have problems to solve nearly every day, and we can solve them in better ways if we use the amazing brains God gave us. Let’s learn more about God as a problem solver. This will help us to understand how we can think in ways that honour Him.
We are created in God’s image, and thinking is one of the ways we reflect Him. Reason, creativity, and imagination are some of the abilities we can see in Him and in all of us. In order to understand better how we can reflect God in the ways we think, let’s learn more about God and His character.
What are some of the other characteristics of God that are reflected in humans?
Allow 4–5 teens to share their thoughts.
The Bible tells us a lot about God’s character. He is always good, always holy, always trustworthy, and always loving. He is also always just. Listen to what the Bible tells us about God’s right and fair judgment:
He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.
Deuteronomy 32:4
What does this verse tell us about God and His justice?
Allow 2–3 teens to share their thoughts. If they do not mention these answers, share that God is perfect, always just, faithful, and without sin. God’s justice is perfect because He is perfect.
Why do you think it might be important to understand God’s justice when we are learning about thinking?
Allow 2–3 teens to share their thoughts. It is okay if they do not know the answer. They will learn more about this during the lesson.
Problem-solving is a kind of judgment. We use the information we observe and gather to make a decision—or a judgment—based on reason and creativity. We can learn how to make good decisions as we face problems by seeing how God reasons and decides. We can trust that His judgment is always right.
What other characteristics does God have that allow Him to always make decisions that are just and right?
Allow 2–3 teens to share their thoughts. It is okay if they do not know the answer. They will learn more about this during the lesson.
Let’s read another Bible verse that may help us to understand more about the ways God thinks.
He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.
Psalm 147:4–5
What characteristics of God did you hear in this verse?
Allow 2–3 teens to share their thoughts. If they do not mention these answers, share that God notices details, that He is creative, that He is powerful, that He makes decisions, and that His understanding has no limit.
God is all-knowing and the source of all wisdom, so He knows what is best in every situation. He is also very creative, as we can see by the beautiful and interesting world we live in.
How could these characteristics show us that God is a creative thinker and problem solver?
Allow 2–3 teens to share their ideas. Then guide them to understand that problem-solving and creative thinking require attention to detail, creativity, decision-making, and wisdom.
What other characteristics of God can help us to understand His creative thinking?
Allow 2–3 teens to share their ideas.
These and so many of God’s other characteristics make Him a perfect problem solver. His answers are always right, and His ways are always best.
Do you think that is it important to know that God is a perfect problem solver?
Why or why not?
Here are a few things we can learn from the fact that God is a perfect problem solver and creative thinker.
Finally, God knows the answers to our problems. Even when we cannot think of a good solution, God already knows it. Nothing is beyond His understanding. If we believe in Him, He promises to be with us and to give us the strength, courage, and wisdom we need to get through any problem we face, even the difficult ones.
Here are some things we can do to develop our own creativity and problem-solving skills.
Though all of these ideas can help us to learn to think in creative ways that will help us to solve problems, our human brains alone are not enough to solve most problems. We should always rely on God in everything, especially when we are working to solve problems. While it is important for us to use our minds to think creatively and solve problems, we should not try to do this on our own. Human thinking may seem wise, but only God’s judgment is always right. When we try to make important decisions on our own, we may make poor choices unless we ask God to help us. Listen to what the Bible teaches us about this:
This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
1 John 3:19–20
What does this verse tell us about our own judgment and God’s judgment?
Allow 2–3 teens to share their thoughts. If they do not mention these answers, share that we often judge incorrectly, including about ourselves, but God’s understanding is greater than our own, and He knows everything.
How can knowing that God’s understanding is greater than ours help us to be better problem solvers?
Also, it is important to rely on God so that we can understand what is true. God is the source of all wisdom and truth, and only His truth is real. We should always measure everything we think of or discover against God’s truth—His character and His Word. Here are questions you can ask to determine whether something is true or not:
If something does not reflect God’s character, does not fit what we read in the Bible, or would not be pleasing to God, it is not right and true. All truth comes from God, so everything that is true reflects who He is and what He has told us. If you are unsure if something is true, you should ask God to give you wisdom to discern what is true. Listen to something the Bible teaches us about this:
For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He holds success in store for the upright, he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for he guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones. Then you will understand what is right and just and fair—every good path. For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.
Proverbs 2:6–10
What does this verse teach us about God’s help when we are in need of wisdom?
Allow 2–3 teens to share their thoughts. Then guide them to understand that we can ask God for wisdom and He will help us to do what is just and right and lead us on the right path.
On our own, we often make poor decisions because we do not have God’s knowledge or wisdom. But when we rely on God and His wisdom, we can think creatively and solve problems in ways that help us and others and bring honour to God.
At the beginning of the lesson, we used our creative thinking and problem-solving skills to make decisions to recognize similarities and differences. Now let’s use those skills again to decide what is God’s truth and what is not.
Divide the teens into groups of 4–5. Then read the following situations aloud and have them discuss the situations with their groups. Give the students 5 minutes to discuss each situation. Then allow 2–3 groups to share their ideas with the whole class.
Situation: A friend posted on social media that he is having sexual relations with many different girls, and he shared many of the details about these relationships, including photos. Two of your other friends are arguing over whether or not his behaviour is right and whether it is okay to post these kinds of things on social media. How can you use God’s truth to help them settle this argument?
Situation: You hear from a neighbour that one of the community leaders was caught stealing money. Your neighbour is gathering a large group of community members to confront the man and drive him and his family out of the community. How can you use God’s truth to resolve this situation in the best way?
Optional: If you are using the Student Pages, give the teens time to do the activity on their pages.
As the teens share their solutions to these problems, be sure to emphasize that love and forgiveness reflect God’s truth, so both love and forgiveness should be included in their responses.
Sometimes our human emotions cause us to desire a certain solution for a problem, but these solutions may not reflect God’s truth. Sometimes they are not even the ways that our culture would tell us are right. We want justice to be done and consequences given to those who have wronged others. We want honour to be protected and shameful things punished. Though these are important, we need to trust that God’s understanding is greater than our own. He is just and wise, and His solutions are better than our own. We can trust that He will bring justice and restore honour, even if we do not see it. His ways are always right and good. That is why He is the perfect problem solver! Listen to what the Bible tells us about God’s understanding:
If you are using the Memory Verse Poster, show it to the students.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:8–9
What does this verse teach us about God’s understanding?
Though it is important to use our human understanding to solve the problems we face, it is even more important to know that God’s solutions will always be the best ones. We should always seek His wisdom and guidance when we seek to solve problems—and we should always give the glory to Him when we are able to solve a problem using the intelligence and wisdom He has given us.
Give the teens a minute to pray individually or in their groups and to thank God for His gifts of intelligence, wisdom, and discernment. Then close with a blessing based on Isaiah 55:8–9:
Blessing: May you seek to use the intelligence God has given you to bring glory to His name. May you always seek wisdom from God, whose thoughts are greater than human understanding and whose ways are always right and good.
Lead the students in singing this quarter’s song, if possible.
Life on Life ©2020 David C Cook. Reproducible for home or classroom use only. All other uses require written permission from David C Cook [email protected]. All rights reserved.
