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.
But God made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding.
Jeremiah 10:12
If you desired a relationship with someone you loved deeply, would you have created a whole world to walk closely with that person? If you were faced with the problem of restoring a broken relationship with that person, could you ever have imagined the solution of the cross? Yet God, who made the earth by His power and founded the world by His wisdom, did just that. He has understanding and creativity that stretch far beyond our own, and His ways are always imaginative and unexpected. Our creative God has blessed us with the ability to think creatively, too!
How can you use that creativity to think in new ways? How can you solve the problems in your own life and in the lives of others by learning to think creatively to find imaginative solutions? The God whose understanding stretched out the heavens has given you the ability to think in creative ways. Ask God to show you His plan for your creative mind. You may be amazed at the gifts He reveals you—and you may be even more amazed at how He uses those gifts to accomplish His purposes.
Encourage the students to ask their family members about problems that need to be solved. The teens can then share what they have learned about creative thinking and use their skills to solve the problem together.
Teacher Tip: If possible, email or text the Family Connection Card to the families of your students.
Greet the teens as they arrive. Encourage them to share with at least 1 other student the most important thing they learned about God’s truth and problem-solving in the last lesson. Allow 2–3 teens to share their thoughts with the whole class.
Tell the students that you will begin class with a game. Divide the class into 2 teams. Then divide each team into 2 lines. Have each team line up so that the 2 lines on that team are facing each other and standing about 1 meter apart. Each team should be set up similar to the illustration shown here. After the teams are set up, explain the rules for the game.
X X X X X X
O O O O O O
The goal of this game is for the 2 lines on your team to move so the lines are standing with backs facing each other. This may seem easy, but there are a few rules about how you can move.
Solution:
Step 1:
X X X X X X
O O O O O O
Step 2:
X O X O X O X O X O X O
Step 3:
O O O O O O
X X X X X X
Give the teams a few minutes to do the activity. If time allows, repeat the game. The teams will likely be able to switch places more quickly the second time. Then gather the class for discussion.
You may not think of yourselves as creative problem solvers, but you are. You make judgments and decisions every day. In order to play this game, you had to be creative, work well with others, communicate clearly, and think quickly.
Here are some characteristics that creative thinkers and problems solvers need:
We have learned about many of these things in past lessons. Today we will talk about 1 of these characteristics that we have not yet learned about: creativity. Creative thinking can help us to solve problems.
Solving problems requires different types of thinking. For example, if you are doing a math problem, you need to think in a logical, step-by-step process to find the answer. This type of thinking is like following a straight path. But some difficult problems or problems that have more than 1 solution may require you to think in ways that do not always seem to follow a process. Creative thinking allows us to discover multiple ways to solve a problem and then decide which solution is best. This type of thinking is like following a path that has curves and goes up and down and all around. Creative thinkers are willing to consider other ideas, even ideas that they may originally have thought were wrong. They also realize that sometimes the best solution is not the easiest or the most obvious one.
Many of us do not think we are creative, but the Bible tells us that we were made to be creative. We can see from the beautiful and interesting world around us that God is a creative thinker.
Jesus was also creative, and His teachings can help us to understand God’s truth more fully. Listen to this example of Jesus’ creativity from the Bible:
[Jesus] also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”
Mark 4:26–29
What does this parable teach us about creativity?
One thing we can learn from this parable is that Jesus was creative. He shared this truth in the form of a creative story to help people to think about a spiritual truth from a new perspective. He used the illustration of the growth of a seed to help those He was teaching to learn about something completely different—the kingdom of God. This shows us that sometimes creativity helps us to express truth in new and useful ways.
Another thing we can learn from the parable is that it is important for us to think creatively. Jesus did not explain this parable in the Bible. Instead, He allowed the listeners to figure out what the parable meant. This required thinking creatively and seeing things from a new perspective. Let’s do that now.
Have the teens find partners and give the pairs 3 minutes to discuss the parable. It may be helpful to read the passage to them a few times during the discussion to help them to remember the details. If they have trouble thinking of questions, suggest 1 or 2 from the list below:
What do you think the seed represents?
What kinds of things did Jesus teach about most often?
What other parables do you know that are about seeds and plants? What are the meanings of these parables?
After the discussion, allow 2–3 pairs to share their thoughts with the whole class. Be sure to praise their creative thinking as they share their ideas.
Optional: If possible, provide the teens with Bibles to use for their discussion. They will be able to interpret this passage with more understanding if they can read the parables earlier in Mark 4.
One important thing this parable teaches us is about the growth of God’s kingdom. The seed is planted in the soil. The plant that sprouts from the seed grows quickly without the man’s help. In fact, it grows so quickly that the man is surprised. The plant continues to grow until it is ready to harvest.
In this parable, Jesus describes how God’s plan to establish His kingdom on earth through the Messiah, Jesus, will take place. It will not happen all at once. The seed has sprouted, but the plant is not yet ready to harvest. But eventually, God’s time will come, and Jesus will return. Then all people will know about the power and glory of the King.
In order to understand this parable, you had to think creatively. If you were thinking only logically or based simply on what you can see in the world around you, you would have thought that this parable was about the growth of a seed. But the first part of the passage helps you realize that Jesus was teaching us about more than the growth of a seed—it is a lesson we can learn about God’s kingdom coming to earth. That is creative thinking!
We are able to think creatively because God gave us amazing brains. Every time we interact with someone or learn something new, a process begins in our brains. This process helps us to decide how we should respond to the person or the information. Here is what happens in that process:
First, we gather information about the situation based on what we observe. Then we sort this information based on our opinions and our previous experiences. Next, we assign meaning to the information. After that, we draw conclusions, which means we decide what we believe is true or right in that situation. Finally, we take action on our beliefs.
Let’s use an example to help to understand this process more clearly.
Imagine I saw that the tap was leaking. If this was the first time I saw the leak, I might draw the conclusion that I need to stop the leak right away and then try to fix it. But I may know from previous experience that the tap has been leaking for almost a month. In that case, I may draw the conclusion that I do not need to do anything about the leak immediately, so I may ignore the tap without doing anything at all.
What are some examples from your own lives where you have used this process to solve a problem?
Allow 2–3 students to share their ideas.
This process that I just described is what we do nearly every time we face a problem, and this process works well to help us to solve most of them. But some problems are more complicated than a leaky tap. These kinds of problems may require creative thinking. We may need to think of multiple solutions and then make a decision about which one is best before we try any of them.
For example, in the situation with the leaky tap, maybe we have tried all the things we would usually do to fix a leak. We have tightened all of the connections and replaced the washer inside of the tap. But the tap is still leaking.
What can we do to fix the tap?
Allow 2–3 students to share their ideas.
As you realized, we need to think beyond the usual step-by-step process to solve this problem. We need to think creatively. We need to find multiple possible solutions to the problem and then decide which solution is most likely to solve the problem. Here are some ideas to try when you have a problem to solve that requires creative thinking:
These ideas would probably work well to solve a problem like the leaky tap. You may be able to easily think of a few ideas you can try, such as replacing the tap or looking to see if the leak is coming from another part of the plumbing. Smaller problems can often be solved using only our own human abilities. Yet we can ask God about those problems too.
But what if the problem was something bigger than a leaky tap or something that involved other people? In these situations, we should always ask God for guidance. God’s wisdom is much greater than our own, and He cares about our problems. In fact, He knows everything we think and feel. Listen to what the Bible tells us about this.
You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.
Psalm 139:1–4
What does this verse tell us about the things God knows about us?
Allow 2–3 teens to share their thoughts. If they do not mention these answers, share that He knows everything we think and feel. He knows what we will do before we do it and what we will say before we say it.
God knows our thoughts, and He also knows the best solutions to our problems. We can ask Him for wisdom and creativity to solve problems. His creativity and wisdom are greater than our own, and His solutions are always right and good.
Let’s practice some of the things we learned about creative thinking by finding a solution to a real-life problem.
Divide the teens into groups of 4–5. Read the following situation aloud.
Situation: The water supply in your community has become contaminated. The nearest clean source of water is more than an hour away. Though the contamination was discovered a few days ago, some people are still drinking the water and getting sick. Others are not drinking any water at all and are now showing signs of dehydration. You need to do 2 things. The first is to help people to understand that they should not drink the water, and the second is to find a way to get enough clean water to provide for the needs of your community. What can you do?
Optional: If you are using the Student Pages, the teens can do this activity on their pages.
Give the groups 3–4 minutes to think of as many solutions as possible. If they seem to be having difficulty thinking of ideas, suggest that they try some of the ideas they learned: start with the end and work backwards; write ideas or draw diagrams; think about the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and risks of the ideas; and ask for help. Then give the groups 3–4 minutes to decide which of their solutions is best. Allow each group to share 1 solution with the whole class. Allow the class to discuss the solutions for a few minutes and decide which solution is the best.
Those were all creative solutions! You are creative thinkers, and you worked well together to decide the best solution for the problem.
If this were a real problem our community was facing, what do you think we should do next?
Allow 2–3 teens to share their thoughts.
One of the steps in our problem-solving process should always be to praise God and give Him the glory when our problems are solved. When we try to do what is right and good and help others, people will notice. But God is the source of all of our creativity and wisdom, so He deserves all the glory when we succeed. Listen to what the Bible tells us about this:
If you are using the Memory Verse Poster, show it to the students.
In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
Matthew 5:16
As you solve problems in your own life and in the lives of others around you, remember to praise God for giving you the ability to find creative solutions. Thank Him for creating you in His image—as a person who can think, create, and imagine. And when others praise you for finding creative solutions, be sure to tell them that God is the source of all wisdom and that He has given you the ability to solve problems. Your efforts can bring glory to His name!
Let’s take a minute to thank God right now.
Blessing: As you solve problems and help others, may your goo works glorify your Father in heaven. May you continue to use your creative thinking in ways that allow others to see God’s wisdom and love.
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.
