Leader Guide
Prayer
- Bibles or the Superbook Bible App
God is holy and His laws are perfect. God requires us to be holy and keep His laws perfectly. Yet no matter how hard we try, we will sin and fail to follow God’s laws perfectly. Can we keep our sins secret from God? No.
Read Psalm 90:8:
You spread out our sins before You—our secret sins—and You see them all.
God knows all about our sins. He is perfect and holy, so we cannot come into His presence with our sins. The good news is that God doesn’t want us to be separated from Him. That’s why He sent Jesus—His perfect, sinless Son—to take the punishment for our sins.
How did Jesus do that? He took our sins on Himself when He died on the cross.
What do we need to do to be forgiven?
Let me read you a wonderful promise in the Bible. Read 1 John 1:9:
But if we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.
What does that mean? If we confess our sins to God, we can totally depend on Him to wash away our sins and forgive us for all the bad things we have ever done.
Lower your head, hunch your shoulders, and act as if you’re sad. I would like all of you to lower your heads and hunch your shoulders, acting as if you are sad and defeated. Do we have to walk around feeling depressed and ashamed because we have sinned? No! Lift your head up and smile. Let’s lift up our heads and smile! He washes our sins away so we can be happy and joyful! All we have to do is admit our failures and confess our sins to God, and ask Him to forgive us. Let’s close our eyes and do that right now.
Dear God, we want to silently confess our sins to You. Please forgive us for all the bad things we have thought, said and done. Allow a few moments for children to pray silently. Lord Jesus, we are amazed that You never sinned—not even once!—yet You took the punishment for all of our sins. Thank You, Jesus, for setting us free from sin! Now please give us Your strength to choose to follow Your commandments each day of our lives. We ask You to fill us with the power of Your Holy Spirit to live for You. In Your name, Amen.