But First, the Bad News

You want to know what the good news of the gospel is. In order to understand what the good news is, you first have to hear some bad news. Circle the face that shows how you look when you hear bad news.

            This bad news is very bad. But remember, the good news of the gospel makes all this bad news go away. Put a square around the face that shows how you will look when you hear the good news and all the bad news disappears.
The bad news is that, when you were born, even though you were a beautiful, special baby:

there was something wrong with you – inside, in your spirit. We’re not talking about your body. We’re talking about you inside your body. You were born with something wrong there. Everyone is born the same way – not just you. Your Mummy, your Daddy, your teachers, your Sunday School teacher – everyone on the whole earth was born with this same thing wrong with them in their spirit. If you never do anything about this thing, then, when you’re big, this is what will happen:

☻    You won’t be able to love God.
☻    God will love you, but He will be very angry at this thing that’s wrong with you.
☻    You will do bad things, and you won’t be able to stop yourself.
☻    You’ll never get to go to heaven, which is where God lives.

That’s really bad news, isn’t it? Right now, because you’re little, even though you still have this thing wrong with you, you’re OK in some ways. Even though you do bad things and sometimes you just can’t stop yourself from doing them:

☺    You can still love God.
☺    God loves you, and you don’t have to worry about Him being angry with you.

But wouldn’t it be a good idea to have this thing that’s wrong with you fixed while you’re still young, so that when you grow up you can:

☺    keep on loving God;
☺    not have God angry at you;
☺    get to go to heaven one day?

So what is this thing that’s wrong with you? The Bible calls it “sin”. Some people think “sin” is all the bad things you do. What kind of bad things do children do? Can you spot any of them in the pictures below?

You may not have circled all the pictures because you may not have seen someone your age do that thing. But all the pictures are things children do that are wrong. But those things aren’t sin. They are “sins”. That’s just a tiny difference in how the words sound, isn’t it: sin – sins, sin – sins, sin – sins. Let’s see how the words look together. Can you spot the difference?

sin
sins 

There is just one letter difference between the two words. But there is a big difference in what they mean. “Sins” are the bad things you do. “Sin” is why you do them. “Sin” is what is wrong in your spirit that makes you want to do things that are wrong. 
So now we know that you and everyone else in the whole world were born with a problem inside you called “sin”. Sin makes you want to do bad things. But why are we like that? God made everything, including people. He made everything good. So why do we all have sin inside us that makes us want to do bad? Where did that come from?

Sharon Currens