God doesn't love gossip

This is the 2nd and last week in our Crazy Love series. This week, we actually tackled the idea of how much God hates gossip and badmouthing other Christians.

When my siblings and I were younger, we would sometimes get upset with each other - it was only sometimes, not often, right, Mom? - and when we did, we would really throw down the insults. The Selphs are prolific insulters, so it got kind of rough sometimes. When we would go after each other, it would break my mom's heart. Sometimes it would make her cry. She couldn't stand the idea of one of her children insulting another one.

Imagine how God feels when we insult his children? We looked at a lot of verses to give us a better idea about that. Here are the list of verses we used to discuss this: Romans 1:28-30, 1 Timothy 5:13, and Proverbs 20:19. I didn't read the verses, but I did teach the proper approach to handling problems with other Christians - which doesn't include gossiping about your beef with them - from Matthew 18:15-19. Then, we talked about how we should be talking, especially about our fellow Christians. For that, we looked at Ephesians 4:29-30.

All in all, I think the lesson was a gut check for a lot of us, including me, and probably the rest of our leaders. My only regret is that I forgot to mention one of the most popular ways of spreading gossip: "prayer requests." Oh well. I'll get to it next time.

Main Scripture Passage
see above

Attendance
Students: 37
Adult Leaders: 12

Game/Activity
Since we were talking about the proper way to love our fellow Christians, we played, "Do you love your neighbor?"