Knowing God - A Sunday School Lesson

The other day my birth-brother made a post on Facebook about knowing God / being religious because he is of God and therefore needs nothing else - no Bible, no community, no religious practice. I question if this is possible. This question has been brought up previously in my old Bible Study class - Can a man remove himself from society and find God in a Garden per se? I don't mean remove for an hour or a day, but to know of God just by being. In the case of my birth-brother, I questioned back more about his children then himself: asking how can the little ones know to even search for God if they are not introduced? How can they know of his ways without hearing or reading of all he has done? How can they live out his works, if they don't know that they are called to do so? This post and its back and forth with him led me to this idea for a Sunday School lesson:

Knowing God

This is an excellent lesson for the beginning of the school year

It can be heard, I can learn of God just through being one with him. but can you know someone without speaking to them, without spending time with them, without reading about them?

Start with a prayer - Dear God, Be with us today as we undertake the study of you. We wish to know you better so that we can better serve you. Please help us to know you better. Guide us in our study and open our minds to understanding your words. Amen

Have the students pair off. Ask them to spend 3 or 4 minutes talking to their partner to find out about them. They should be ready to introduce their partner to the group and share their findings.

Take a few minutes to have everyone introduced by their partner. Ask if class if the introductions were done well and accurately. Ask, "Is there more that we could learn about you?" Brainstorm ideas of how we could get to know each other better.

To help them think more deeply, ask them to name a famous person that is no longer alive. Ask them to tell us what they know about him or her. Ask how they learned these facts. Ask how they could learn more.

Tell them that the same applies to God. Loving God is an action. We must get to know him. We may never know all of Him, but as part of our spiritual path we must work to strengthen our understand of Him. Through this understand, we can be guided in our actions. Brainstorm ways that we know about God. Ask what other ways we might get to know him better.

Craft: Create a God's Eye - Using longer chopsticks, make a cross. Knot the yarn around the center X and then weave around each of the sticks making a full loop around each one. When the eye is completed and tied off. Write the words Prayer, Worship, Fellowship, Bible on longer pieces of ribbon. Tie a ribbon off each stick end. Explain that by using these four standards, we can better know God. God can see through his eye that we wish to be Christians and wish to know more about what he wants from us.

Try to explain that knowing God is one of the purposes of Sunday School. By knowing Him better, we can be better. While it is important to have a private relationship with God, it is also important to learn and share in community so that we can get a deeper understanding of God. Tie this into the beginning activity, "Did you know all those facts about each other before we started?" (hopefully the answer will be "no") "By working together, we were able to learn more and we should do the same in our religious studies."

Bible Verse: Proverb 12:15 "The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto council is wise."