tNCC Family Camp 2012: God Counts Us — We Matter to God – TNCC

20th August 2010

Session 1: God Counts Us — We Matter to God

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1. Icebreaker: Numbers games

Separate kids into 2 teams. Prepare post-its or sticker labels with numbers on them. Paste randomly on the back of each kid. At the word “Go!”, each team need to arrange themself accordingly to numbers 1 to 20. The team that arranges themselves fastest wins!

2. Hook: Count the number of …

Show various slides of objects for kids to count, e.g. sheep, jellybeans, coins etc.
For older kids, you may want to add in trickier counting puzzles, e.g. number of Fs in a sentence etc
Counting may seem easy at times. And not so easy other times. Some things are seemingly uncountable.
- Like the sands on the seashore … or in this pail. How many grains of sands are there?
- Or the stars in the heavens
  - The human eye can see about 3,000 stars on a clear sky
  - A small telescope can see about 100,000 stars
  - The Milky Way Galaxy has about 100 billion stars
  - There are about 100 billion galaxies out there
  - Estimate of about 10 billion trillion stars (10 with 21 zeroes!)

3. Lesson: God Counts …
A. Stars

It would seem impossible to count the number of stars, but do you know who can? God! Why? Because He made them!
He not just made them and counts them but He knows their names!
- Psalm 147:4 He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.
- Isaiah 40:26
  Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
  Who created all these?
  He who brings out the starry host one by one
  and calls forth each of them by name.
  Because of his great power and mighty strength,
  not one of them is missing.

Can you imagine God calling each star out one by one, by their names. He looks after each one. He knows when they are formed and when they fade away. All 10 billion trillion of them! And not one of them is missing.
If God can keep count of ALL the stars in the heavens, surely He can keep count of everything, including you and me. Why? Because we matter to Him.

B. Sheep

In Luke 15:1-7, Jesus tells the parable of Lost Sheep.
- A shepherd had 100 sheep. One gets lost. One out of a hundred. If I had a hundred sheep and one gets lost, I’d be upset, but I wouldn’t bother going to hunt for it. After all, I have 99 others. But the shepherd goes. He leaves the 99 in the pen, and goes hunting for the one lost sheep. He looks, and He calls, and He climbs up and down into the dark night until He finds one lost sheep. He rescues the sheep, brings it home and gets the whole town together to celebrate. For one sheep. Because it mattered to Him.
- Jesus, our Good Shepherd, came down to earth to save the lost sheep. He searched for us, He found us, and He brought us back safely with lots of rejoicing. Because we matter to Him.

C. Hairs on our head

Luke 12:7 Even the hairs on your head are numbered.
The average person has about 100,000 hairs on their scalp. They shed about 50-100 hairs a day.
I’m always a bit fixated on the hairs on my head. Every time I wake up in the morning or when I wash my hair, I drop a lot of hair. And I’d get worried. But there’s no way I can keep track and count how many are on my head, how many drop and how many grow. But I know that my Heavenly Father knows exactly how many there are. Because I matter to Him.

God counts us … because we matter to Him

At this camp, there are hundreds of people. In this room, there are about 40 people. Each and every one of you belongs to Jesus, and you matter to Him.
He counts you because He loves you.
And because of that, we can all count on Him always.
This weekend, when you go to the beach and play in the sand, when you look up at the skies tonight, when you comb your hair at night, remember … God counts every single grain of sand, every single star and every single hair. Because they all matter to Him. We all matter to Him. Amen!

4. Closing song: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (sang to tune of “Once I caught a fish alive”)

tNCC Family Camp 2012: God Counts Us — We Matter to God