Never Give Up
Liz, Lucille, and Scooter all try to be perfect—and they all fail. Scooter now thinks that God might just give up on him. Is Scooter right?
Before You ListenLet's Get Started
Theme: Trying to be perfect.
1. Philippians 1:6 shows that God can choose you to do good work. What good work has he chosen you to do?
2. In Mark 10:17-27, a man asked Jesus, “What can I do to have eternal life?” Jesus told him to follow the 10 commandments.The man replied that he had followed all the commandments for his whole life. But Jesus told him there was one more thing for him to do. Jesus said, “Go sell everything you own. Give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven. Then come with me.” The man loved all his wealth, so he went away gloomy and sad. He could not give up his stuff to follow Jesus. As you listen to this episode, think about how we can never do enough to be perfect.
After you listen
Memory Verse
“God is the one who began this good work in you, and I am certain that he won’t stop before it is complete on the day that Christ Jesus returns.”
Quiz
A: Liz wanted to read the Bible more; Lucille wanted to pray more; Scooter wanted to be better behaved.
Reflect
In this episode, Liz, Lucille, and Scooter all tried to be perfect—and they all failed. They thought they had to be perfect for God to love them. They forgot that the people in the Bible weren’t perfect, and God didn’t give up on them. Abraham didn’t trust God’s promise and had a son with a servant instead of Sarah. Jacob stole from his brother. Peter denied Jesus three times.
In Philippians 3:1-14, Paul gave a list of all the reasons why he was perfect. He was a circumcised Jew, of the tribe of Benjamin, followed the law perfectly. But then he continued, saying that he was missing something—Jesus. In Philippians 3:8b-9 he said, “Nothing is as wonderful as knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have given up everything else and count it all as garbage. All I want is Christ and to know that I belong to him. I could not make myself acceptable to God by obeying the Law of Moses. God accepted me simply because of my faith in Christ.” Perfection doesn’t give you eternal life; only faith in Christ can do that.
Want to dig deeper and learn more about God’s forgiveness? Check out 1 John 1:9, Isaiah 43:25-26, Acts 3:19.
Challenge
Find a partner and play the Mirror Game. Face each other and have one person be the leader. The other person has to try to do exactly what the leader does, as if she or he were looking in a mirror. Try slow movements at first and move to faster ones. Can you imitate perfectly? Can you imitate at all if you take your eyes off the leader? Jesus wants us to imitate him, but he knows that we can't do it perfectly. What matters is that we keep our eyes on him. He will help with the rest.
