Free Preteen Lesson on Seeing People the Way God Does
Here’s a free lesson for your preteen ministry on seeing people the way God does!
In this lesson, students will explore the story of Jonah and discover that God’s love and compassion extend to every person … even the people we don’t understand, like, or agree with.
Preteens will learn that every person is created with value, deeply cared for by God, and worthy of dignity and compassion. Through Jonah’s story, students will be challenged to look beyond labels and see others the same way God does.
(This lesson comes from Salty – check out the full series breakdown here.)
Looking for preteen ministry curriculum? Check out our latest bundle!
One Year Preteen Bundle – Image Bearers Edition: Get a full year of preteen ministry curriculum designed to help 4th-6th graders own their faith and follow Jesus with confidence.
FREE PRETEEN LESSON ON SEEING PEOPLE THE WAY GOD DOES
Lesson: God’s Lesson for Jonah (From the Salty Series)
Bible: Jonah 1:1-3, Jonah 4:2
Bottom Line: God creates every person with value, cares for them deeply, and calls us to see others the same way He does.
SUPPLIES
Opening Game:
- 20 game-board style spaces across your game area. Each space should be marked with something like a piece of paper, a line of tape, or cone.
- A checkpoint at space number 10. The checkpoint could be a different color paper, tape, or cone.
- 1-2 dice
Small Group Activity:
- A small slip of blank paper for each preteen
- A pen or pencil for each preteen
- 1 bucket, basket, or container for each small group
- Optional: Add a label to each container that says “Forgiveness”
OPENING GAME
Objective: To introduce the feeling of risk that Jonah may have felt toward following God’s directions.
Game Prep:
Set out 20 game-board style spaces across your game area. Each space should be marked with something like a piece of paper, a line of tape, or a cone.
Put a checkpoint at space number 10. The checkpoint could be a different color paper, tape, or cone.
The game leader will need 1-2 dice to roll.
How to Play the Game:
In this game, players will take a chance saying “yes” or “no” to moving forward along the game play area at the risk that they may move too far, according to a dice roll. The first player to reach the end point exactly wins.
Select four players to play the game and have them stand at the beginning space of the playing area.
SAY: Today, we are going to play a game called, “Who Will Go?”
The goal of the game is to get from the starting spot all the way to the finish line at the end of the game board.
Each round, I’m going to roll a die.
That will decide how many spaces everyone will move forward.
But there is a twist!
Before I roll the die, I’ll ask all our players a question: “Will you go?”
Each player will need to give me a yes or no answer before I reveal the dice roll.
Whoever says yes will move forward as many spaces as the dice roll, and whoever says no will stay where they are.
But be aware, if you say you will go and the number I roll would move you past the finish line, you’ll have to go all the way back to the closest checkpoint!
The first person to get to the last space exactly and not past it is our winner!
Optional: Introduce a second die that would increase their chances of moving too far.
TEACH
SAY: Thanks for playing “Who Will Go”!
Now that our game is complete, it’s time to go deeper into God’s Word together.
Raise your hand if you will say “yes” to go along with me as we journey into today’s lesson.
Allow preteens to raise their hands.
SAY: You can put your hands down.
I’m glad that you are willing to go deeper into God’s Word and grow in Him today.
Everyone who raised their hand is like the players in the game who were brave and ready to go forward.
But during the game, there were also moments when it felt risky for the players to go forward.
There were times when the players were unsure if they were ready to take another step or if it was better to stay put.
Something very similar happened to Jonah, a prophet that we can read about in the book of …
ASK: What was that book called again?
Pause for preteens to shout “Jonah.”
SAY: Right, Jonah.
In the very beginning of Jonah’s story, God asks Jonah to go somewhere.
Let’s look at the beginning of Jonah’s story together in Jonah 1:1-3:
1 The LORD gave this message to Jonah son of Amittai:
2 “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh. Announce my judgment against it because I have seen how wicked its people are.”
3 But Jonah got up and went in the opposite direction to get away from the LORD. He went down to the port of Joppa, where he found a ship leaving for Tarshish. He bought a ticket and went on board, hoping to escape from the LORD by sailing to Tarshish.
SAY: God asked Jonah, “Will you go?” … and Jonah said, “NO!”
In fact, Jonah wanted to get so far away from Nineveh that he went in the opposite direction, got on a boat, and tried to hide from God.
Unlike our game players, he was not willing to take any steps forward when God asked him to.
To figure out why Jonah went the opposite direction, we need to take a closer look at what God was asking Jonah to do in the first place.
In the beginning of the book of Jonah, God tells Jonah to “get up and go to the great city of Nineveh.”
The city of Nineveh wasn’t called “great” because it was fun to visit.
It was called “great” because it was big in size and had a powerful status in the ancient world.
It was known as a place full of wickedness, which is why God asked Jonah to go and announce His judgment over them.
Here’s the thing about God’s message of judgment …
When God announces His judgment over a group of people in the Bible, there are two possible outcomes.
The first outcome is that a group of people get a warning that their evil and wickedness is unacceptable to God, and then He completely destroys them.
But the other outcome is that a group of people get a message of God’s judgment, and they change their ways.
In this case, they ask God to forgive them, and God saves them from destruction.
ASK: What do you think God wanted to happen to the evil Ninevites? Destruction or change?
Allow preteens to respond.
SAY: Jonah thought that God wanted to save them.
In Jonah chapter 4, Jonah reveals exactly what he was thinking that very moment when God first asked him to go to Nineveh.
Let’s read Jonah 4:2:
2 So he complained to the LORD about it: “Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, LORD? That is why I ran away to Tarshish! I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people.”
SAY: Jonah knew that what God ultimately wanted was for the Ninevites to be saved and change their evil ways.
But Jonah was a little salty about God’s plan.
ASK: Who remembers what it means to feel salty about something?
Call on a preteen to remind the group that salty means something like annoyed, bitter, or frustrated.
SAY: Jonah was feeling salty about God’s plan and frustrated by what was happening in Nineveh.
ASK: What do you think Jonah wanted to happen to the evil Ninevites? Destruction or forgiveness?
Allow preteens to respond.
SAY: Jonah thought that the Ninevites deserved destruction, not a second chance.
He just couldn’t imagine a world where those evil Ninevites could ever worship God!
So, Jonah tried to run away from his mission to Nineveh by getting on a ship headed to Tarshish, but there was a massive storm all around them.
The sailors were terrified and didn’t know what to do, but Jonah realized that his disobedience to God was the reason there was a storm.
More than that, Jonah realized that the only way to stop the storm was for the sailors to throw him off the boat.
The storm was so strong, the sailors had no choice but to listen to Jonah and throw him into the stormy sea.
Immediately, the storm stopped and the sailors were amazed, praising God!
But Jonah was in the water with a great surprise.
Jonah 1:17 says that “the LORD had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights.”
Jonah spent three days and three nights in a giant fish as big as a whale!
It was a horrible experience, but Jonah survived because God wasn’t done with Jonah.
He was spit out of the fish and finally ready to obey God’s directions for him.
He went to Nineveh and told them that their city was going to be destroyed.
When the Ninevite king heard about God’s judgment of their choices, He was very distressed.
The king called for everyone to turn away from their evil ways and stop all their violence.
And the people of Nineveh listened, hoping that maybe God would see their change of heart and hold back His punishment.
Remember what Jonah said about God in Jonah 4:2?
Jonah said that God was:
- Merciful
- Compassionate
- Slow to get angry
- Filled with unfailing love
- Eager to turn back from destroying people
God acted just like Jonah thought He would by holding back destruction and showing the city of Nineveh mercy.
Jonah totally called it!
At the end of Jonah’s story, God and Jonah have very different attitudes about what happened to the Ninevites.
God was rejoicing that so many people were saved, but Jonah was salty and bitter that the city of Nineveh wasn’t destroyed.
So, who had the right attitude?
That might sound like a silly question.
Obviously, God always has the right attitude about things.
But sometimes people struggle with pride, thinking that their way is the right way.
Jonah had this struggle.
He thought that the way he was thinking about other people was right.
But God actually had an important lesson to teach Jonah.
Every person is lovingly created by God, and that makes every single person valuable to God.
That means that everyone is worthy of His care and His love.
Even if they make mistakes, nothing can take away how valuable people are to God.
That’s the truth.
No matter how we feel about other people, the truth is that God created them, He cares about them, and He wants them to know His love.
That’s why God sent Jonah to warn the Ninevites that they were heading for destruction.
The Ninevites were people that God really wanted to save – they just needed to hear a message from God to turn things around!
Jonah only saw the wickedness and evil of the Ninevites, but God saw what they could become.
Here’s the lesson God had for Jonah – and it’s our lesson too:
God creates every person with value, He cares for them deeply, and He calls us to see others the same way He does.
Sometimes we can be like Jonah, thinking that the way we feel about people is the right way.
Maybe it’s seeing other students at school acting up and labeling them as “bad kids” like they could never possibly do the right thing.
Or maybe it’s “joking” about something bad happening to someone when they hurt your feelings or disagree with you.
We can really get it wrong when we …
- Call people names
- Write mean comments on someone’s video
- Talk badly behind someone’s back
- Are rude to someone
We get it wrong any time we look at people with pride instead of with God’s love.
If you ever start to feel a little salty about people, remember how God sees them.
Then we can start to care about people like God does!
The book of Jonah highlights how God creates every person with value, cares for them deeply, and calls us to see others the same way He does.
Over the next few weeks as we continue to explore Jonah’s story, you’ll see that this amazing love God has for all people is the kind of love He wants us to have for others too.
SMALL GROUP ACTIVITY
In this activity, preteens will write the name of a person or people that are hard for them to love on one side of a paper and write their own name on the other side. They will be invited to put their paper in a bucket representing forgiveness after they consider that God wants to forgive everyone listed on their paper – including themselves and those that are hard to love.
SAY: Sometimes God invites people like Jonah on a journey to fix how they think about God and others.
Right now, God has a mini journey for us too, to help us start to see people the way that He does.
Pass out a piece of paper and pencil / pen to each preteen in your small group.
SAY: On this piece of paper, write down a person or a group of people that would be hard for you to show love to.
Maybe you can even think of someone in today’s world that acts like a Ninevite!
We’re not going to share these names with each other – this is just between you and God.
Pause for preteens to think and write.
SAY: Maybe you wrote down a bully’s name, or maybe you wrote something like “people who scam other people out of money.”
There are all kinds of people in our world that can be tough to love.
Now, on the other side of your paper, we are going to write the name of one more person who has made mistakes and isn’t perfect all the time.
I want you to write your own name.
I know that sometimes it’s hard to admit, but no one is perfect.
Everyone has sinned.
We all fall short of God’s perfection and glory.
ASK: Who in here would like to be forgiven by God for all the ways you have sinned?
Encourage all the preteens to raise their hands.
SAY: I have great news for you!
God wants you to be forgiven.
Some of you have already received God’s forgiveness by admitting that you have sinned and believing that Jesus’s death on the cross paid the price for your forgiveness.
Here I have a bucket to represent people who can be forgiven by God.
ASK: How many of you would like to put your name in the bucket?
Encourage all the preteens to raise their hands.
SAY: That’s great, I want to enjoy God’s forgiveness too.
But if I want my name to be in the forgiveness bucket, I have to understand that the person I wrote down on the other side of my paper has a chance to be forgiven too!
It’s not just the people in this room who God wants to forgive – it’s all the people we wrote down that God wants to forgive too!
That’s why God says that those who want forgiveness from Him need to show forgiveness to others too.
You can find this in Matthew 6:14-15 if you want to dig deeper with your preteens.
SAY: We have to remember that God creates every person with value, cares for them deeply, and calls us to see others the same way He does.
If you want to put your name in the forgiveness bucket right now, start by praying that God would save and forgive the other names that you wrote down first, and then put your paper in the bucket!Allow preteens to pause and pray, then put their paper in the forgiveness bucket.
SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- Why didn’t Jonah want to go to Nineveh, even though God told him to?
- What is a time when you didn’t want to do something even though you knew it was the right thing to do? Why was it hard to do?
- What do you think Jonah was feeling while he was running away from God?
- Why do you think God gave the people of Nineveh a chance to change instead of destroying them?
- How would you feel if you were one of the Ninevites who heard God was going to forgive you instead of destroy you?
- What does the story of Jonah show us about how God sees people, even when they make bad choices?
- What do you think would have happened if the Ninevites heard God’s message of judgment but kept doing what they were doing?
- Why do you think God gave Jonah a second chance to go speak to the Ninevites instead of destroying him in the storm or the great fish?
- What would you tell someone who thinks that their ideas and plans are better than God’s ideas and plans?
- If God sent you to a person or a group of people in our world that needed to hear His message today, how easy would it be for you to say “yes” to His mission for you on a scale from 1 to 10 (1 being it would be almost impossible and 10 being super easy)? Why?
End Lesson
Looking for preteen ministry curriculum? Check out our latest bundle!
One Year Preteen Bundle – Image Bearers Edition: Get a full year of preteen ministry curriculum designed to help 4th-6th graders own their faith and follow Jesus with confidence.