Over The Top Week 2- Give the Good News

WHAT? What are we talking about today?

VIDEO | A Clip from Cobra Kai

We are in a series called Over the Top, where we're finding out that generosity has to do with much more than our finances. To do that, we need help from an unlikely source: Sensei Johnny Lawrence from Cobra Kai.

INSTRUCTIONS: As a teaching tool, play a short clip (0:22–0:50) from Cobra Kai Season 1 Episode 8, where karate teacher Johnny Lawrence of the Cobra Kai dojo puts his students through some unorthodox training methods.

ACTIVITY | Hand Karate

Sensei Lawrence wants us to know we must listen to his teaching to become the best. So, let's see if you learned anything with a game!

INSTRUCTIONS: For this activity, you won't need anything but space to spread out. Have students pair up and stand 1–2 feet apart, facing each other with their feet together and their palms touching their partners. On "Go," partners try to make the other player move their feet by only pushing their opponent's hands. Touching anywhere else, moving feet, falling, or interfering means they are out! The winner of each round moves on to find a new player to battle against until only one is left.

Note: To keep everyone involved, have students that lose follow and cheer for the person who beat them . The final two players battling will have cheering sections. Before the final round, encourage students to shout out their winning strategies.

What I loved about this game was how you all shouted helpful tips for how to win. Like Sensei Lawrence, you were generous with your experiences to help the final contestants. Did you notice you were giving away something, but it wasn't money? It was your experience and advice!

QUESTION | "What was something you saw this week that you told someone else about?"

INSTRUCTIONS: Ask the previous question and allow a few students to respond.

We give our experiences away all the time. For example, we have all seen a hilarious or mind-blowing video, and we most likely shared that video with someone else.

What was something you saw this week that you told someone else about?

Even if we're not experts on what we saw, experiencing something incredible made us want to share it. Not only does this help us feel known, but we also want others to share in a similar experience that we had. We naturally want our friends to learn about things we enjoy or love. And they want the same for us. This is another way we can be generous outside of money. We can give away our knowledge and experience. And if Jesus transforms our life, why wouldn't we share that experience?

SO WHAT? Why does it matter to God and to us?

VIDEO | An Extreme Reading of 1 Thessalonians 2:9–13

INSTRUCTIONS: have a volunteer read the passage of scripture every week in extreme sports safety gear. We suggest giving them a fun name like "Extreme Eric or Erica: Safety Expert" and having them re-occur weekly. Since we are looking at Martial Arts this week, they could wear a Cobra Kai costume with a safety helmet. We think having them, do crane kicks on a chair while reading would be funny.

SCRIPTURE | 1 Thessalonians 2:9–13

An early Christian leader, Paul helps us see how we can expand our understanding of generosity in a letter he wrote to a community of Jesus' followers in the ancient city of Thessalonica. He wanted them to remember to follow Jesus from his experience when he lived with them.

INSTRUCTIONS: Read 1 Thessalonians 2:9–13

1 Thessalonians 2:9–13 NIV

Surely you remember, brothers and sisters, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you. You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous and blameless we were among you who believed. For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory. And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.

This community experienced and received Paul as a teacher. He reminds them of this and encourages them to live like he lived when he was with them. It might sound like he is full of himself, but Paul didn't think he had everything together. He claimed to be someone trying to follow Jesus as his goal, and he wanted this community to do the same.

He encouraged the people to care for those around them in a way that reveals who Jesus is through unconditional care and without belittling anyone they serve. He showed them, by example, that they are to love and care for each other and their neighbors, as a caring, compassionate parent or caregiver might care for a child. The most crucial thing Paul gives away is the good news of who Jesus is and how to live like him. Paul reminds them that he shared the good news of Jesus with them. He didn't just tell them the good news, he showed them what it looked like to live it out by living with them and caring for them. Paul generously gave everything away by showing and telling the Thessalonians what it looked like to follow Jesus.

I think it's helpful to remember he didn't have to do that . . . he chose to respond to God and what he knew to be true by sharing it with others, and we have that choice, as well. Any of us can choose to respond like Paul. If God's love is central to our lives, we will naturally want to share it. When you pair that with caring for others by generously giving your time like we saw Paul did last week, you probably won't teach them in a way that lectures or looks down on them. You'll share the good news by pointing others to the truth of who Jesus is in your experience.

SCRIPTURE | Matthew 9:23–25

Paul shows us that we want others to experience and encounter Jesus' love the same way we have because we know what difference he has made in our lives. There is a story in the book of Matthew about a family who had an experience with Jesus that was so over the top that they went and told everyone about it. After healing someone in his hometown of Capernaum, Jesus encounters a local religious leader with a sick daughter on the verge of death. In a last-ditch effort to help her, the man had sought Jesus out, but his daughter died while he was out looking for him.

INSTRUCTIONS: Read Matthew 9:23–25

Matthew 9:23–25 NIV

When Jesus entered the synagogue leader’s house and saw the noisy crowd and people playing pipes, he said, “Go away. The girl is not dead but asleep.” But they laughed at him. After the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up.

For those familiar with Jesus' stories, even this one is extreme. The family would have been sure this little girl had passed before they would have called they called musicians to play music to mourn her death. So why does Jesus respond, even before examining her, that "she wasn't dead but asleep?"

Some religious laws in those days said God's people were not supposed to touch or interact with dead things, and because of this, the girl and her family were in a tough place. Everyone thought she was dead. So if Jesus raises her from the dead, as we know he will do, how do these laws apply to her? Imagine how hard and complicated that would make her life. Would people touch or interact with her? Would anyone want to play or be friends with the zombie girl from Capernaum? Jesus saved her from all those problems and questions by declaring she wasn't dead. Not only did he rescue her at that moment, but he was also looking out for her future. He wanted her to have a life filled with good and beautiful things. When we receive Jesus' salvation, like this little girl, he gives us a new life and future. If we have had this experience, naturally, we would want others to.

SCRIPTURE | Matthew 9:26

When people experience the transformational work of Jesus, they want to share it. Look at how the story ends.

INSTRUCTIONS: Read Matthew 9:26

Matthew 9:26 NIV

News of this spread through all that region.

The people who witnessed this didn't keep it to themselves, write in their journals or pray quietly (okay, maybe they did all of those things too), but the point is they talked about it . . . a lot, so much that the news spread. Our love for Jesus and others often looks like this kind of generosity. When we experience the love of God, we start to feel this same generosity growing in us that leads us to share the good news. Those of us who know Jesus had someone in our lives who was generous enough to share the good news of Jesus with us and invite us to experience a transformative life of following Jesus.

IMAGE | Bruce Lee, Master Teacher

When we think about teaching others, we can tend to only think about a formal classroom scenario. It can be that, but it can also be much simpler. Teaching is simply sharing something you know or have experienced with others. Bruce Lee is an icon of martial arts and the first leading actor of Chinese descent to star in a major Hollywood production. He was undisputedly the most famous martial artist of his time and perhaps ever, and when you're a master at something, lots of people want to learn from you.

INSTRUCTIONS: As you teach, show the slide in Week 2 of this week's series materials.

When he taught others, he had a specific way he thought was most effective. He said: "A teacher is never a giver of truth; he is a guide, a pointer to the truth that each student must find for himself." Bruce Lee was on to something. Sharing the good news is less about dispensing facts and more about telling others about our experience with Jesus with our words and showing them Jesus in how we live. As we do our part, Jesus takes over and is the one who leads them to encounter him for themselves. That means the pressure is off! It means we can generously tell people the Good News of Jesus and what he is doing in our lives and let Jesus take it from there. It means we can...

be generous by sharing the good news.

NOW WHAT? What does God want us to do about it?

STORY | The Teacher Who Guided Me To The Truth

When we share the good news, it's because we want what's best for the person we're sharing it with. That's what Jesus wants, too.

INSTRUCTIONS: Share a time when someone shared the good news about Jesus with you. Was the person who shared perfect or had everything together? Talk about how they demonstrated the good news with how they lived. Talk about how they wanted you to encounter the truth for yourself. How did hearing what that person shared to encourage you to be generous with the good news?

*Scott w/Katy Hudson (Perry)

Scott Collins was I guy that I group up with in youth group. Unlike a lot of us in that group, Scott was a truly committed Christian.

The Real Deal.

I never saw him waiver.

He always loved the Lord and didn’t really care about what other people thought was popular like partying, dating a bunch of girls, all that stuff.

And although he knew that myself and others in that youth group were out there doing all kinds of stupid, ungodly things, he never tried to chastise or judge us.

He just preached the Good News of Jesus Christ with his life.

*Pic of Scott now

Scott wasn’t perfect. He came from a broken home, but he had a mom named Mitsy who kept him in church and taught him God’s Word.

Scott has been an Army Chaplain and Nazarene Pastor for a few decades now, and I’ve never seen or heard anything but good, godly character from him from the time he was a teenager until now.

In the passage we looked at today, we saw that as we encounter and are transformed by Jesus, the desire to share his good news will naturally flow from us. Here are three questions you can ask to help you get started.

WHY IS JESUS GOOD NEWS TO ME?

Last week we saw that being honest about how we spend our time is crucial. We also need to be honest about who Jesus is to us. We need to ask questions about whether we think the story of Jesus is good news in our lives and be able to say why.

HOW IS JESUS HEALING ME?

Just like the girl in Matthew's story and the lives of the Thessalonians, God is working in your life to make beauty and goodness happen. Those are the places where we can see the good news working in our lives and share that experience with others.

WHAT IS ONE STORY I CAN SHARE THIS WEEK?

Find something God is doing in your life, and share the good news about how Jesus transforms you. Some weeks will be challenging, and finding a story to share will be hard, but it will feel like there are too many good news stories during other weeks.

REFLECTION | My Story With God

Let's take some time and put those questions into practice. I often feel like I need to have everything together or be an expert in spiritual things before I tell people about Jesus, but that isn't true. We don't have to be experts. We can kindly, lovingly, and graciously share what we know and have experienced in our life of following Jesus. It is a simple way to be generous in another way besides money.

INSTRUCTIONS: For this reflection, you will need the handout in Week 2 of this week's series materials and something for students to write with. Ask students to fill out the sheet whether they follow Jesus or not. These questions may be challenging, but they are there to help the students reflect on why they think the story of Jesus is good news.

RESPONSE | Sharing Good News

We want to allow you an opportunity to generously share the good news of what God is doing in your life.

INSTRUCTIONS: You will need tape or push pins to attach people's reflection cards for this response. Use the aesthetic elements included in the series branding to create a large space on a wall or on a poster board for students to hang their stories. We have included a space to do this in the room design for this series if you want to use it. Invite students who feel comfortable to tape or pin their cards to the wall and spend time reading the stories people put up.

ACTIVITY | Over The Top Challenge

INSTRUCTIONS: If you haven’t already, this is a great time to discuss the Over the Top Challenge. The instructions and files can be found in the Fall Discipleship section of your curriculum dashboard. It is important to be generous in all areas of our lives. That is why we have the ongoing "Over the Top Challenge."

Let's allow God to show us how to

be generous by sharing the good news.