I have been doing the kids work at church over August and tied it in with the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow to use physical discipline to teach the kids about spiritual discipline. I wrote this to explain the journey we have been on for the rest of the church family and my daughter read it out:

“I would like to tell you about what we  have been doing in Sunday School, or as we call it BCB – Blairgowrie Church Bunch. Over the last few weeks we have been looking at the Commonwealth games and what it takes to succeed as an athlete. We started by thinking about Eric Liddell, the Christian sprinter who a gold medal at the 1924 Paris Olympics. We watched a clip of Chariots of Fire where he speaks about the running the race of life with God.

We discussed what you need to do to be a good athlete – eat right, drink well, exercise, sleep and warm up. We then thought about what we need to do to be spiritually strong – listen to God, speak to him, go to church, help other people. We compared physical disciple to spiritual disciple and worked on The Tree of Discipline.

We thought that praying was like eating – because it is vital to keep us strong and healthy. We wrote prayers on wrapping paper and wrapped them round a chocolate bar. We thought about the verse, “His delight is in the law of The Lord, and on his law he mediates day and night, he shall be like a tree planted by springs of water.”

Then we all took a turn to be blindfolded and taste different drinks – we had to say which we liked the best and which we recognised. We thought that drinking was like bible reading because it refreshes us and satisfies our thirst for God. The verse we thought about was “taste and see that The Lord is good.”

We also thought about the importance of silence and solitude and compared it to the importance of sleep for athletes. We played sleeping lions and we so good we all came first. We thought about the verse in Luke 5.14 when Jesus “went out often to desolate place to pray”.

We thought about how adrenaline helps athletes get extra help to go faster for longer or run away. We compared it to the. Holy Spirit that makes the bible and prayer come alive. We thought about what happens when you add the Holy Spirit to a Christian and compared it to adding Mentos to Diet Coke. We sneaked outside to do our experiment and made the coke explode like a volcano! Our verse was Jesus’ conversation in John 4 when he says: “rivers of living water will flow from within them”.

Thank you for your attention and please ask us about what we have been learning. Thank you for praying for us, and for making us feel part of your family.”