Christ Strengthens Me – Straw Through Potato

What You Need:

• A couple of potatoes
• Regular straw (preferably without the flexible neck) – a couple of these is recommended because the likelihood of one breaking is extremely high
• A glove or two (although this video doesn’t use them it is advisable for the children you have help you to use one)

About the Lesson:

This lesson uses simple household items to talk about how God makes us so much more strong than we are on our own.   You are unable to shove a straw through a potato unless you know the secret.

Lesson:

Today we’re going to have a contest. I’m going to challenge one of you to come up and see which of us can do what sounds like a pretty simple challenge.

When they come up, have them put a glove on their left-hand (assuming that they are right-handed)

The challenge for today is to see which one of us can put this straw completely through one of these potatoes. I will give you one full minute for you to do it and then it will be my turn.

Start the timer and to add some extra excitement, play some exciting music. After the time is up you will find that they very likely have done nothing more than break their straw and put a few nicks in the potatoes.

Now you did a good job, and there is absolutely nothing for you to be ashamed about. You did the best you could with what you had but you are lacking something very important. Does anyone know what that is?

It is the help of God. Yes, whenever we have a difficult task ahead of us and we do not think that we have the ability to complete the task we should call on God. He will give us strength to do things that on our own we are unable to do.

But God is not a servant on call that is there to do our bidding whenever we need Him. We have to do our part as well.

We must live for Him, pray, read our Bible, go to church and do the best we can to show Him that we love Him. If we do that, He will do more for us than you can even imagine. He can give us the ability to do things that we are completely unable to do on our own. Like this….

Put the glove on your hand and pick up the straw. Try not to make it obvious that you are putting your thumb over the end of the straw and then quickly jam the straw hard and fast into the potato. You will find that it completely goes through without breaking. The straw now has the strength to do this once the end is plugged.

Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

We are so much stronger with God than we are on our own.

Note: Another way to present this is to talk about how when you plug the leaks in your life by repenting and getting rid of the sin in our lives, that we are strengthened.