Resources

• a sheet of clean, unwrinkled paper.

What to do

• Give each youth a clean, unwrinkled sheet of paper.
• Ask the youth to close their eyes, and imagine this piece of paper represents the person in their life they love most.
• Order them to wrinkle it up into a ball.
• Then ask the youth smooth it out back to the way it was.
• “How do you feel?”

Take it to the Next Level

• • Who was the person you thought of when holding the piece of paper?
  • Were you hesitant to wrinkle up the paper? Did you find crumpling up the piece of paper difficult? Why or why not?
  • In what ways does this paper represent relationships in life?
  • Think about a time in your life when you felt like this wrinkled piece of paper? What happened?
  • How did you feel when you tried to restore this piece of paper to its original state?
  • Think about a time when you did something in a relationship and wished you could have set things back to the way they were before. What happened?
  • Why is it so difficult to repair damaged relationships?
  • What lessons does this simple object lesson hold for us when it comes to relationships in our own lives?

• In what ways do people ruin relationships?
• What can be done to put things back to the way they were?

The saying says “forgive and forget” but it is rarely that easy. In some relationships, people have greatly suffered physical, sexual and emotional abuse. How can they forgive? Sometimes we wonder, “How can I ever forgive this person for what s/he did to me?” How do we forgive? How do we receive forgiveness? How do we restore things back to the way they were?

It is impossible to smooth everything out when the paper has been damaged. Wrinkles and rough areas will remain. In the same way, when we take the important relationships in life lightly, there is a great potential for us to create rough areas and other areas that are difficult to smooth out. While forgiveness may take place, scars may still remain. Sometimes only God and time can repair the scars.

Things we do can damage our relationship with God AND with people. “Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, or his ear too dull to hear, but your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that He will not hear.” (Isaiah 59:1-2) “He who covers over an offense promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends.” (Proverbs 17:9)

But fortunately, God can mend broken hearts and he himself is forgiving and eternally loving. Sin has the same effect on our lives.. especially in the area of sexual purity. But when we go to God seeking forgiveness he restores the relationship with Him completely. We can find NEW life in Christ. In this lifetime there may still me some scars, but in the life to come everything will be made new. When we confess our sin, His blood washes us white as snow, and purifies us. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9) “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” (Isaiah 43:25)

And in the same way God forgives us, we need to forgive others. “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ, God forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:32)

MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”
200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.
Learn More…