Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD!
O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.
I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.
O Israel, hope in the LORD!
For with the LORD there is steadfast love,
and with him is plentiful redemption.
And he will redeem Israel
from all his iniquities. | Psalm 130
It’s nice to be a good girl or a good boy, isn’t it? When you are good you are happy. You can sing, you can run and jump and play.
But when you have been naughty, everybody is sad. Mom is sad, Dad is sad, and you are sad. Happiness is all gone.
Then why aren’t you good all the time?
Well, it’s hard to be good all the time.
Even grown-ups aren’t good all the time.
Why is it so hard to be good?
It is hard because we have sin in our hearts. You remember the story of Adam and Eve. Satan came to Eve and told her to disobey God. And Eve did disobey. She ate the fruit God had told her not to eat. Then sin came into the world. Sin spoiled God’s beautiful world. Now every baby is born with sin in its heart. Every boy and girl has a sinful heart. And grown-ups have sinful hearts too.
Do you remember why God made us? He made us to love Him, to praise Him, and to live for Him. And He tells us that we will be happy if we love and obey and praise Him.
But sin whispers naughty things in our hearts. Sin tells us to disobey. The sin in our hearts makes us grumpy and angry and selfish. Sin puts fun and play and other things first and we forget to put God first. God’s law says we must love Him best of all. Our hearts say, “Me first.”
God’s law says we must love each other. But we do not love each other as we should. We are selfish.
It is sinful to be selfish. It is sinful to be grumpy. It is sinful to tell lies and to steal. It is sinful to disobey Mom & Dad.
All these sinful things are deep down in our hearts. Sin comes from way deep down. And then we do what we want to do instead of doing what God wants us to do or what Dad and Mom want us to do. Sin is very strong in our hearts. Sometimes Satan even whispers in our hearts telling us to sin just as he told Eve to sin.
It makes us sad to think that sin is so strong deep down in our hearts and to think that all people sin against God.
Something to talk about
- Why should we be good?
- Why aren’t we good?
- Where does sin come from?
- Who can help us and make us good?
Memory verse
They have all fallen away;
together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one.| Psalm 53:3