Object Lesson on Perseverance - Sealed Jar

Use this object lesson on perseverance to teach kids that they can trust God to get them through everything.

Object Needed: Sealed Jar

Big Idea: Trust in God.

We've included the text for this object lesson below and we even recorded a video to help give you ideas for how to teach it.  Enjoy watching!

Perseverance Object Lesson Script

Have any of you ever gone to the pantry to get some jelly or a pickle and couldn't open the jar? It's pretty frustrating, isn't it? You're hungry and the only thing separating you from a nice peanut butter and jelly sandwich or crunchy pickle is a tiny piece of metal on top of a jar. Thankfully for you guys, there's something you can do with that tightly sealed jar. If it won't open for you what do you do?

You take it to mom and dad. A grown-up with bigger hands and more arm strength is like the Mighty Eagle on a tight lid. If you can't open it, mom probably can. If she can't open it, dad probably can, and if dad can't open it, well dad will probably find some other creative way to get it open. Some situations in life are like the stuck jar. You can try and try all you want but you can never get it to work out the way you want it to.

It'd be so nice to have God come flying down from the sky and save the day, but God doesn't work that way. Sometimes God has a plan in the waiting and the struggling that we can't see when we're in the middle of it. Take the story of Joseph for example. Joseph was sold into slavery and then tossed into prison. God could have crashed into that prison and sprung him out anytime, but if God had done all that, Joseph would not have been at the right place and the right time to save Egypt and his family from a famine.

If God was in the business of saving us every time things went wrong, we would never learn anything ourselves. We just sit back and wait for the quick and easy rescue, and never learn to trust in the Lord ourselves. We never learned to soar on our own. The next time you come across a stuck jar. take a moment to thank God for the way he teaches us to trust in Him through waiting. Ask him to give you perseverance and to prepare you to do his will then go find mom and dad to help you.

Looking for more?  Be sure to view our entire collection of 52 Bible object lessons for kids and children's sermons.