Objective: To teach instant and cheerful obedience.

You will need: Copies of “ticket”.

Set up: Any setup to resemble a door or an entrance. Cut the tickets along the lines, fold them so that the content of the ticket is not seen outside and put them in a box.

How to play: Shuffle the tickets. Ask each child to pick up one ticket from the box. Instruct the children not to open the tickets until you tell them to. Each ticket will have a name of an animal. The children have to find their pair, run to the entrance of the ark (make sure to mark a place as the entrance of the ark), imitate the animal in their ticket with their partner and get into the ark before the ark door closes. The ark door will close within 30 seconds.

Explanation:

Begin by saying, “In order to get into the ark and be safe, you had to act immediately. God also wants us to obey right away! How often do you say “later, mom!”, “Just 5 minutes and I’ll do it, dad” to our parents when they ask us to do something. We must respond quickly to instructions and directions given to us. Noah started working on the Ark immediately after God gave him the instructions. And that is why he was able to finish constructing the ark before the flood. This is called INSTANT OBEDIENCE.”

“God also wants us to obey cheerfully without grumbling, complaining, questioning and whining. Often we look at what our parents/elders want us to do and argue. “Mom, I don’t want to do that.” “Dad, it is too hard.” “Mom, that seems so mean.” “Teacher, can’t I just do this little bit, won’t it be enough?”

Noah had a lot of instructions to follow and yet, he did not complain. This is called CHEERFUL OBEDIENCE.”

“So the 4 keys of obedience are complete obedience, constant obedience, instant obedience and cheerful obedience. If we leave one or more aspects of these out, we are not truly obeying. True obedience comprises of all the 4 keys.”

End by saying, “Each time you obey God’s commandments, you can find protection and blessings from Him just as Noah did.”