Tray jousting
10 minutes
Arm your young people with rolled-up tubes of newspaper and baking trays. Holding the newspaper in one hand and balancing their tray on the palm of their other hand, they must use the newspaper to knock the tray out of their opponents’ hands without having theirs knocked off. Once their tray has been dropped, they’re out of the game. The winner is the last one holding their tray.
Opening questions
10 minutes
Ask the group to discuss:
- What times can you think of when life has felt like a battle?
- What sorts of things go wrong in our lives?
- What do we do when life starts to go wrong?
Read Ephesians 6:10-24 and ask what they think this passage has to say about tough times. Say: this passage asks what Christians do when things start to go wrong. There’s two key pieces of wisdom that it gives to help Christians face the worst parts of life:
- Know your enemy
- Know your armoury.
Know your enemy
10 minutes
Ask: Who does the passage say our enemy is? What do you think of that? Say: our default is to see the things that happen to us as the result of other people’s actions. But the Bible says there’s something bigger going on. When things go wrong, when we feel under attack, it may well be that there are people involved but the Bible says they are not the focus of our battle. There’s something spiritual going on (Ephesians 6:12).
Ask: What do you think of the idea that there’s a spiritual side to our troubles? Say: the Bible says there’s a spiritual battle we are living in but there’s a spiritual defence for us - spiritual armour to help us fight our day to day battles. (Sme of the spiritual warfare stuff in this passage may be really alien to your young people. If there’s not time to fully engage with this, why not include an additional session? The Youth Alpha film series on evil might be a good way to follow this up.)
Know your armoury
15 minutes
Say: This passage has a whole list of armour that it says God has given us to face our enemy in spiritual battles. Ask: why do you think God gives us armour? Why do you think the passage says we need to put on the full armour of God? What pieces of armour does the passage say we receive?
Ask: If you can make some armour that would be great. If not, draw each piece of armour in the passage onto A1 paper. Hand the young people post-it notes and pens and invite them to go round each piece of armour , answering these questions:
- How does this help when life is tough?
- How do you get hold of this piece of armour? What do you need to do to put it on?
Invite them to feedback to the group then ask: can you think of a time you’ve been under pressure and used the armour of God? What difference does it make? How about a time when you didn’t use the armour? How did it feel to be without it?
What would you do?
10 minutes
Split into small groups, give each group a scenario (examples below) and invite them to discuss these questions:
- What would happen if the person was not armed with the armour of God and what if they were?
- Which piece of armour would be most useful to them?
Scenarios
You’re feeling completely overwhelmed by the pressure of school work and you’ve just received another piece of homework to do for tomorrow.
- You look in the mirror and feel rubbish. All you can hear is a little voice in your head telling you you’re not good enough.
- You’re finding yourself really tempted to watch pornography.
- Everything around you feels like it’s falling apart - you’re having a huge fight with your parents, your friends won’t speak to you and you just got detention for something you didn’t do.
- A girl in your class has started spreading rumours about you.
- The doctor has told you that you can’t play your favourite sport for six months.
- You’ve messed up again in faith and done something you know God wouldn’t approve of. Now you just feel rubbish.
Get feedback from the groups. If they have a flair for the dramatic, why not get them to act out the two different outcomes of the scenario: one if the person is armed with the armour of God and one if they’re not?
Say: God knows the scale of the challenges we face in life. He doesn’t abandon us to fight them without his help. He offers us a whole range of ways of protecting and arming ourselves to stand firm. But we have a choice - will we pick them up and use them or will be ignore them, forget them or overlook them?
Ask: (don’t expect them to answer this aloud): on a scale of 1-10 how good are you at wearing the armour of God when life is tough?
Get armed, stand firm
5 minutes
Ask the young people to call to mind an area of life where things are complicated right now. Challenge them to think of what piece of the armour they need to put on to face what’s challenging. Ask them to write or draw on a post-it note the piece of armour they need to pick up and encourage them to keep it throughout the week as a reminder.
Have a moment of silence for them to ask God to help them pick up this armour and be by their side in their battle. Read these slightly altered words from Ephesians 6:23-24 as a prayer: ‘Lord, give us, brothers and sisters in Christ, peace in our battles. Give us love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ as we face what is difficult. Please show us, who love you with an undying love, grace every day. Amen.’
Sarah Percival Long is youth adviser for the diocese of Winchester and a volunteer youth worker.
