Today on the podcast, Sean and Makenna speak about how you can begin to discuss lofty theological ideas with preteens.
They specifically are discussing this illustration that Elevate used to talk about justification, sanctification and glorification. The illustration uses a mirror and dirt and spray bottles to discuss the idea of these two theological concepts. Makenna shares what she used recently during the message to explain justification, sanctification and glorification to the preteens. During the message she used a wardrobe style mirror that was covered in coffee and dirt and it was pretty nasty. To explain justification, she noted that God doesn’t look at our reflection he looks at Jesus’ reflection. For this mirror the process of sanctification is squirting it with a spray bottle of cleaner which doesn’t take away everything, but bit by bit like God cleans away the dirt (sin) away so that we can reflect God better back to the world.
As Makenna squirted the mirror the coffee stain slowly trickled down and then used a paper towel to clean off one spot where God had removed the sin to show how much better we are able to reflect the light. For glorification Makenna used the same mirror but dumped a whole bucket of water onto it. To do this portion of the illustration she had the mirror inside of a large bucket to catch the water.
Illustrations can be a great step for preteens to be able to understand these lofty theological ideas. Here is a link to a previous podcast where we discussed this same idea.
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