We hope you enjoyed your lesson on the Released Time trailer this month! This is your take home lesson for the fifth lesson: Faith, the story of Elijah. Read over this lesson to review the story and then answer the questions at the end.

​

Remember, if you complete all 6 take home lessons from this year during Released Time, you will earn a $60 scholarship towards a week of summer camp at Camp Victory! We will also give out prizes on the Released Time trailer for those who complete the lessons each month. Make sure to fill out the answer form at the end of the lesson with your name and school information so we can get it recorded!

​

If you forgot to turn in Lesson 5 on Respect, click here to do that lesson. 

​

       Faith means believing God will do what He says. The memory verse for this lesson is Proverbs 3:5 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding”. That may be familiar to you because we have a lesson on faith every year in our Bible classes at your school. It’s important for us to know what faith is and how we can exercise it in our lives. God’s Word says “without faith it is impossible to please God “ -Hebrews 11:6. We all want to please God so it’s important to understand the meaning of Biblical faith. It can sometimes be easy to trust God and say “we believe” when things are going well. But what happens when the bottom falls out and life starts getting tough? Those are the times our faith is so important, and we can trust God to bring good out of problems that weigh us down.

       In our Bible lesson this month, we learned of a man who had to keep believing even when things got really tough. His name was Elijah, and he lived at a time when most people didn’t love and obey the God of the Bible. There was a wicked king and queen who led the people into idolatry and worshiping false idols. So God called Elijah the prophet to go and confront them about their sin. As a punishment for the unbelief of the people, God sent a drought that lasted 3 ½ years.

       At the end of the drought God sent Elijah to demonstrate to all the people who the only true God was. The people needed to turn back to God, in faith, and He would forgive their sins and heal their land. So Elijah challenged the false teachers to a contest to show who was the true and living God. The contest would take place on the top of Mt. Carmel. Elijah would build an altar to the one true God and ask Him to send fire down from heaven. The false teachers would also build an altar to their false god and ask the same thing. Elijah allowed the false teachers to go first. They built an altar to the idol they worshiped and then called on their god, who was supposed to be the god of fire, to burn it up.

       The false teachers built their altar, then danced around it while they called on their god to send fire down. This went on all day, and their god never answered them by burning up the altar they built. Why not? Because he was not a real god, just a statue of wood or gold they had built.

       Then came Elijah’s turn. He had faith that God would answer his prayer with fire to demonstrate to all those watching that He is the true and only God. After Elijah was done building an altar, he had it drenched with water. Most of the people watching couldn’t believe it. After he was done, he prayed for God to answer, and God did in a big way. Fire came down out of heaven and burned up the altar Elijah had built. including the wet wood and the stones. It even burned up the water in the ditch around the altar. When the people saw this, they fell on the ground and shouted, “The Lord, He is God!” They now had faith that Elijah’s God was the one true God.

       Next, Elijah told the people that the drought was over and that it would soon rain. Do you think they believed him? Absolutely, they had faith in God’s Word that had come to them through Elijah the prophet. God sent the rain they needed. Even though they had lived through a very hard time, God was faithful to forgive them and give them what they needed.

       God calls us to have a faith like Elijah. A faith that knows what God said and believes it. A faith that will get us through tough times. It takes faith to believe that Jesus is God’s Son. It takes faith to believe that Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins. It takes faith to believe that Jesus came out of the grave on the third day and conquered death. It takes faith to believe that Jesus is coming back one day and taking us to heaven to live with Him. Do you have that kind of faith? Remember, without faith it is impossible to please God. If you haven’t already, put your trust in Jesus, the Savior. He is the only way to have your sins forgiven and to have eternal life.