Teaching God’s word in a Good News Club can be incredibly rewarding as well as challenging. One Good News Club teacher remembers a time when she realized its often both. The teacher noticed that a young boy’s repeated yet random movements were a tick and that he had Tourette’s Syndrome. Her heart broke for this child who also came from a dysfunctional home. She wanted to reach out to him and show him that God could be his perfect, heavenly father. But he couldn’t pay attention for longer than one sentence at a time. Twice he came back for more information about the Gospel, and each time she felt like he didn’t understand. On his third time coming back and talk to her, she didn’t think he would be any further along but she was excited to be wrong. With sudden clarity, this young boy explained the Gospel to her, telling her all about how to have sins forgiven by believing in Jesus. He peered intently over her shoulder as she showed him Acts 16:31 from the Bible and helped him read it. “I’ve never done that before, believing in Jesus. And I want to.”
A week later, the teacher followed up to see if this young boy had further questions or to clear up any confusion he might be having. But this boy had no confusion at all. “Jesus took away my sins last week. All of them, even the ones I haven’t done yet, because I know I’ll keep sinning no matter how hard I try to be good.” A young child’s explanation on God’s eternal saving grace. It must have been the highlight of her week to tell him, “Your earthly parents may not always be there for you or may not always be able to show you the love they should, but when you believed in Jesus, God became your heavenly father who is always there and always perfectly loving.” His face lit up with a big smile.
