Gospel Threads

Weave It Wednesday is here! We’re so excited to share ideas and resources for you to weave the gospel into every aspect of your classroom instruction.

Our desire over the course of a school year is to show our students a beautiful picture of Jesus formed through constant Gospel Woven Instruction. This happens most effectively and naturally by breaking the gospel into parts, or threads, and weaving a particular thread of the gospel into a class lesson. These threads are each part of God’s story of redemption: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration.

Creation

Key themes: Origin and Identity

God’s story begins with him miraculously bringing everything into existence, including the first humans, Adam and Eve, who were created as image-bearers to reflect his character. This defines them and gives them their worth and value. They enjoy a unique relationship with God and were made to worship him, obey him, and love him.

All things find their worth and value in Creator God, and yet all of us have looked to someone or something other than God to define us. We all have a fundamental belief about our origin and identity—who or what made us who we are, and what defines us.

Fall

Key themes: Brokeness and Blame

Adam and Eve rebel against God, choosing to believe lies about themselves and their Creator. This rebellion, called sin, brings about relational brokeness, hiding, shame, blame, separation from God, sickness and death.

The world we live in is not as it should be. Brokeness is all around us. Everyone has a fundamental belief about why things are broken and tend to place blame on others. However, God’s Story shows us that our own sin is the primary thing that wreaks havoc on our lives and reveals our deep need for redemption through a Savior.

Redemption

Key themes: Rescue and Deliverance

God enters a covenant relationship with his chosen people, Israel, and throughout their history, rescues and redeems them in countless ways. His final act of redemption comes when he becomes a man in the person of Jesus Christ, who through his life, death, and resurrection, brings redemption from sin and reconciliation to the Father.

All of us look to created things to save us, rescue us, give us significance, and make us right with God. Money, possessions, acceptance, approval, relationships and achievements all seem to offer some hope for repairing the brokeness in our lives, but the gospel tells us that Jesus is our only hope. He is the only one who can rescue us from our brokeness and restore our relationship with God.

Restoration

Key Themes: Hope and Transformation

After the resurrection, Jesus ascends into heaven and sends his Holy Spirit to live in his followers, giving them new desires and the power they need to walk in his ways to become more like him. Jesus began his reign as the King of his people while on Earth, and he will one day return to make all things new —establishing his full reign and ushering in his kingdom where God’s people will worship him perfectly for all of eternity!

There’s a deep longing within each of us for change… for things to be made right and good. For some, this means finding a job or spouse, world peace, a perfect world without poverty, disease, or evil. What we’re all craving is a mending of the brokeness. We want restoration, and the restoration that Jesus brings starts right now in the life of the believer, making us free to live in his ways even in the midst of a broken world as we eagerly await Christ’s return and the future hope his kingdom in all its fullness!

Huge shoutout to Saturate for their incredible resources that really helped GEM create our foundation of gospel-woven instruction!

Which gospel thread do you think is the easiest to weave into a lesson plan? What about the most difficult? We want to hear from you in the comments!