The Treasure Hunt

A Devotional for Girls’ Ministries Week

Devotional for Wednesday Night Mpact or TGM Girls Club meetings
to Tie into GM Week Theme–"Hidden Treasure in Jars of Clay"

Opening Activity: Choose from some of the bonus ideas (posted on the website) as the girls come in or use the crossword puzzle in this packet; work as a team or individually according to the age of your girls. Choose one geared toward your age group or design your own opening activity after you read through this material.

Lesson Focus: To discover your God-given gifts (Rom. 12:6-8) and to learn how they shape your personality and create your place in God’s kingdom.

Clay Pots: Purchase clay pots (3”-5” size) and fill the bottom two-thirds with styrofoam. Cover it with moss and put some small artificial flowers in if you would like. Take a wooden dowel and cut it long enough to fit down through the styrofoam and above the rim of the pot enough to hold a sign. Use heavy card stock and print the names of each gift (as listed in the GM Day “Discovering Treasure” page). Print two cards for each gift and tape or glue them together onto the dowel rod. You’ll have seven pots for the seven gifts. You’ll use this later on when the girls identify their gifts. Also use them at the sleepover as a reminder of the gifts and personalities you’ve discussed this week.

Adapting to Age
Because of the wide span of ages in Girls’ Ministries, giving you one lesson for the club meeting would be overwhelming. Instead, on these two pages you will find several ideas and a lot of information that you can choose from and adapt according to the club you teach. You know your girls better than anyone else, so custom tailor the lesson to fit their needs and their abilities to understand and grasp the concepts of salvation, sanctification, and being filled with the Holy Spirit.

Demonstration
Bring in several different kinds of drinking glasses–from styrofoam cup to fine china and everything in between. Fill them with different kinds of drink–tea, milk, water, soda, etc. Explain how different they are on the outside and how each one has a different type of beverage in it. Regardless of what the containers look like they all serve the same purpose–they hold the beverage you want to drink. Likewise, the drink inside serves the same purpose. Relate this to our bodies (jars of clay) being created by God to hold the gifts (hidden treasures) that He gives to each of us. Those gifts are all to be used for the same purpose–to serve and glorify Him!

Lesson
Use the information that was printed in the “Discovering Treasure” pages for the GM Day program to explain the different gifts to the girls in a little more detail. Do some role playing to help the girls understand how these gifts affect our personalities. The parable about the Good Samaritan, for instance, is a great example for role play on how each different personality/gift would have responded to the traveler in distress. There will be a bonus page on the website to help you flesh out this idea; it will outline the traits that each one would have exhibited if confronted with the traveler that day.

There will also be a bonus page on the web designed to send home for parents. It will give information about the book that this information was taken from and will outline the gifts and help them see how their children’s personality traits are connected to these motivational gifts. (I would highly recommend that you purchase this book for your own benefit before teaching–Discover Your Children’s Gifts by Don & Katie Fortune (www.heart2heart.org/books.htm). It is a great resource tool for working with children. Be sure and check the GM website (girls.iphc.org/gmweek/gmweekfiles.html) to download other helps that might be designated for your club meeting with the girls.

Activity
Use seven brown lunch sacks and put something into each bag that represents one of the seven motivational gifts listed in Romans 12:6-8. Fold the bag down a couple of times and staple it closed several times. Number each bag and write down somewhere what each numbered bag represents. Allow the girls to feel the item through the bag and try to guess what’s inside and which gift they think it represents. (For instance, put a small book into the bag for the teacher.)

Craft Idea
There are lots of crafts you can do with clay pots such as the treasure chest made out of a clay pot (see Craft & Activity Ideas). This craft can be used on Wednesday night or for your sleepover. There will be other ideas posted on the website in August. You can also make t-shirts by downloading the color logo from the website and printing it onto an iron-on transfer and then ironing it onto a t-shirt. This is the easiest method. Or create your own craft based on the ages and abilities of the girls in your particular club.

Snack time:
Buy some type of snack that can be packaged individually in a small clay pot with cellophane wrapping. Write the girl’s name on the pot before wrapping. Then once she has opened the package to reveal the “treasure,” use a Sharpie marker to write the name of the girl’s gift if you have decided which one she is. (There are tests to help you with this in the book mentioned previously.)

Challenge & Prayer Time:
Challenge the girls to think about what they’ve learned to this point about the hidden treasure God has place within each of us and to determine that their gift to God will be to use those gifts for His glory. He wants them to become His vessel, His jar of clay! He wants to be part of the molding and filling of their vessels. Pray over them for His plan to be accomplished in each of their lives.