COMMENTS about this page: Demonstrating what it is to trust or believe in someone or something. The term "belief" in God, Jesus, the gospel or the bible is often rather abstract. The challenge is to bring faith from the abstract to an understandable concept. The following object lesson using a person and his faith as the object, makes a powerful statement around which you can build your lesson.

This is one of the best ways I have found to illustrate or demonstrate trust or belief. I still use the illustration. Find someone, a young person or child who knows you, and when asked, claims to trust you. Ask him again if he really trusts you and is willing to demonstrate his trust in front of everyone. When you find your man, ask him to stand in front of you, about four feet away (four feet depending on the height of the person). Have him turn and face away from you. He is standing with his back to you. Now ask him to do the following to prove his trust. He is to stand stiff as a board and at the count of three he is to fall backward in that same stiff position without moving his feet. You promise to catch him before he hits the floor. Does he really trust that you will? Believe me, this will demonstrate if his trust is a casual word or a sincere belief! Have the group counts to three. As he falls backward, IF he moves his foot back to catch himself, he demonstrates he is not really trusting you. If on the other hand, he falls backward in a stiff position not moving his feet at all, he is depending totally on you to catch him. He indeed believes in you. He has demonstrated the principle of trust! If your first subject moves his foot, he is disqualified in his trust; find another subject. You should have no problem as most kids want to see if they can do it.