Who’s ready for school to start back?! I am! And my kiddos are too! It’s always an exciting time of year but it’s also a very BUSY time of year. Lots of you listening will go back to your school schedule and start some kind of sport or other lessons.  And you’ll have… homework! So it’s usually this time of year when I see all that activity coming up, starting in just a few weeks, that I stop to remind myself of something. It’s not complicated, but it’s just something that we forget a lot. Especially this time of year as we get busy. But, here’s the deal: God wants a relationship with you more than anything. Or in other words, He wants to hang out with you and have your attention more than anything else. Obviously He’s a fan of us learning and growing our brains to genius status as we go to school. And I’m sure He loves sports and music lessons or any other extra activity you’re learning. But those all come in second place to us having a relationship with Him. Relationship is a big word, but it simply means knowing someone and being known by them. You have plenty of relationships. You have relationships with your friends, your parents, your brothers and sisters and lots of other people. You talk to them and you listen to them; you spend time together; you know each other so well that you know what the other person likes and doesn’t like. See? It’s pretty simple but this is what it means to have a relationship. And the Lord also wants a relationship with YOU! .......... So maybe you’re wondering, how DO I have a relationship with Him? It starts with asking Him to be IN your life. To be the one in charge of your life, actually. And you do this because you know that He DESERVES to be in charge since He is God and… we. are. not.  In fact, Jesus is God’s son who came to save us from our sins when He died on the cross. We’ve talked before about how sin separates us from God, it pulls us away from Him or opposite from Him. But when we know and believe that Jesus died on the cross, we are pulled back to Him. Jesus’ death is so much stronger than sin that we say it defeated sin. It wins over sin all day, every day!  And this means that we can have a relationship with Him! It’s because of Jesus that we can even imagine having a real relationship with the Lord! John 3:16 says that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. Anyone who believes in him will not die but will have eternal life.” This means that because of God’s son, Jesus, we can have a relationship with Him FOREVER, that’s what eternal life means. What an awesome thing! We can know and be known by the God of the universe! The King of all Kings! How cool! So here are some questions to talk about. You can pause after each question and discuss or just generally review together when it’s over. Oh, and there’s no wrong answer to these! The point is to get conversation flowing. So don’t overthink it! 1.     What does it mean to have a relationship with someone? 2.     How can we have a relationship with God? 3.     Do you have any other questions about this? If you are thinking about something, ask the adult you’re listening with! One last time before we sign off, let’s practice John 3:16 together. You can repeat after me. “God so loved the world - that he gave his one and only Son.  - Anyone who believes in him  - will not die - but will have eternal life.” John 3:16 *Music: Forest by Vlad Gluschenko