“To Keep Ourselves Unspotted From the World”

Materials Needed:

• Girl and boy figures and dirt spots (Friend, February 2002, For Little Friends).  Put the girl and boy figures into a page protector, and cut out the individual dirt spots.
• A Doctrine and Covenants for each person
• Tape to attach the spots
• A CD player and a CD of General Conference

Activity

In life Satan tries hard to tempt us to sin.

Show the picture of the girl, the boy, and the dirt spots. Tell the children that the dirt spots represent sin.

• What are some sins that Satan tries to tempt us to make in life?  (Answers might include: lying, disobeying a parent, fighting with siblings, cheating, stealing)  Have a family member put a dirt spot onto the girl or boy figure for each answer they give. You may need to help or direct their answers so that everyone has a turn.

Satan doesn’t want us to excel and succeed in life. He wants us to live lives that are full of degradation and worldly thoughts and actions such as greed, selfishness, and pride.

Heavenly Father wants us to live upright, clean lives so that we can gain exaltation, and he provides ways for us to achieve this.

• Have the children look up and read the first phrase of D&C 59:9, and ask if they know what it is saying.  (In order to keep ourselves unspotted from the world we need to go to church, take the sacrament and renew our covenants on the Sabbath.) Take a spot off the girl or boy figure for each item mentioned: going to church, taking the sacrament and renewing our covenants.
• What other things does D&C 59:9-14 say that we should do on the Sabbath in order to keep ourselves unspotted from the world? (devotions and worship of God, resting from our labors, oblations (which is service to God), confessing and repenting, preparing food with singleness of heart, fasting and prayer)  Take a spot off for every item mentioned.
• Why would doing these things help keep us clean and unspotted from the world?  (Because we are spiritually and physically strengthened and renewed, and we are not as susceptible to worldly thoughts, temptations, and sin.)

Object Lesson

Turn on a general conference CD (or DVD).  Also turn on some other items that make noise such as a TV, radio, hand vacuum, blender, etc.

• Is it difficult to hear and listen to the conference CD with all the noisy distractions?

We would have to turn off all the competing noises in order to hear and focus on the conference CD. That is why Heavenly Father has given us the Sabbath Day, so we can turn off all competing influences and focus on things that will strengthen us spiritually and keep us unspotted from the world.