Collective Worship 3 - Don’t Forget to Let Love in! Content Overview: We want children to know that they are valued, that they are one in a million and that they are loved. We want them to consider who in their life makes them feel safe, valued and loved as well as understanding that God is a God of love who created them to be loved by Him. This collective worship explores the way in which children understand that they’re loved by looking at the 5 love languages and how God shows us all his love through the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15).

SLIDE 1) Say, “HeartSmart is about being smart with our heart. The life of our heart affects the whole of our life. Today we’re going to look at the first of the HeartSmart High Five. Everything in HeartSmart comes from this.”

SLIDE 2) Read the slide, “Don’t Forget to Let Love in!” and highlight Boris’ new position. Ask the children what they think it means. Explain that it’s all about loving ourselves. Sometimes loving ourselves can be hard to do. Knowing that someone loves us helps us to love ourselves.

SLIDE 3) Explain that each of the pictures illustrates one of the five main ways that people can show us that we’re loved. Ask the children to choose their top two. You could ask children to share.

- Kind words - “Gracias” - Kind action - Father son laptop - Good time together - two girls talking - Gift - unexpected present (i.e. not birthday or Christmas) - Hug/high five - football high five

(This is based on principles from Five Love Languages, by Gary Chapman. (Northfield Publishing, 2015)

Say, “Knowing that we’re loved brings strength to our hearts.”

SLIDE 4) One of the ways we understand that we’re loved is by knowing that we’re one in a million. The next three slides emphasise this, each highlighting a different point. Firstly, we are the apple of someone’s eye. Explain the phrase - out of all the apples, we’re the one that’s chosen - and invite the children to think about who choses them. Explain that God says in Psalm 17:8 that we’re the apple of His eye.

SLIDE 5) Penguins are loyal to their partners. Love is loyal. God is loyal and is committed to us. In Hebrews 13:5 God says, “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.” This is a way of understanding that we are loved by Him. There are other people in our lives that are committed to us also, who might they be?

© HEARTSMART, Hilltop Media Ltd, 2018. Please do not use without a valid licence.

SLIDE 6) One in a Million. Out of all the 7.6 billion people in the world, there is only one of us. God has made us unique. Jesus says in Luke 12:7 that God even knows the number of hairs that are on our head. We are important. We are special, we are loved.

SLIDE 7) Whether we’ve got lots of people in our life who show us love and help us to feel one in a million or not, we all have to come to the place where we can say’ “I love me!” This is what, ‘Don’t Forget to Let Love in’ is all about.

SLIDE 8 + 9) Tell the story of the parable of the prodigal son from Luke 15 in the Bible. Clarify that the father loved the son no matter what. Explain that this is a great illustration of what love looks like. Many of the people who heard Jesus tell the story for the first time thought that the son was going to get in trouble so it would have been a surprise ending. You could say:

- Were the father’s arms shut or open to the returning son?

- Love’s arms are always open to us.

- Love welcomes us it does not send us away.

SLIDE 10) Letting other people’s love in to our heart makes our hearts stronger. Loving ourselves no matter what, makes our heart stronger. If we want to live well and if we want to love others it all starts with us loving ourselves and that means letting love in.

SLIDE 11) Finish with a 2 minute reflection and prayer. You could use the following questions as content:

- “What’s one thing that we’ve heard today that we’re going to remember?” - “Is there anything that we can think of that gets in the way of us being HeartSmart?” - “What can we do now, to love ourselves and others more?”

SLIDE 12) Holding slide.

Collective Worship 3 - Don’t Forget to Let Love in!

© HEARTSMART, Hilltop Media Ltd, 2018. Please do not use without a valid licence.