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Choose from the following children's sermons:

• Turning a Pawn into a Queen, Jeremiah 1:4-10, Randy Quinn (see below)
   
• God Knows Your Name, Jeremiah 1:4-10, Frank Schaefer (scroll down)

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Turning a Pawn into a Queen
a children's sermon based on Jeremiah 1:4-10
by Randy Quinn

Do any of you know what this is? (I don’t think our children will know, but there may be an older child present who does.) This is a chessboard and chess pieces. You play a game called "chess" with it.

It’s a hard game to play because you have to think pretty hard to play it, so we won’t play it right now. I’ll just talk about a few of the pieces, OK?

This is the King and this is the Queen. If you are playing the game, you try to protect your King, because once you lose the King, you lose. But the Queen is the most powerful piece on the board. She can do almost anything that any of the other pieces can do, only better.

These are Pawns. There are eight of them on each team, and they can’t do much. They can only move one square at a time. Pawns just get in the way.

But if a Pawn can get all the way to the end of the board - all the way from where it starts to the other team’s back row, the Pawn can become a Queen!

In the scripture we just read, Jeremiah complains that he is only a little boy (Jer 1:4-10). But God says that he isn’t JUST a little boy. He’s a boy with a message from God. And that makes him important.

And that’s true for you and me, too. Sometimes we may think we’re like a Pawn. We’re not very important and we get in the way a lot. But God can make us into a Queen. In fact, God has already made us into his children and that makes us more important than even a Queen!

All God wants us to do is to be faithful. God wants us to be like the Pawn that keeps moving toward the goal of becoming a Queen. If we’re faithful, we’ll make it.

Let’s pray:

God, sometimes we don’t feel very important. Help us to be like the Pawns who keep doing what needs to be done, even when it doesn’t seem to be very important. Help us to remember that we are your children and that makes us important, already. Amen.

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God Knows Your Name
a kids talk based on Jeremiah 1:4-10
by Rev. Frank Schaefer

Props: picture(s) of yourself as a baby or small child

Greetings to you, my faithful troopers, please grab a seat on the alter steps around me.  I am so excited to show you some pictures from my family photo album.

(Pass picture[s] around) Now, isn't that a very cute little baby?  Who do you think this cute little baby is?  (Let them guess).  How did you guess it was me?  Because I'm still cute, right?

What do you think my mom and dad used to call me?  By what name did they call me?  (Share with them your nick-name or baby name or simply your first name)  They called me _______, not pastor _______, or Mr. _________, or Rev. ________.

What do you think, did God know my name when I was a baby? (slightly nod your head to encourage a yes answer) That's right, God knew my name, just as God knows your name as well.  Now, if someone knows your name, they must already know quite a bit about you, don't you think? Children are very special to God and the Bible tells us that he watches out over the little ones, and God surely knows their every name.

I must tell you something very amazing.  Listen to this: you know, in one of our bible lessons this morning--from the prophet Jeremiah-- God says something interesting.  He says that even before Jeremiah was born, God already knew him.  God already knew his name, and he already knew what Jeremiah was going to be like as a person many years before he lived.

Do you think that's amazing?  Maybe it is not so amazing if you think about it.  After all, God knows everything.  Even the things that have not happened yet.  God knows they will happen.

And also, God knows every person because he made the soul of every person.  Now we don't know how exactly God joins the soul to the body, but we know that it happens.  Perhaps God does it some time when we're in our mother's wombs.

But the important thing I want us to understand today is that God actually knows you and me--all of us-- by name.  Even though there are so many people living in this town and in this country and this entire world, you are not just a number or a faceless person to God.

No, God knows you very well, he knows your name, and he knows what you look like, he knows what kind of person you are.  God knows everything about you!   That's how much God cares for you and how much he loves you.  Isn't that good to know?  Doesn't that make you feel special?  Let us say thank you to God for his great love and care for us:

Prayer: "Dear God, we all want to thank you for caring so much for us that you make it your business to know everything about us--even our name.   Thank you that you have made us and that you are always watching over us.   Thank you for loving us and caring for us. Amen."