Twinkies are a fun treat, but I’ll bet you didn’t realize their relevance to teaching faith! Stick with me for a minute…
Twinkies taste good, they’re light and fluffy, and they have that delicious creamy vanilla frosting center. Simply put, Twinkies are amazing! Can you imagine your life before you had your first Twinkie? If you’re like most people, you wouldn’t want to imagine something like that. But think of your life before you knew all about the awesome frosting center and its sugary goodness.
If you didn’t know that Twinkies existed, how would you have heard about Twinkies? Perhaps one day you were hanging out with friends and they began telling you about how good Twinkies are. They talked about the texture, the flavor, and, of course, that vanilla frosting in the middle. More than likely, after hearing your friends describe a Twinkie, you would want to head to the nearest store and try one out for yourself.
The Application for Teaching Faith
The idea of your friends telling you about Twinkies is a little like how faith works. After hearing about how good Twinkies are from other people, your desire to eat a Twinkie grows. That’s similar, in a way, to how our faith in God grows. As we begin to hear about God and his goodness, we want to know more about him and begin our own relationship with him.
So faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing the Good News about Christ. (Romans 10:17, NLT)
The more you hear about Twinkies and their goodness, the more you want one. The same is true for our faith. The more time we spend in God’s Word, reading God’s Word, talking about God’s Word, and thinking about God’s Word, the more our faith grows.
Faith Is Taking God at His Word
What would make you believe that Twinkies are good? To begin, it would have to be a matter of trust. You would have to trust that your friends are telling you the truth about how good Twinkies are. You might rely on the fact that your friends regularly tell the truth or that they have generally good taste, but it really comes down to believing that what your friends say about Twinkies is true.
That simple analogy is packed full of applications for teaching faith. Faith is simply taking God at his word. It’s trusting what God says above everything else. Just as you would trust your friends’ word that a Twinkie is a great snack, you have faith by trusting that what God says is true. Hebrews says it like this:
The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. (Hebrews 11:1, The Message)
Faith takes God at his word. Having faith means believing what the Bible says, no matter what life might look like around you. So the next time you rip open a package of Twinkies, remember their uncanny use for teaching faith!
Take this devotion about teaching faith a step further by downloading a PDF of discussion questions (available for $2) from studentdevos.com.
Youth Group Discussion Questions: What Twinkies Teach About Faith
This article originally appeared here.
