Jesus Is Stronger

This page is for you, the parent or teacher — not for the child.

Fifteen studies, five weekdays a week, three weeks. One short passage a day. It is built to be a child’s whole Bible time for the day and to take fifteen or twenty minutes, not an hour.

This is the last of the twelve plans, and it is meant to be done last. Fourteen of the fifteen days are Mark, in order, so the three weeks read as one book with one question running through it: is there anything Jesus isn’t stronger than?

The shape of one day

1. Read the passage out loud. Twice. You read it the first time. Let the child read it the second time if they can.
2. Close the Bible and have them tell it back in their own words. This is the step everybody skips, and it is the one that does the work. If it comes out thin, read it again and let them try again. Don’t correct the retelling into a lecture — just ask, “what happened next?”
3. Ask the four questions. Let the silence sit. A seven-year-old needs longer to answer than you think, and the first thing they say is usually not the thing they mean.
4. Help them land one “I will.” Small and real beats big and vague.
5. Pray. The prayer under each day is there if they want it; their own words are better.

The four questions

Every day, the same four:

1. What does this show me about God?
2. What does it show me about people — and about me?
3. What will I obey this week?
4. Who will I tell?

By this plan — the twelfth — most children can carry the four standard questions on their own. Let them, and keep the kid-sized versions for the days that are hard.

Ask the same question every day

At the end of each of the first thirteen days, ask it out loud: so what was Jesus stronger than today? Let the child answer in their own words and keep the answers somewhere they can see them — a list on the wall, one line a day.

Thirteen lines is the argument. Day 14 is what the argument was for.

The two days with evil spirits

Days 1 and 5. Tell them plainly, at a six-to-twelve level, and do not embellish. No extra detail, no atmosphere, no speculation about what such things can do. Mark’s emphasis is not on the spirits at all — it is on how completely and how quickly they lose. One sentence from Jesus, and it is over.

If a child is frightened, that is the sentence to give them: whatever that was, it did what Jesus told it to, immediately. If a child gets fascinated instead of frightened, steer back the same way — Mark spends one verse on the spirit and the rest on Jesus.

Day 14 is the whole plan

For thirteen days a child has watched Jesus stop everything with a word. On day 14 there is something he does not stop, and he could have.

This is where the plan either lands or breaks. Two ways to break it:

• Triumphalism — treating the cross as one more display of power, a clever trick that made death lose. It skips over the fact that Jesus really died and that it really cost him, and it teaches a child that following Jesus means winning.
• Rushing to Sunday — “but don’t worry, he comes back on Friday’s study!” Don’t. Let day 14 be Friday for a whole day. Sunday is better bread when Saturday has been felt.

Say this instead, in your own words: he was not weaker that day. He was stronger. Stopping it would have been the easy thing — staying was the hard thing, and he stayed on purpose, for us. The centurion is the proof: the first human being in Mark’s Gospel to say this really was God’s Son was a soldier who watched him die, not anyone who watched him do a miracle.

Let the cry stand, too. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is in the Bible in Jesus’ own mouth, and a child who learns that those words are allowed has been given something they will need one day. Don’t explain it away. “Even Jesus said that, and the Father was not angry with him for it” is enough.

When a child asks the obvious question

Somewhere in these three weeks, most children ask it: if Jesus is stronger than sickness, why didn’t he heal my grandmother?

Do not answer it with a formula. The honest answer is the one this plan actually gives:

• He can. Days 1–13 are not exaggerations.
• He does not always, and nobody gets to say why.
• He is not far away from the pain — day 13 has him crying at the grave of a friend he is about to raise, and day 14 has him inside the worst of it himself.
• The tomb is empty, so nothing that has happened to anyone we love is the end of their story.

“I don’t know why, and I know he is not indifferent” is a truthful answer, and a child can carry it. A tidy answer that turns out to be false is much more expensive later.

Day 16 doesn’t exist — and that’s Mark

Mark 16:8 ends with the women running away frightened and saying nothing to anyone. That’s where the plan ends, on purpose.

If your child notices that the ending is abrupt, they have read well. Say so. Then ask the question Mark is asking them: the women were told to go and tell. They were too scared, at first. What are you going to do? Every other Gospel tells us they did tell, in the end — that’s why we know the story at all.

The finish of the year

If your child has worked through the other eleven plans, they will recognise nearly everything here — Jairus’ daughter, the storm, the loaves, Lazarus, the cross, the empty tomb. That is by design. They started with “in the beginning” and they end here.

Mark this. Do something on the last day: a meal, a certificate, letting them tell the whole story from Genesis to the tomb in their own words while somebody writes it down. A child who can do that at eleven has something most adults do not.

Making the “I will” real

Put a name in it and a day on it.

✗ “I’ll trust Jesus more.” ✓ “On Monday, before the test, I’m going to tell Jesus I’m scared instead of pretending I’m not.”

Then ask about it the next day, before you read.

Ages, and mixed ages

Written for roughly ages 6–12. Days 5, 7, 13 and 14 are the heavy ones. Read them plainly, don’t dwell on the detail, and let the child’s questions set how far you go. A young child who wants to stop and talk about death has not derailed the study — they are doing it.

Overlap with the adult plans

This is a children’s route through Mark; the adults’ Whole Book: Mark walks the same ground at a different depth. If a parent is doing that one alongside, the supper conversation is worth having on purpose.

If you miss a day

Pick up where you left off. Fifteen studies is fifteen studies whether it takes three weeks or five. Whatever you start, finish — and this one especially, because day 15 is what the other fourteen were for.