Much like how Lilo sees the good in Stitch, adopting him into her family even when he is not perfect, God sees the good in us and adopts us into His family. Our relationship with God does not end in a fleeting moment of being chosen by him. We continue to become more like Jesus throughout our relationship with Him in a process called sanctification. In the same way, Stitch becomes more and more like Lilo (the one who adopted him) throughout the movie. In the end of the film, we see Stitch finally understanding what it means to love others and be in a family, which is a huge part of what it means to follow Jesus.
3 It is the same with us. When we were children, we were slaves to the basic spiritual powers of the world. 4 But then the chosen time came. God sent his Son. A woman gave birth to him. He was born under the authority of the law. 5 He came to set free those who were under the authority of the law. He wanted us to be adopted as children with all the rights children have. 6 Because you are his children, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts. He is the Holy Spirit. By his power we call God Abba. Abba means Father. 7 So you aren’t a slave any longer. You are God’s child. Because you are his child, God gives you the rights of those who are his children.
23 God is the God who gives peace. May he make you holy through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept free from blame. May you be without blame from now until our Lord Jesus Christ comes. 24 The God who has chosen you is faithful. He will do all these things.
Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust control Riley’s emotions. Joy tries to keep Riley as happy as possible, but this becomes very difficult when they move to a new city. The other emotions, especially Sadness, start interfering even more with Riley’s happiness. Even though it is good to be positive, Riley suffers a lot of disappointment and tough circumstances that cannot be fixed by pretending to be happy. She learns that it’s ok to be sad and express those emotions to her parents. In our lives, we cannot depend on our own strength to be joyful all the time. It’s ok to be upset when things go wrong. And it’s ok to tell God about it. God would sooooo much rather us be open and honest to him about our feelings than shut down and turn away from him. Jesus experienced and expressed his emotions to God, even anger and sadness. Instead of running from our emotions, we should embrace them and share them with God, even when they might be about Him. We can find true peace and joy even in the hardest of circumstances, not by our own strength, but from the strength of God.
In the beginning of Monsters Inc, we are greeted with a society whose norm was to send monsters into childrens’ rooms daily to scare them. We see that Sully and the other monsters believed that the children themselves are harmful and scary. The introduction of a child named Boo helped Sully to realize their backwards way of thinking. Instead of scaring kids, the monsters could make them laugh. This story shows us that children are greatly important and have the power to make monumental change. Jesus even emphasizes the power of having faith like a child – that even adults could learn from the way that children see the world.
God can show up in our lives in ways that we don’t expect. He knows what is best for us. As a result, when we ask Him for things, He may not show up exactly as we would want or imagine. Rather, He shows up and answers prayers as we NEED. In the movie, Carl is seen living a lonely life until he gets bothered by wilderness explorer Russell. Russell ends up taking him on an adventure that changes both of their lives for the better. Similarly, if we trust God to fulfill our prayers, He will answer them in a way that is often better than we could imagine.
Remi is so focused on his new life cooking for people with Linguini that he starts to see the world in a new way. When he reunites with his family, his Dad tries to show him all the ways that humans are out to get them because they are rats; however, Remi knows that there are some humans that have good in them, even to the point of standing up to protect them from danger. When we follow Jesus, it changes a lot of the ways that we live our lives and see other people, leading us to care for people that we would never notice before. While things may get hard and people disagree with us sometimes, God is right there helping us when we are struggling. Even when we can’t see it, God is always working in us and the people that we interact with.
In Kids Ministry, we believe God extends grace—even in places we least expect it. This semester, we are watching clips from popular movies and relating them to Jesus! We believe that God is all around us, so we are dedicated to looking for Him in movies with the hope of seeing Him elsewhere because of this practice.
Mulan is focused on bringing honor to her father, much like how we should be focused on bringing honor to our Father (God). In the beginning, she tries to do so by changing who she is and being who she felt she was supposed to be to impress the matchmaker. However, her trying to change herself didn’t work. God does not want us to pretend to be someone we’re not. He wants the real us because he created us as we are WITH A PURPOSE. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t supposed to change. We are supposed to become more like Him.