You’ve seen the movie now check out the devotional
Study 1:
Nemo touches the ‘butt’: Our defiance against a loving father
Finding Nemo is a story about a young spirited clown fish with one undersized fin. He is eager to start school but his Dad follows him on his first day which causes Nemo to feel frustrated. This frustration leads to Nemo defying his father. But the results of his defiance end tragically for Nemo and his Dad, Marlin.
Nemo has a pretty good relationship with his father. He knows he is loved and cared for but they still have their moments of fighting and disagreeing about issues and events, like any standard family. But are these fights just part of life or are they a more deeper rooted problem?
Read Romans 3:23
What does it mean “all have sinned”?
What is sin?
In what ways do we sin?
Let’s look at the 10 commandments together, these were the laws God gave to Moses for man to live by and can be found in Deuteronomy 5: 7-21. Do you think anyone has ever been able to keep all of these laws?
But what if you are well behaved and you listen to your parents and obey them and are known for being a good person? Surely that counts for something right? Let’s read Isaiah 64: 6, what does it say?
So then is God being unfair and asking too much?
Let’s look at 1 Peter 1: 15-16.
God is ___________ so we are called to be ______________________
And Psalm 100: 3 We are God’s ____________ the ______________ of His pasture
We are God’s creation and He loves us. Ephesians 2:4-5 says this: 4 But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
So we are in trouble, we are like Nemo, trapped and heading for a grim future because of our actions. Certain death awaits us…. Or does it? Is there hope for us yet?
Lastly, let’s look at Isaiah 53:6
We all like ____________ have gone astray, each of us has turned to _________ ____________ _______________ But the Lord has laid on him the ______________ of us all.
So we have hope. God has put a rescue plan into action to save us!
Study 2
Motivated by Love: The lengths a Father will go to, to be reunited
So, we left Nemo lost and desperate yesterday fighting for his very life because of his actions and his disobedience to his father. All seemed lost for poor Nemo… or was it?
Marlin, Nemo’s Dad could have gotten angry and said “well it serves you right, you should’a listened!” But did he? NO! He loved his son so much he would risk his very own life to save that of his sons.
Let’s look at John 3: 16 together:
For God so _____________ the world He _________ His only that _____________ ____________ in him shall not perish but shall have ___________ ___________.
How much more are we loved by God. God not only sent His one and only son to save us, He knew that His Son would die for us.
There was no “maybe this might go badly”, God knew what was coming and still put His action plan into work to save us, Us who did not love Him. Us who hated Him! It’s one thing to want to save a loved one, but wanting to save some who hates you! How great must God’s love for us be then?
Let’s read Ephesians 2:4-10 together
What motivates God to want to save us?
We have been saved by _ _ _ _ _
Just like Nemo we are undeserving of this love and grace from our heavenly father. We haven’t earned it by being good. God acts out of His deep love for His children. He shows us compassion where we did not deserve compassion in order to raise us up and save us from ourselves.
Where we fail God has a perfect plan. A plan of redemption to free us from the chains of our sin. A plan that sent His one and only Son to die on a cross so that we may be free from the punishment we deserved
However, if we look back to our story of Nemo and Marlin we can see that Marlin is also human (or fish in this case). He too is affected by sin and in need of saving as we follow him along his journey to save his son.
We have to learn to let go of our fears and surrender ourselves to God and give Him control of our lives… Our love for our Saviour can help us to overcome these fears as we move through life…. But more about that in the next study.
Study 3
Letting Go How to gain life through death.
Marlin, our brave but flawed rescuer sets out across the oceans to rescue his son Nemo. As we now know, Marlin is a bit of a worry wort and tends to look at all the things that can possibly go wrong in a situation. Along the way he meets Dory an upbeat, look on the bright side of life, but very forgetful fish. As they travel, they face many perils including, sharks, glow in the dark fish-eating fish, jellyfish and being swallowed by a whale.
As they are trapped in the whale Dory begin to speak whale. Marlin doubts her abilities and instead tries to save himself by holding onto the whales tongue as it tries to ‘swallow’ them. Let’s now look at the bible verse Proverbs 14:12.
How does this bible verse link to Marlin’s actions?
What about our own lives?
Dory tried to reassure Marlin to put his trust in her and let go. It’s the same for us, We need to let go of trying to save ourselves and put our trust in God
This can be a hard thing to do, especially when the world around us is telling us otherwise.
What are some things you have heard or been told about being a Christian?
Trusting in God means having faith: the faith to let go of our own efforts and believe that God has us in mind. Let’s look at Jeremiah 29:11
God wants good things for His children. He wants us to be saved and reunited with Him.
Go to Romans 6:23. What is the gift God wants to give us?
and look up Isaiah 50:10. What does this verse tell us to do?
Let him who walks in the ___________________ and had no ________, __________ in the __________________ of the _________________
Lastly let’s look at Romans 10:13. Who can receive God’s gift?
Where or what is your trust in?
Study 4
Just Keep Swimming Moving forward in a world filled with danger
When we think of Dory what is the main catch phrase we think of?
That’s right, Just keep swimming swimming swimming…
But what happens when life gets too much and we can’t go on.
What happens when we find ourselves in a field full of Jellyfish and all hope is lost. What do we do then?
The world often tells us that we need to harden up and move on, or if we just try a little harder or do thing’s differently… but sometimes this isn’t possible.
It’s just too hard for us and we don’t want to go on or just plain can’t….
Where is God’s plan in this for us?
We talked about trusting God to save us yesterday but what happens when it gets really bad? do we still trust Him then? Is God still good?
Let’s look at Nahum 1:7.
The LORD is ____, a _____ in times of ___. He _____________for those who _________ in him.
And Psalm 34:8 Taste and see that the LORD is _________; ________________is the one who takes _________ in him.
What does refuge mean?
So even when times get hard and we can’t do it on our own, we can turn to God and seek his help, take shelter in Him and hand him our problems.
We don’t need to do it on our own and God doesn’t want us to do it on our own either!
Here are some other verses to look through. Beside each verse write down what God promises us/what the verse is saying:
Philippians 4:13 __________________________________________
Isaiah 40:29 _______________________________________________
Psalm 119:28 ______________________________________________
Ephesians 6:10 ____________________________________________
2 Corinthians 12: 9-10 _____________________________________
Isaiah 43:1-2 ______________________________________
Isn’t it encouraging to know that though we are weak God is there for us and wants us to call on Him for help. Especially when life is hard.
Study 5
Reunited Together The happy ending we all need
So here we are at the end of our story. Marlin has made it to Nemo and rescued Him. They are reunited together and all is forgiven and love abounds between the two…
A happy ending. Like all good fairy tales. But can the same be said for us? Do we get a happy ending?
YES WE DO! God makes many promises throughout His word, but by far His best one is His promise to us that if we have faith and believe in Him as our Lord and Saviour we will live in perfection with Him, made new, and glorified together with His people, living with God, forever.
Let’s look a bit more closely at this promise of inheritance
Look at Ephesians 1: 11-14,
What happens when we believe?
Now look at John 6:47 what do we have if we believe?
And at Jude 1:24-25 how will we be presented to God?
So, when we become a Christian does that make us perfect? No, Just like Nemo who still had to live with his smaller fin and still struggled to respect and listen to his Dad so we are still living in a fallen world and we still struggle with sin.
But we have hope and a knowledge that the sin does not make us who we are. We know and can trust God that we will be made whole and perfect through the gift of His Son Jesus.
So what does perfection look like? It’s hard to know exactly what to expect but we are given clues in the bible as to what it will be like.
Here are a few verses to look at, List what each one tells us:
Revelation 21:1-5 ______________________________________________
Revelation 7:15-17 ____________________________________________
John 14:2 _______________________________________________________
Romans 8:30 ___________________________________________________
Matthew 25:21 _________________________________________________
Revelation 21:22-27: ___________________________________________
What an amazing promise to have given to us and the best ending possible to our very own story.
All we have to do is ask God
