November 2019 : Ready to use music – Higher Love

ARTIST: Kygo and Whitney Houston SUITABLE FOR: 10s to 13s 

INTRODUCTION 

At a time when many high-profile Christian leaders have been  publicly struggling with their faith, this song, and the session, provides an opportunity to explore what it means to wrestle with the big questions while walking with God. 

As you begin the session, set up a graffiti wall with marker pens and lining paper, then invite your young people to add their own ‘big life questions’ to the board. Explain that many songs point to this soul searching and can help us articulate exactly what we are wondering 

about. We are not alone in asking these questions; people have searched for meaning in life throughout history. But this group is a safe place for us to discuss some of them. 

LISTEN AND DISCUSS 

Play the track, distributing copies of the lyrics if you think it would be helpful and inviting the young people to sing along if they so wish. After listening to the track, discuss the following questions: 

• Which of these lyrics can you most easily relate to? 
• Have you heard other people ask questions like this? 
• How would you answer this singer? 

Help the young people to share their ideas. Explain that when we hear searching like this we may desperately want to point to Jesus as the source of the highest love. But even when we know that to be true we can still be left with unanswered questions. There will still be things in life that we cannot fully understand. And that’s OK. It doesn’t diminish who Jesus is; it just recognises the complexity of life. 

Distribute Bibles and invite the young people to look at the book of Ecclesiastes. Depending on your young people, you may find it helpful to summarise this book, encouraging them to flick through as you do so and point out the rhythm of the writing: “Life is meaningless…but God…” Share a few extracts. 

Ask the young people how the passages you shared relate to 

the song and to the questions they wrote at the start of the session. Ecclesiastes reminds us of the complexity we have explored during this session. We can have total trust in Jesus and believe that he is the ‘higher love’ this singer is searching for, while still wrestling with our big questions. The reality is that we live in a broken world, and because of that things do not always make sense in the way they will one day, when God’s kingdom reigns. 

As you draw the session to a close, gather the young people together around the question board. Encourage them to see your group as a safe place where they can always bring their questions and struggles as you collectively make sense of what it means to follow God, despite any struggles people may be facing.