Opener – Circle Twister
Have youth group leaders get all participants standing and forming two circles. One of the circles should be inside of the other circle.
It’s helpful if there are a couple of the leaders standing on a stage above the players or on a stable platform/chairs.
When the music starts the two circles will rotate in opposite directions.
The leaders will stop the music and make an order. Somewhat like the game twister, they will call out body parts to connect.
Examples are “right elbow to left ear”, “left knee to nose”, “right hand to right shoulder blade”, “head to left ankle” or other safe combinations you can come up with.
You can have these written down to be pulled out of a hat or just make them up as you go.
The leader calls out one of the orders and the inside circle players are to quickly find an outside circle player and complete the order by connecting.
As the players start to find a partner, they are given only a few seconds to complete the order, the leaders on stage will start calling players out that have not completed the order.
The leaders will start pointing and saying “Your out”, “Your out”, “Your out” trying to eliminate as many as possible.
After a few seconds you start up the music again and repeat, trying to get it started quickly so that the kids will be mixed up with as many players as possible.
You can play this until you have one couple as the winners or until they get tired of the game. Great game to get kids to interact and meet new faces (elbows, knees, ears, feet). Can be done with a large group of 50-100 kids.
This is the second lesson in our series called Games People Play. Today we’re talking about Twister.
History of the game Twister:
Back in 1965, Reyn Guyer was running a sales promotion firm he had founded with his father.
Known for creating eye-catching in-store displays and innovative package design (clients included Pillsbury, Brach’s Candies, 3M, and Kraft Foods), they were commissioned by a Wisconsin shoe polish company to develop a premium for use in a "send a buck and a box top" mail-in campaign.
Guyer was toying with a notion that included color patches that went on kids’ feet (along with a correspondingly colored walkaround grid), when it occurred to him that what he had come up with might work better as a game.
He called on one of the company’s artists, who sketched out a giant board, then tested it out with a group of office workers divided into two teams.
Seeing the fun in eight people-as-playing pieces crammed on a 4x6 mat, a number of concepts emerged, eventually evolving into a game they called "Pretzel".
Pretzel was picked up by the Milton Bradley company, who, against Guyer’s wishes, changed the name to Twister.
But even with the name change, the game still had trouble once it got to market -- major retailers balked, not sure where it fit in or if customers would understand it.
Company fears that they might have a huge flop on their hands vanished, however, on May 3, 1966, when Twister was featured on ’The Tonight Show’.
Helping matters was the fact that one of Johnny Carson’s guests that night was Eva Gabor (the lady who plays “Lisa” from Green Acres).
All it took was one shot of Eva on her hands and knees, with Johnny climbing over her, and no longer was there any doubt what this game was all about.
Further proof: during that first year alone, more than three million copies were sold.
On May 2, 1987, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst set a world record for the largest Twister game ever as 4,160 students played Twister at the same time.
Conservative estimates are that Twister has been played by 65 million people worldwide.
The premise of the game is simple. Spin the spinner and the place the proper hand or foot on the proper color.
But if you’ve ever played the game, you know that what sounds so simple actually becomes extremely difficult.
You can only be pulled in so many different directions before you fall.
What I want to do this evening is two take two simple strategies in winning the game and apply it to relationships.
Pulled Apart and Twisted...
Getting pulled in 100 different directions on a Twister mat is fine. But it’s not so fine when life feels like one big game of Twister—when you’re relationships with friends or that special person of the opposite sex.
This evening I want to take one verse out of the book of Hebrews. In Hebrews 12, there’s a short little passage that can really help us to do a little “untwisting” in our lives.
Let’s pick it up in the second half of verse one. “…let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith…” (Hebrews 12:1b-2a, NIV)
Strategy #1
The first thing I want to share with you in winning the Twister game in your life, is to BE FLEXIBLE
-----------ILLUSTRATION: Imperial Hotel
Years ago, Frank Lloyd Wright was given the impossible task of building the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.
No comparable construction job ever before had been undertaken.
With patience he laid plans for the immense building in this land of earthquakes and terrible tremors.
After carefully reviewing the situation, he found that eight feet below the surface of the ground lay a sixty-foot bed of soft mud.
Why not float the great structure on this and in some way make it absorb the shock of the earthquake?
After four years of work, amid ridicule and jeers of skeptical onlookers, this most difficult building in the world was completed, and soon arrived the day which tested it completely.
The worst earthquake in fifty-two years caused houses and buildings all around to tumble and fall in ruins.
But the Imperial Hotel stood, because it was able to adjust itself to the tremors of the earth.
-------------------------
Throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.
If you’re tangled up, then you can’t be flexible to reach the color
We know that Twister is full of hindrances and entanglements. That’s what makes the game challenging and fun.
But the hindrances and entanglements we meet in our lives can really make a mess of things.
And the enemy is so good at entangling you.
Proverbs 29:1 reads: A person who will not bend after many warnings will suddenly be broken beyond repair.
Strands of string illustration
The enemy wants you to be confident that you can feel like you’re flexible until the spinner lands on the color green that happens to be between the players legs in front of you.
Then you’re stuck trying to slide your foot between their legs and ending up with their butt in your face – and staying their until two or three turns.
When we begin doing “harmless” things --- things that you know you can stop at anytime, is when God sends that alarm off in your heart – while you casually reach over and push the snooze button.
I can smoke weed two or three times, it won’t hurt. You’re right!
I can let my boyfriend have a good feel every now and then, just as long as I don’t go all the way, it won’t hurt. You’re right!
I can sneak into my parents cabinet and take a drink of alcohol everynow and then to get a buzz, it won’t hurt. You’re right!
Me and my friend can ditch class this once, it won’t hurt. You’re right!
I can hang around this jacked-up dude and be his friend, just so he gives me a ride. It won’t hurt. You’re right!
Now remember the toilet paper. Each time you decide to try one of those “it won’t hurt” adventures, you’re mind becomes more confident, while your heart becomes more callous.
And before long, you realize one day, you’re trapped. You’re not flexible. You’re rigid, because you have now developed a habit of those “it won’t hurts” until now it becomes “it hurts”.
You no longer have the luxury of being FLEXIBLE because now you’ve become TANGLED. Tangled in relationships that possibly may include lying constantly to your friends.
Tangled in always having friends around you that have something to offer you – I’ll let you be my friend if…
You’re tangled in the web of where it’s now become a challenge to ditch class…and take as many friends with you as you can get away with…
Tangled in always wanting that buzz you get from what started out as 2 or 3 swigs from the bottle, to mixing it with coke so you can take it with you --- you’ve become tangled in wanting a better buzz
Tangled in a relationship where your boyfriend now EXPECTS you to let him have his way with your body when you’re together.
Guys become tangled in relationships where they always have to do what their friends do in order to be accepted and not ridiculed.
So how do we lead a life that is unhindered and untangled?
There is one of two significant phrases in our passage that I need to show you. To keep your FLEXIBILTIY, you need to follow the last part of verse 1, “throw off” “lay aside every weight.
It that simple. Ladies, dump the guy that wants to steal your honor
Guys, dump the friends that always want you to follow them in their crime spree.
Whatever is dragging you down, and keeping you from that wonderful feeling of being able to stretch out and be the real you – lay it aside – and move on.
If you’re too wrapped up in it, then start by removing one strand at a time -- Get rid of one friend at a time, until you’re away from the crowd
Girls, if you don’t want to dump the dude, because you’re afraid of being alone, then start with one “that’s a no-no” at a time.
Chances are you won’t have to dump him, he’ll leave you and try to find another person who’ll be his next challenge.
Strategy #2
The second thing I want to share with you in winning the Twister game in your life, is to KEEP YOUR BALANCE.
When you’re playing Twister, it eventually becomes impossible to focus on one thing. You’re being pulled in so many different directions that eventually even the best players will lose their balance and fall.
It’s really easy to lose your balance in life for the very same reason.
We’re pulled in so many different directions that we can’t maintain our balance. There aren’t enough hours in a day; there aren’t enough days in a week.
There is so much competing for our time, so much stuff or activities that demand our attention, that we can lose focus on what is most important.
The old TVs when I grew up you actually had to get up and turn this big knob to change the channels. We still have one at my grandmothers house
Sometimes the picture on those old TVs goes out of focus and you’ve got to turn this other knob until the picture refocuses.
Some you are looking at me like I’m from another planet right now. Yeah, the remote control didn’t always exist.
This phrase, “fix your eyes on Jesus,” is really a call for us to turn the knob on our lives to bring things back into focus.
If your life is off balance, the first question to ask is, “What is my focus?” But here’s the deal when you ask that question: There’s only one right answer.
There’s only one focal point that can be a stabilizing force in our lives. And it’s not your school activities, not your popularity status, not how to get people to notice you at school by doing weird and crazy stuff.
This is a game that a lot of students play in their lives. They try to become a pro at Twister because they bend and twist their focus toward all this stuff.
We probably all know people who are focused on this stuff and their lives are way out of focus and completely off balance.
Maybe the person you know who is focused on the wrong things is you.
The reason Hebrews challenges us to fix our eyes on Jesus is not just because he offers us eternal life, it’s because he also offers us a focused, balanced, content, and purposeful life now.
Which brings us to a question: how do I do this? How do I turn the knob on my life, how do I refocus my life on Jesus? Our verses from Hebrews hold the answer.
Let’s look at the second key phrase in our passage. Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. Throw off all this stuff. Lay it aside. Get rid of it.
In Twister, you have to spin a wheel to decide what your next move will be. You can’t prioritize your moves because your moves are all a matter of chance.
How To Win....
So how do you “BE FLEXIBLE” and KEEP OUR BALANCE by our choices in your lives without simply leaving it to a spinning wheel?
Whenever you’re facing an option or a choice in your life, there are four questions you can ask that will help you decide where this choice belongs.
The first question is “Does this choice meet God’s approval?”
For someone who claims to be a Christ-follower, this has to be the first question in your quest in making the right choices in your life.
For a lot of you, this one question alone will untwist a lot of you in here right now whose life is one big knot.
Psalm 86:12 says. “I will praise you, O Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever.”
A second question to ask is “Does this choice strengthen my family ties?” – Because you are irreplaceable in your family.
You are replaceable at your school, you are replaceable on your team, you are replaceable in your class at school, but you are irreplaceable in your family --- because that is who defines you.
Some of you have been twisted and torn from your family, but you still are defined by the strength of love for eachother.
If you do not love your family, then you will lose your balance in the game of Twister and it will affect in your choices in life.
Do your choices strengthen your family ties or will it distance you from them?
The third question to ask is “Does this choice help to others?”
The Bible tells us in 1 Peter 4:10, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others…”
Serving others is a hallmark of the Christian life and it has to be reflected in the choices of a Christ-follower.
The second greatest commandment that Christ gave us is love one another as you would yourself.
Are you giving others in your life sloppy seconds after you have satisfied what only you want?
The fourth question to ask is “Does this choice make my life better? Proverbs 28:25 tells us, “…the one who trusts in the LORD will be enriched.”
The next time you want to do something that is questionable on the Twister mat, before you do it, ask yourself, will my life be better?
These four questions are important if we want to BE FLEXIBLE and KEEP YOUR BALANCE according to God’s will and design.
Closing
If we have a choice that doesn’t match up with one of these questions, then our passage from Hebrews says “throw it off.”
If we don’t take make a decision to get things right our life with these two things, then the world around you and the people around you will prioritize your life for you.
And it will be about as predictable as giving the Twister wheel a spin. Your life will be nothing but stretch and sway.
You will have no peace because, if you haven’t remained flexible in your life, everything will be “up tight” and those around you will notice it.
You will have no peace because, if you haven’t balanced your life, everything will seem like an immediate crisis.
2 Peter 3:17 says, “My dear friends, you have been warned ahead of time! So don’t let the errors of evil people lead you down the wrong path and make you lose your balance.”
If you follow the world’s lead, you’ll do nothing but play a losing game of Twister day after day.
Our focus has to be on our relationship with Jesus and that has to be reflected in our life’s priorities.
Anything less and life will always be a game that ties you up in knots. Be flexible and keep your balance.
