Get the Latest e-devotional HERE
It has been a busy past few weeks with Christmas, New Years, and a Student Retreat in east Tennessee, so I apologize about missing a few weeks worth of devotionals. I pray that God richly blesses your quiet time alone with Him over the next week.
And if I might offer a tip on how to use the e-devotional. It is created with the individual in mind, but it can also be used in family worship. Open with the Preparing our Heart section every time you gather your family together for worship this week. Don’t worry so much about repetition, doing the same thing a few times helps people (especially children) to learn. Have your family repeat the prayer after you, line by line. Read a different Scripture Reading each day, there are six total, so there should be plenty. Use the Children’s Catechism Questions a couple times this wee, it’ll help them build a robust theology early in life (we try to learn 5 a month). I myself have learned a lot from teaching the Catechism to my children.The songs can be listened to or sung, and the Roots and Wings section can be read out loud to the whole family. It’ll help build a healthy view of the Church of the past, which are part of the over all Communion of the Saints, and worshiping members of the Church already in Heaven. Remember God is not God of the dead, but of the living. (Matt 22:32)
I know family worship can be an awkward thing to start, especially if you’ve never made it a part of your weekly rhythm of life. But when God tells us to “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Psalm 22:6), he is talking as much or more about training our children in the worship of God than about mere morality. If we do not cultivating the worship of God in our children, we have no basis upon which to trust that they will suddenly one day turn out to be worshipers of God in Christ Jesus. If we do not cultivate the worship of God in our families, then they will not gain the full benefit that comes in the weekly worship gatherings of the Saints in your local church. I can’t encourage you enough to spend, not just daily time personally with the Lord, but to make family worship a part of your daily life as well. A personal goal I have is to have family worship one day with my children, and my children’s children…….. and if the Lord tarries and l live to be a very old man, to have family worship with my great grandchildren. I can think of nothing more beautiful than 50 years with my lovely bride and four generations of believers surrendered to Jesus Christ and His Gospel.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.