Passage for this week: 1 Corinthians 2:7-8
Resource: Pray The Word Podcast by David Platt
How to use this resource: The questions below should be read after you and your family have spent time listening to the resource, and after you have had time to read through the passage carefully and slowly. Following your family time discussion (using the questions below, or your own questions regarding this text), close in prayer and ask your kids how you can be praying for them and let them know how they can be praying for you as parents.
Family Devotional Question For This Week:
1. What stands out to you the most from reading this passage? What did you learn that is new to you from this passage? What did you learn that caused you to remember something you’ve known, or what has been reinforced from reading this passage?
2. How is this passage talking about the spiritual blindness of the generation and rulers that put Christ to death? How was His death according to God’s “hidden wisdom”?
(Potential answers: This might be a tough question, but this passage and David both help us out here. the wisdom Paul is referring to are God’s plans that were settled from Creation, how Gods Son Jesus Christ would be the rescue and redemption of fallen sinful Man. God’s words and plans were not understood or seen by sinful men who put the incarnate God to death, but did so because of their sinful intentions and desires to try and snuff out The Lord (see Acts 2:36 and 4:10 – emphasis on their actions and desires to put Jesus to death out of their hatred). if only those who put Jesus to death would’ve understood the things He was saying and teaching, they would’ve understood and would’ve seen Him to be the messiah. Yet, God’s plan of salvation (or, His ‘hidden wisdom’) was brought to fruition with the betrayal of Christ and His crucifixion in order that His resurrection on the third day would prove His Lordship for all to see.)
3. How can we make sure we aren’t living by our own wisdom? What does it look like for us to live by God’s wisdom?
(Potential answers: Knowing the wisdom of God involves and demands time spent with Him recognizing what His word says about our lives and the decisions we make each and every day and how they either do or do not conform to His Word. This requires (as David showed us in this week’s resource) a dependance on The Lord in prayer, asking and seeking His help to show us what we are to do. being led by the Word of God and the Spirit of God are non-negotiables for those who say they trust in Jesus and must live accordingly to what they say is true. if decisions are self-pleasing, self-adorning, self-fulfilling rather than directives we have from the Word of God and the Spirit of God, we can know that something will be off and that would look more like living according to our wisdom rather than the Lord’s. in sum, we seek to live by God’s wisdom through being filled with the Holy Spirit which occurs at each individual believer’s salvation – the moment they believe on faith in Christ Jesus – and from that point are empowered to live obedient worshipful lives to spread the Gospel and be freed from sin’s grip that once reigned in their lives.)
Prayer Prompts For This Week:
– Pray that God would help us not to think as this world thinks. As David prayed, ask that God would Help us to think like He thinks and for Him to conform our thoughts to His thoughts and our ways to His ways..
– Pray that Good’s Word would be real to us. Pray that we would seek and desire to be in His Word daily in order that we would not only see and know the difference between worldly wisdom and Godly wisdom, but that we would live according to that Godly wisdom present in His Word.
– Continue to pray for one another and write down or remember the requests of each person. Either have one person pray over each request, or delegate those prayer requests so that each person prays for something or someone specific.