Weekly Devotional Time Resources
Remember, this is just one resource to help you as families spend time reading God’s Word!
Passage for this week: 1 Corinthians 1:10 (also Exodus 20:12; Ephesians 6:1-4)
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. What should unity in each Christian family unit look like?
(Potential answers: Parents, if you are going through this right now with an earnest desire to raise up your children and lead your family in the way and knowledge and devotion of the Lord, that desire is what this question is getting at in some sense. know that the Lord has founded your family and has given you headship as parents over your children, desiring their obedience in your godly gospel-revealing parenting! for children, being reminded of the only command in the decalogue (the ten commandments) from Exodus 20:12 that says for children to be obedient to their parents so that they will be blessed. Ephesians 6:1-4 implants this truth further in our minds when Paul says “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), 3 “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” 4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. So, unity for each chrisitian family should look different from a worldly honor and a worldly obedience – it should have Christ as its example and loving sacrifice and humble submission as its outworking as well)
3. What does unity in the Church look like and why is it important? What should it look like?
(Potential answers: First, it is helpful to remember that in John 17:11 Jesus prays that we in the church may be unified via the protection HE HIMSELF prayed for the Father to grant us. it is always a sweet reminder knowing that Jesus has prayed for us and continues interceding for us (Hebrews 7:25; Romans 8:34). unity in the church had to be addressed by Paul in a few of his letters, which shows us how common it is for our hearts to grow unfaithful in grumbling or to have personal quandaries with one another. Further along in John 17 (verse 21) we see Jesus Himself giveth reason why unity in the church is so important: “so that the world may now that YOU have sent ME”. this shows us that the unity the church should display is for evangelistic purposes! so even our unity has purposes not for ourselves, but to witness to a lost world that God raised Jesus from the grave and that salvation is found in only Him. His resurrection life and indwelling Holy Spirit gives us a New life with New desires and a New hope that the world should see most clearly in how we are UNIFIED, not necessarily in our affiliations or political thoughs, but above all, in our love of God and our love and compassion shown to one another and to those outside)
Prayer Prompts For This Week:
– Pray for us to, as David prayed, press in to Christ, to focus on Christ, to make sure we identify areas where we are looking to teachers or traditions or any number of things to try to unite us when, in reality, the only one who can unite us is Jesus..
– Pray that we would be a family and a church that exalts Jesus and keeps the Gospel as our central hope, proclamation, and hill that we will die faithfully on if so pressed.
– 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.