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 1:4-8
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 has God shown mercy to those who are in Christ Jesus and have believed the Gospel?
(Potential answers: Read through verses 1-8 and see how Paul describes through praying how God has been merciful to christians. forgiveness of sin is highlighted, and a main way that God makes evident His mercy towards sinful humans who are only deserving of condemnation because of sin. Scripture elsewhere describes the new heart that God gives us after taking out the heart of stone and having Himself reside in us through the giving of the Holy Spirit. so, all of these truths are coupled in this verse with the precious understanding that it is The Lord who will sustain us to the end in our faith – even as we falter, doubt, struggle with fears, deny Him as Peter did (only for us to seek His forgiveness afterwards) and remain in temporal insecurities. God answers all of that by affirming our salvation is secure by nailing our sins to the cross of Christ Jesus and conquering the subsequent death of Jesus by raising Him from the grave on the third day to live and reign forevermore.)
3. What does it mean (in general, and to you personally) to stand guiltless in the presence of God?
(Potential answers: Seek out some personal understandings from your family from what it means to each of you to be guiltless. there will likely be some interesting answers! if we think primarily about justification in the legal sense, I think this is one of the best ways to understand what it means to not only be guiltless, but for that to be true because our guilt has been PAID FOR. because God punishes sin by causing christ, who knew no sin, to become sin in our place, we can now stand faultless before His throne, having been justified by his blood shed for our sin in our place! What a savior, Jospeh Scriven writes about, for us to think as we read his hymn: “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear! What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer”!)
Prayer Prompts For This Week:
– Pray for the understanding of this passage, for us to know that we can and will stand, having been found guiltless before the throne of God, as He holds us steadfast in trusting in Christ’s sacrifice alone.
– Pray that God would draw us deeper into a relationship with him because of this great grace and mercy that He has shown us through Christ. pray that we would not be reliant on our own merits or thinking that as long as we follow certain rules or do/don’t do certain things, then God will be happy with us. pray for God to reveal to us the extent to which His love has been shown for us and affirmed for us as Christ paid it all in our place.
– 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.