Weekly Devotion, 8/15/2022

Passage for this week: 1 Corinthians 4:1-2
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.Think about how you would define the word ‘stewardship’. What does it mean to be a steward? How are we as Christians ‘stewards’? 
(Potential answers: In the coming verses we will discuss judgement from God based on how we steward His Gospel. So, to be a steward in this sense is a calling that is of eternal importance and weight. Christians ‘steward’ the Gospel by handling it with great care, importance and consequence as we share the good news about eternal life through Christ Jesus. One way to define a steward or stewardship is “to manage or look after something that one has been entrusted with”. Personally, think about how you are living out being a steward of God.

3. Purposefully, lets now think about what it means to be a servant of Christ as David explained to us. How does this overlap with faithfulness? in other words, how can stewards and servants of Christ be found faithful? 
(Potential answers: We are first thinking about what it means to be stewards of Christ and with what we are gifted by God, then we think about that role in light of serving Christ as His servants. to be a servant is to be least concerned with personal status or prosperity and most concerned with the plans and purposes of the Master. We know what we are gifted with and how God grants to us wonderful things in His creation – of primary importance is how we steward well His Gospel. with this in mind, we are to serve Christ with all that we possess. So, serve Christ with all that you have, steward well the gifts and possessions (the Gospel being the most important) He has granted you, and thus be found faithful by God!

Prayer Prompts For This Week: 

 – Pray that our aim is to define success as adhering to this passage – by being stewards and servants of Christ Jesus alone. Pray that God would grant us greater faith and understanding of the eternal consequences at hand for the lives of the lost people around us.
 – Pray that if today was our last day on earth, that Jesus would find us as faithful servants and stewards based on how we have responded to His free gift that is Himself.
 – 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.