Hello Friends,
This summer my household started having weekly worship and sharing times together. It usually looks like this: Singing with my son's iTunes Playlist (about 35 minutes), my husband playing his hand drums and me making art.We also keep our bibles handy and pray spontaneously. At the end we share whatever the Lord has been showing us lately from our private times with Him. The whole session takes about 45 minutes to an hour (the same length of time we might have spent watching a TV show together) and we always come away strengthened and encouraged.
During one of these times I opened to Isaiah 65-66, where the Lord is telling Israel about the blessings he desires to pour out upon her. I painted a tree in water colours across both pages.
And added a verse of prayer for her to a blank spot at the bottom of my bible page.
While my husband and I practised private devotions and we took our children to church, we did not have regular times of worship and bible study with our children when they were growing up. Sadly, our three sons walked away from God during their teens. We are still waiting for two of them to come back. Regret is a destructive emotion. I will not live there another moment of my life, and I know that God can redeem all things, but I wonder if our children could have been spared the pain of living apart from God if we had lived out our faith with them through family times of worship, prayer and bible study.
A big part of the problem was not knowing how to go deeper in our faith as a family. We tried going through devotional books together and daily bible reading times as a family. It was about as enjoyable as dry toast most of the time. It was very easy to let it slide.
But God is gracious and it is never too late to start. Now that we have brought creative expression worship into our family devotional time it has become really alive. A weekly family worship time works much better for us than a daily time ever did, too. We just needed to find the right fit for us
Do you have regular faith-building times with your family? If so, what does your time look like? Do you find it dry and hard to maintain, as we did for many years? Or have you found ways to make it enjoyable and interesting for everyone?
Here is something I plan to teach my SS class this week about prayer:
Thank you for visiting my blog. I hope I have inspired you in some way. Above all, I hope you will know how Father God truly sees you: YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL AND YOU ARE LOVED.
Blessing hugs,
Teresa
Challenges:
Word Art Wednesday - anything family friendly goes
This summer my household started having weekly worship and sharing times together. It usually looks like this: Singing with my son's iTunes Playlist (about 35 minutes), my husband playing his hand drums and me making art.We also keep our bibles handy and pray spontaneously. At the end we share whatever the Lord has been showing us lately from our private times with Him. The whole session takes about 45 minutes to an hour (the same length of time we might have spent watching a TV show together) and we always come away strengthened and encouraged.
During one of these times I opened to Isaiah 65-66, where the Lord is telling Israel about the blessings he desires to pour out upon her. I painted a tree in water colours across both pages.
While my husband and I practised private devotions and we took our children to church, we did not have regular times of worship and bible study with our children when they were growing up. Sadly, our three sons walked away from God during their teens. We are still waiting for two of them to come back. Regret is a destructive emotion. I will not live there another moment of my life, and I know that God can redeem all things, but I wonder if our children could have been spared the pain of living apart from God if we had lived out our faith with them through family times of worship, prayer and bible study.
A big part of the problem was not knowing how to go deeper in our faith as a family. We tried going through devotional books together and daily bible reading times as a family. It was about as enjoyable as dry toast most of the time. It was very easy to let it slide.
But God is gracious and it is never too late to start. Now that we have brought creative expression worship into our family devotional time it has become really alive. A weekly family worship time works much better for us than a daily time ever did, too. We just needed to find the right fit for us
Do you have regular faith-building times with your family? If so, what does your time look like? Do you find it dry and hard to maintain, as we did for many years? Or have you found ways to make it enjoyable and interesting for everyone?
Here is something I plan to teach my SS class this week about prayer:
Creative Prayer:
- Draw (or paste) a picture of someone or something you want to pray about.
- As you draw and colour ask God to show you how to pray.
- Listen for his answer. Look in your bible to see if he speaks to you from there. God often speaks to us through his Word.
Thank you for visiting my blog. I hope I have inspired you in some way. Above all, I hope you will know how Father God truly sees you: YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL AND YOU ARE LOVED.
Blessing hugs,
Teresa
Challenges:
Word Art Wednesday - anything family friendly goes
1 comment:
Beautiful tree! Thank you for playing along in the Word Art Wednesday Challenge! Have a blessed day!
Charity - DT Member - Word Art Wednesday
http://wordartwednesday.blogspot.com
http://collectivecreativity.blogspot.com (my personal blog)
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