More Than Church
Updated: Mar 22
Check out these thoughts from our Family Devotion for this Sunday on how Creation Glorifies God...
FAMILY DEVOTION
"Our planet, Earth, is part of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy is 588 quadrillion miles wide and it’s filled with billions of stars. So many stars that if you counted one star per second, it would take you 2,500 years to finish counting them all! Even more amazing is the fact that our God put every star in its place, and He knows them all by name! And this is just one galaxy of an estimated 125 billion galaxies in the universe!
God created all of this—everything—out of nothing. The Sun, moon, stars, planets, and everything we can see on Earth—He created all of it. And He created it so that we could see His awesomeness and worship Him. In Psalm 19, David reminds us that the heavens and the skies are showing us the glory of God. They are shouting out a message to the whole world that there is a Creator God and He is big, He is powerful, He is creative, and He is awesome!
God’s glory can be seen all around us through the world that He created, but there’s an even greater way we see God’s awesomeness. Romans 5:8 says, “But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” The awesome God who created this huge universe loves you. He loves you enough that he would send Jesus to save sinners and offer eternal life to all who believe in Him.
All of creation displays the glory of God—how great He is—although not perfectly. The perfect revelation of God’s glory is found in Jesus, who came to show us exactly what God is like. Because Jesus is God, He is the perfect display of God’s glory.
Pray: God, You are awesome! Everything in Your creation is showing us how great You are. Most of all, you have shown us Your great love through Jesus who is the perfect picture of Your glory! We give You all the praise and all the glory because You are worthy of it all. Amen!"
MORE THAN CHURCH
So what are you going to do with what you just read? You have options:
Ignore it
Like it but do nothing with it
Be inspired by it, but forget it eventually
Listen, respond, and teach it to your children
These, among others, are the same decisions each and every time we are confronted with God's Word. And honestly, I have fallen into the first three options more times than I care to list.
As parents, we are called to more. We are called to teach and train our own children (and our grandchildren) the things in God's Word.
Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. (Deuteronomy 4:9, NIV, emphasis added)
Your kids need more than church. They need you to worship as a family. They need to see you, mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, and others worshipping God with your lives. They need to hear God's Words from your mouth. They need to catch you reading your Bible and praying to God on your knees. They need to hear that God answered your prayers. They need to hear you talk to God about them, with them, and for them.
FAMILY WORSHIP EXPERIENCE
Our Kids ministry uses the Gospel Project for Kids (birth-5th grade). With that, we provide resources for you, the parent, to have spiritual conversations with your kids about what they are learning on Sunday.
On our AT HOME page, we provide the following resources for each Sunday of the year:
Lesson Summary
Bible Story Video
Family Devotion
Key Passage (memory verse)
Key Passage song (to make memorizing more fun)
Each of these resources is only as good as you allow it to be. I encourage you to give one or more of them a try. Maybe have a weekly family devotion night. Maybe you could talk about the Key Passage at breakfast. Maybe learn the song together and make a music video of the kids (and you, if you're brave enough) singing it to send to family.
Be creative, have fun, but do something to reinforce what your kids are learning each Sunday in GCFKIDS.
I promise you, they will get more out of it coming from you, than they do when it comes from a kids leader or volunteer. Don't believe me? I dare you to try.