TRAIL GUIDE: God’s Family & Mine
The “Trail Guide” devotional is used by our adult leaders of grade school groups in Quest as a way to prepare their hearts and minds for the topics we will be covering with the children on the weekend. We have made them available here to help our parents of grade-schoolers engage with their children around the topics we are discussing and also for anyone else that might be blessed by following along.
EXTREME MAKEOVER, Unit 2, Section 1, Lesson 1: God’s Family & Mine
God uses many metaphors (parallels) in the Bible to describe how He relates to us, how He relates to the church, and how we relate to one another. One of these is the metaphor of “God’s family.” In this picture, God is the parent and we the children. Jesus is our brother, and we the church, saved by grace through faith, are the adopted brothers and sisters in this family (Ephesians 1:5, Galatians 3:26, John 1:12-13). How does the Father want us to love our family? To answer this question we must first look to how He has loved us and also how the Son, our adopted brother, has loved us. Jesus said, “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” It is at the source of divine love that we must begin and end our quest.
As you prepare your heart and mind for this week’s lesson, take a fresh look at some of these verses and make mental note of the ways in which our family life parallels our life in God’s family. What can we learn about how we relate to God and what insights might we gain about how God views us as His children, through the lens of the human family? We as individuals were created in the image of God. We as families reflect that likeness to an even greater degree.
“Everyone should provide for his own relatives. Most of all, everyone should take care of his own family. If he doesn’t, he has left the faith. He is worse than someone who doesn’t believe.” – 2 Timothy 5:8
MEDITATING ON THE WORD:
Jn 19:25-27 | Eph.1:5| Mal 4:5-6
Galatians 3:26 | John 1:12-13
1 Tim 5:4-8 | Eph.6:1-4