Easter Flannelgraph

Last week over Easter we cut out felt crosses, soldiers, a tomb, several bystanders, a couple thieves, and several other related items and read through the account of the Easter story while showing it all graphically up on the flannel board.  It was a nice way to help the young ones get a better idea of what we were reading about and why Easter is so important.  We did a similar exercise at Christmas time.

The flannelgraph opened up lots of questions!  We'll definitely be doing this again next year!

Oh So Close...

Ian is just oh so close to having his current memory verse memorized. Its almost as if he wants to be entirely sure of himself before he will say it without being helped. Last night I only had to help him with the very first words of John 3:16 (NKJV).  I'm almost certain that he knows it all himself.  Now we just have to encourage him to realize it!

Laboring Over the Gospel

The other day I took the time to give a thorough explanation of the entire gospel message to our oldest son. To the best of my ability I used language that he is hopefully able to understand. Because he's still quite young I often wonder just how much he knows and how much he connects the dots. I took great pains using verses that he has learned to explain to him that Jesus is God. I reminded him of our reading through Genesis and the creation story of Adam and Eve who had only a single, simple law that they were unable to keep and brought sin upon the whole human race as a result. I pointed out to him that he himself is also a sinner and gave evidence to him from that very day by reminding him of the law that has been given to him to obey his parents. I discussed that this sin creates a massive problem because God expects perfection. I pointed out in Leviticus that the animal sacrifices that the Israelites were to bring to God were to be perfect and completely unblemished and that God would not accept anything less. I labored over the fact that Jesus is both God and man who kept every law perfectly and did not have any sin in himself and could thereby be the most perfect and final sacrifice and that the sacrifices in the Old Testament were only a type of the ultimate sacrifice that was still to come at that time in Christ. I made specific mention of the fact that in order to deal with this problem of sin in us that something had to die to pay the penalty (since the penalty of sin is death) and that Jesus, as God, did in fact die and that his obedience even unto death is both sufficient and acceptable to God to deal with this problem and fulfill God's righteous requirement. We covered the fact that not only did Jesus, God the Son, die, but that he also rose again and is also even now living and reunited in heaven with God the Father. Finally, I stated that only those that believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ could be saved and that that too included his own need to believe.

Right now the soil is fertile. We earnestly pray that the seeds take root.

Crimson stains

We have been singing "Jesus Paid It All" this month as our hymn of the month. The other day we also ate beets with our evening meal and at one point accidentally spilled some of the juice on a place mat. Later that night I used the stained place mat as an example of what a "crimson stain" was like. It is also interesting to note that we also have snow outside right now. I think the boys have a slightly clearer picture of the meaning of the words to this hymn's chorus now.

I tried to explain to them how utterly impossible it would be to fully remove the small beet juice stain from the white of this place mat and that no matter how much you washed it you could still always see the evidence of a stain there. Yet what Christ has done for us is to take the whole of the stain of sin and make it even whiter than glistening snow through his completed and finished work of obedience to death on the cross.

I'm still not sure how clear that picture is to them yet, but it was an apt example that made a great object lesson.

Chorus:

Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.

ESV Study Bible

We have been reading through the book of Exodus as a family.  The other day as we were continuing our reading in chapter 28 about the priestly garments I realized that the children (oldest is 5) had been getting disengaged not only that day but also for the previous several days during our reading.  Suddenly I remembered that the ESV Study Bible contains some very nice color representative drawings of many of the things we'd just been reading about including the ark of the covenant, tabernacle, golden lamp stand, alter, tabernacle court, and the most importantly the priestly garments which we had just covered.  I had originally purchased this study Bible for personal reference and never imagined using it in family worship, but the boys really enjoyed seeing the pictures of what these things might have really looked like.  It was nearly worth the purchase of the Bible just for that one use.

Beginnings

It seems fitting to recap how we ended up doing regular structured worship together as a family.  When we were first married my wife and I would read from the Psalms together each evening.  We did this together for pretty much the whole of our first year of marriage until our first child was born.  After that, once he became old enough, we started reading to him from the Psalms each night as we put him to bed.  We continued this trend after our second child was born and eventually branched out and read through Proverbs, Acts, and the gospel of John.  With the children getting a bit older it became evident that more structure was necessary.  I also remember especially wanting to teach them specifically how to sit through church.  Having also been exposed to some pretty good teaching having to do with family worship I happened to be introduced to some great resources to help facilitate the process and morph it into what it is today..

I wish I could say that we have been perfectly consistent throughout this entire time, but nonetheless God has truly been at work to bring this to fruition and we want nothing more than to please him as a family, together as parents, and myself personally as a father.  Although we've been doing this for many months now, with a family so young we are truly only just beginning and look forward to the months and years to come.

Soli Deo Gloria