Our Church got together with a few other churches this past weekend and had a Middle School Retreat out at Woodland Lakes Christian Camp. One of the resources we put together for the retreat was a group devotion time for Saturday morning.
The retreat was focused on helping students realize what an authentic faith looked like, and ways they could develop their faith. The devotion itself focused on spiritual gifts. Our goal was to help students realize one of the ways God had uniquely gifted them, and help them think about how they could use that gift for God's Glory. We also included a devotional time for group leaders to spend praying for their students. Our hope was to plant a seed in students' minds to be thinking about the rest of the day, and also to have group leaders fully engaged with their students by starting the day off praying for them.
I wanted to share the devotion with all of you. Especially those of you who are involved in Student Ministry so that you could use it, or take away some ideas from it for your students. Let me know what you think of it, or if you use it some time, how it goes. Id' also love to hear your thoughts about how this style of devotion time could be strengthened or improved.
Feel free to use it for whatever you want:
Devotion Overview and Instructions
Hand Outs and Leader Guides
(Hand outs are to be printed front and back)
Showing posts with label Devotions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Devotions. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
From My Granddad's Devotions
One of the last times that I went up and visited my parents my mom gave me something that had been my Grandfather's. He passed away almost 5 years ago and he was a huge influence on my life. When my mom told me she had something of his for me, I was very excited to see what it was. It turned out it was a devotional that my granddad had gone through and taught to his Sunday School Class. He was very involved with his church. He served as an Elder, served with the youth, and taught an adult Sunday School class for the longest time. He was a very important role model in my life as well.
I have started reading through the devotional and its full of all sorts of really cool things. It looks like he started the devotion sometime around 1979. In it he also took attendance for the Sunday School class. Not so that he could have a head count for the day, but so he could find out who was gone or missing that week. It is full of notes about people who were sick or in the hospital that he would need to visit or send a card. How cool is that?
It also had all of his thoughts and notes from the devotional as well as an outline for the class time that he would come up with on his own every week and attach to the booklet. After skimming through it I decided that I would start going through it. I guess I am even pretending that I am sitting in on my granddad's class and learning what he learned and taught nearly 40 years ago.
The first section of the devotional was about Jesus as our creator. It focused on the passage of John 1:1-14. This passage starts off by talking about how Jesus was 'the Word' and how he has been with God since before creation. It also talks about how God was involved in the creation process. If you are interested you can also check out Colossians 1 to see another Biblical author talk about Jesus' active role in creation.
The portion of the devotions that really stuck out to me was in the second half of the section. In the second half of the section it focused in on how we need to be thankful for who God has made us to be and the purposes He has created us to do. The devotional references Jeremiah 18:1-4 which reads,
" 1 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD : 2 "Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you my message." 3 So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him."
When I read that passage I absolutely loved it. The devotional was talking about how Jesus is our creator and we are His creation. If we truly believe that, then we should celebrate how He has created us and gifted us. The thing I love about the Jeremiah passage is that it is saying even if we screw up or aren't perfect God still every ability to shape us into something beautiful for His glory. It doesn't matter what shape we are when we get to God. Once he starts working on us he will bring beauty about in our lives that we could never have imagined.
If you want to read some other passages that talk about this a little more, than check out Isaiah 29:16//45:9//64:8//Ex. 4:10-11//Psalms 139
I have started reading through the devotional and its full of all sorts of really cool things. It looks like he started the devotion sometime around 1979. In it he also took attendance for the Sunday School class. Not so that he could have a head count for the day, but so he could find out who was gone or missing that week. It is full of notes about people who were sick or in the hospital that he would need to visit or send a card. How cool is that?
It also had all of his thoughts and notes from the devotional as well as an outline for the class time that he would come up with on his own every week and attach to the booklet. After skimming through it I decided that I would start going through it. I guess I am even pretending that I am sitting in on my granddad's class and learning what he learned and taught nearly 40 years ago.
The first section of the devotional was about Jesus as our creator. It focused on the passage of John 1:1-14. This passage starts off by talking about how Jesus was 'the Word' and how he has been with God since before creation. It also talks about how God was involved in the creation process. If you are interested you can also check out Colossians 1 to see another Biblical author talk about Jesus' active role in creation.
The portion of the devotions that really stuck out to me was in the second half of the section. In the second half of the section it focused in on how we need to be thankful for who God has made us to be and the purposes He has created us to do. The devotional references Jeremiah 18:1-4 which reads,
" 1 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD : 2 "Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you my message." 3 So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him."
When I read that passage I absolutely loved it. The devotional was talking about how Jesus is our creator and we are His creation. If we truly believe that, then we should celebrate how He has created us and gifted us. The thing I love about the Jeremiah passage is that it is saying even if we screw up or aren't perfect God still every ability to shape us into something beautiful for His glory. It doesn't matter what shape we are when we get to God. Once he starts working on us he will bring beauty about in our lives that we could never have imagined.
If you want to read some other passages that talk about this a little more, than check out Isaiah 29:16//45:9//64:8//Ex. 4:10-11//Psalms 139
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