Love family by
loving God
Matthew 10:37
4/2/20
Pastor John C. Berg
37 “Whoever loves
father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or
daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
This
is your daily devotion for April 2nd. God’s
word for our consideration this morning is taken from Matthew 10:37 37 “Whoever loves
father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or
daughter more than me is not worthy of me. This may be the most challenging devotion for you to take
in. Jesus is not saying “don’t love your
family.” He is warning us that we can
turn our loved ones into little idols.
In fact, I suspect this may be a very common form of idolatry for many
of us.
We’ve mentioned more than once in these devotions
that God promises to work good things for us even through bad times. I think one of the good things that many of
us are experiencing right now is that we are getting more time with our
families. When things get tough we tend
to nest or cocoon with our families. We
focus on keeping family safe. We’re
probably doing that even more so now since we are literally being forced to be
with our families more. Many of us are
enjoying being around our kids more and hopefully they like having us at home! But there is a danger here. The devil has thousands of years of practice
in infiltrating blessings and causing harm.
Remember, the harm the devil wants more than anything is to damage your
relationship with God. And so it’s
possible that he might use this time to get us to love family more than God.
Of course we love our children and parents but we
need to remember who created us, who saved us and who gave us faith in
Jesus. God is to number one in our
hearts. If we love and honor him we want
to do what he says, and he one thing he commands is that we love and care for
family.
Remember the most important way to do that! The best way to love your family members is
to bring them to Jesus and bring Jesus to them.
More important than the safety of our kids and the health of our elderly
parents and grandparents is their relationship with Jesus. So we can do both at the same time. We can love and honor God above all else and
also loving our family members by bringing them to Jesus, by connecting them
with God’s Word. I know many of you are
watching these devotions and I’m glad for it.
Divinity and St. John members in the mail you received little orders of
service I put together. My suggestions
is to use these together with the devotions as evening family worship
time. This is a way to love family and
love God above all else at the same time.
This is a blessing that God is working right now. If more of us can get into the habit of
hearing God’s Word and worshipping as a family at home it will accomplish
tremendous spiritual good for our families and churches.
Let’s pray: Dear
Jesus, thank you for blessing us with family.
Thank you for giving us time with them.
Help us to love them bringing them to you and you to them. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment