FAMILY IT! — Wednesday Family Devotional — “Mixtures and Solutions”

Supplies: Bible; cooking oil; 2 different drinks; 2 glasses

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When I was growing up, one of my favorite TV shows was “Laverne & Shirley.”  One of the main character’s favorite drinks was milk and Pepsi.  (Gross, I know.)  Make your own “TV Show” drink by combining two different beverages in your house.  My guess is you could come up with some tasty ones.  Iced tea and lemonade, maybe.  Or perhaps Diet Cran-Cola?  If nothing else, whip up a quick glass of milk water.  Not as yummy, but it’ll make my point, because all of these are “solutions.”  Anybody taking chemistry in school this year will learn that.  You’ve combined these two things and now they make something new, something that can’t be separated again.  It’s a solution.

Try the same thing using one of your beverage choices and a little bit of cooking oil.  Stir it up really well.  Now wait a minute.  Almost immediately you’ll start to see the oil separate from the other liquid.  No matter how hard your mix it up, it will eventually split into its two parts.  That means it’s a mixture.

READ

Read Jude 17-25 together.  Paraphrase for younger children. 

THINK AGAIN

In the first half of his letter, this brother of Jesus shared about how dark the world is.  He didn’t mince words: there’s a lot of sin and it is EVERYWHERE.  It’s in our schools, our workplaces, our neighborhoods, even our homes.  Some people just seem to make it their life’s goal to try and mix up your relationships.  It’s like they enjoy dividing people and causing friction.  Bad attitudes and ungodly behaviors show up in our teammates, our coworkers, even our friends and family sometimes.  It can be hard to avoid!  

Beginning with verse 17, Jude encourages believers to persevere through it all.  He tells us to “keep [ourselves] in God’s love.”  The solution, ironically, is to be a solution, to allow our lives to blend with the Holy Spirit so completely that we become someone totally different—completely inseparable.  Too often we let Jesus in, but we keep the oily coating of doubt or past sin habits.  We get bumped our shaken in our faith, and pretty soon we’re separating out again, pulling away from our Savior.  Not good!  We don’t want to just mix it up with God—we want to be new creations, right?

APPLY

How’s your solution?  Think for a few minutes about what you can do to make your relationship with God more complete.  Share some of your ideas with each other.  Now have each person in your family choose one as a goal for the week (i.e. “I’m going to spend ____ minutes in prayer every morning before I leave my room.”).  Set a date a week from now to check and see how everyone is doing.

Are you feeling mixed up?  Are there some things right now that are more challenging for you to get past?  Maybe there’s that one person who really knows how to rattle your faith cage.  Or maybe it’s a recent event that’s causing you to pull away from the Father a little.  Share that with at least one person in your family, and ask them to pray for you to increase your faith and belief in Jesus.

PRAY

Dear Jesus, You are my solution.  You’re the answer to everything I need, to every want I could ever have.  Jesus, I also want my life to be a solution, a perfect combination of You in me.   Draw me close to You, Lord, so that I might never be separated.  As the world around me gets crazier and my faith gets rocked, keep me always in Your love.  In Your Name we pray, Amen.

REPLY

Did you and your family enjoy this devotional blog?  We'd love to know about it!  Our hope is to continue providing this weekly opportunity for families to do a devotion together.  If your family did this devotion, please shoot us an email, text or just post a comment to this blog.