Bedside Baptist

Due to the large amounts of snow and ice surrounding our house I decided that this morning we wouldn't venture out to church but instead have our own little church at home. It turned out to be so special and so much fun.

We started out in prayer asking God to speak to us as we worshiped Him and read His Word.

Then the kids each grabbed their guitars and we sang a couple worship songs together.

Then we each opened our own Bibles to Luke chapter one.

The kids decided that they wanted to hear the Christmas story so that's what led us to the beginning of Luke. Silly me thought that's where the Christmas story began and was a little surprised when I saw that Luke actually starts with the birth story of John the Baptist. I had forgotten that but felt like we should start there anyway, thinking that we'd skim over it till we got to the second half of chapter one where we would find Jesus' birth(I wasn't too far off.)

Well, the short of the story is that we ended up only talking about first half of chapter one. Little did I know at the time that God had us right where He wanted us in His word and had much to teach us.

Here are some of the verses that we hung on and discussed this morning:

1:4 "you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught."

1:6"they were upright in the sight of God." -referring to John's parents

1:13"do not be afraid, your prayer has been heard."

1:17"he will go on before the Lord...to make ready a people prepared for the Lord"-referring to John

1:25"the Lord has done this for me"-John's mom giving glory to God

The two points that I emphasized to the kids and I think that God was trying to emphasize with me:
***just as John the Baptist had a role in preparing people for Jesus' first coming, so we have a role in preparing people for His second coming.

***just as John's mom gave glory to God for John's birth, so we must give glory to Him for all things!

We ended our Bible reading with prayer. Our prayer this time included only giving glory to God for the various things we could think of.

Our church service concluded with some loud singing, wild dancing, much laughter and big smiles. God had richly filled each of us with His Spirit.

Tonight as I put the kids to bed they said, "mom, can we have church again tomorrow morning?