The ladies at our church gathered together to make Advent Calendars together and I love them! I met with one sweet family in our church to take a picture of their daughter as she happily placed all the pieces on the felt and explained what each one was.
I’m very excited to share this fun Christmas tradition with you. It comes all the way from a lovely family, the Tarletons, serving the Lord in Texas. Sarah Tarleton and I met in college at Union University and though we haven’t seen each other in years, we’ve been able to stay connected through social media.
Adam and Sarah Tarleton have four children under the age of six and have made the decision not to put unnecessary pressure on themselves to start fantastically complicated Christmas traditions. Rather, they keep it simple and keep the focus on Christ.
This Christmas Drama tradition began when Sarah was a teenager. It’s a way of visually presenting the Christmas story with candles and a short script that alternates between Scripture and carols. Every year on Christmas Eve, no matter who is in their house visiting, their family gathers around their dining room table.
Welcome to December! The focus of the blog will be a bit different this month. I’m going to highlight how various families keep Christ the center of Christmas this month. You’ll love some of these great ideas, especially if you’re a parent of “littles” looking to start new traditions.
Today, we’ll start our Advent season with a book review on Advent in Narnia: Reflections for the Season by Heidi Haverkamp. This 96 page book serves as a reader’s companion to The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. It consists of four weeks of reflections, each week with 7 days. It even tells you which chapter to read along with in Lewis’ book.
I was searching for a great Christmas book to share with you and stumbled on this one. On the whole, I am a huge fan. It would work great as a family guide. I can see families sitting around the Christmas tree, reading part of Narnia and part of the Reflections every evening.
Our love could never be as perfect as His, of course, but as children of God we were able to receive love vertically from Him that we could learn how to extend to each other.
Ian and Larissa Murphy were not that different from my husband and me in college. They were young and in love with both God and each other. They were planning their future together when a car accident caused a severe brain injury to Ian. As Ian lie in the hospital bed, suddenly Larissa’s planning changed from their future marriage to the possible funeral of Ian.
When you pray for fellow believers, do your prayers feel deflated? So many times I want to sit down and pray for the girls in my Sunday School class, but my words feel empty and vague. One of the blessings of having Scripture is that we can use it in our prayer lives. Here’s a list of the top 5 prayers from the New Testament that we can pray for fellow believers.
1 Corinthians 15:58, “Therefore, my dear brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord’s work, knowing that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”
Ephesians 1:17-19, “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the perception of your mind may be enlightened so you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the glorious riches of His inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power to us who believe, according to the working of His vast strength.”
Ephesians 3:16-19, “I pray that He may grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power in the inner man through His Spirit, and that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know the Messiah’s love that surpasses knowledge, so you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Philippians 1:9-11, “And I pray this: that your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, so that you can approve the things that are superior and can be pure and blameless in the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.”
Colossians 1: 9b-12 , “We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience, with joy giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the saints’ inheritance in the light.”
Copyright © 2013. Pedestrian God Ministires
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