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The “Trail Guide” devotional is used by our adult leaders of grade school groups in Quest as a way to prepare their hearts and minds for the topics we will be covering with the children on the weekend.  We have made them available here to help our parents of grade-schoolers engage with their children around the topics we are discussing and also for anyone else that might be blessed by following along.

ON BELAY, LESSON 1: Jesus saves and no one can take you from Him

To live a truly eternal life, eternal both in quality (in God’s eternal presence and with His eternal purpose) and in duration (we will never perish), we must understand and place our confidence in God’s assurances to us.  An assurance is God’s pledge, His guarantee for His children born of the Spirit through Christ.  While there are experiential or subjective ways for us to get a clue as to our salvation and place in God’s family, our love for the church and the things of God (1 John 2:15, 3:14), and the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) among them, it is only God’s “testimony,” His solemn declaration through His Word, that stands as our objective proof of the assurance we have that, when we have believed and received His gift of eternal life through Christ Jesus, we are secure in his hands.

Why is it so important to know we are firmly held in the Father’s hands?  From our childhood most of us can remember hearing these words, “Come on, Daddy’s got you.”  If you are like me you probably associate those words with an experience like standing on the edge of a swimming pool that seemed like a bottomless sea or sitting at the top of a slide that seemed like Mount Everest.  As we looked down at those outstretched arms we did some very quick calculations. What has my experience been with this person up to now?  Can I trust him?  If our father was a trustworthy and loving father who had shown himself to have powerful arms (at least compared to ourselves) capable of catching us, we most likely took a deep breath and jumped.  Experience shows us that over time our confidence level in this person grows and makes each subsequent jump easier until finally we are flinging ourselves, carefree into his arms.  When Jesus says of the Father, “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand,” He is saying, “This is my Father and, through me, your Father as well and He won’t let you fall.  Jump.  Daddy’s got you.”  All of our other assurances in God are built upon this cornerstone.  Confidence in God’s faithfulness begins here.

No one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. -John 10:29b

MEDITATING ON THE WORD:
John 10:28-30
1 John 5:11-12
Psalm 145:13
Hebrews 10:23
Psalm 18:2, 62:2,6-7