Family Quest: The Rock – Peak 2 (Lesson 3)
Confident prayer flows from a personal, experiential trust in the character of God.
Trusting that God will answer your prayers, and always in the very best way possible, begins with the knowledge of the revealed character of God in Scripture.
“As for God, his way is perfect: The LORD’s word is flawless; he shields all who take refuge in him.” (2 Sam. 22:31)
Scripture is clear; God answers the prayers of his people when they turn their hearts toward him. But how does He answer? What can we expect?
Download Peak 2, Lesson 3ABOUT FAMILY QUEST: At Reston Bible Church, we firmly believe that parents are a child’s first and most important spiritual leader. In order to support you that mission, we have created a parent devotional and some discussion starters to go along with each lesson your grade school age children are learning at Quest on Sundays. Our hope and prayer is that this material will help you to engage with your children around the topics they are learning on Sunday mornings, answer their questions, go deeper with them, and find real, day-to-day applications. We are honored to be able to partner with you in the critical task of sharing Christ with the next generation.
Family Quest: The Rock – Peak 2 (Lesson 2)
“In Jesus’ name.” We throw those words on to the end of our prayers as though they were a postage stamp or magical phrase that will result in our prayers being answered.
I am as guilty as the next guy in this regard. “In Jesus name,” has become just as rote as saying, “amen,” at the end of a prayer. It is interesting to consider that “in Jesus name” does not appear at the end of any prayers in the Bible. So what does it mean to pray, “in Jesus name,” and why is it the key to answered prayer?
Thinking about the answer to this question brought to mind an incident that occurred some years ago. I was suffering with a kidney stone. Those of you who have had one will attest to the agony. I went to a hospital where I sat, or rather writhed, in pain while the receptionist asked me about my address, my insurance, and my medical history. She then informed me that I had to wait for admittance even though there were apparently no other patients in the waiting area in as much pain. I asked her to reconsider but to no avail.
Download Peak 2, Lesson 2ABOUT FAMILY QUEST: At Reston Bible Church, we firmly believe that parents are a child’s first and most important spiritual leader. In order to support you that mission, we have created a parent devotional and some discussion starters to go along with each lesson your grade school age children are learning at Quest on Sundays. Our hope and prayer is that this material will help you to engage with your children around the topics they are learning on Sunday mornings, answer their questions, go deeper with them, and find real, day-to-day applications. We are honored to be able to partner with you in the critical task of sharing Christ with the next generation.
Family Quest: The Rock – Peak 2 (Lesson 1)
Smart phones, satellite phones, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, text messages, LinkedIn, and on it goes.
We live in the most communicative era of human history. We will go to great lengths to facilitate quick, clear, on-demand communication with whomever, whenever we want. And when we lose connectivity? Look out. We want faster and clearer communication every day and we won’t tolerate down time or poor connections. The demand has created a telecommunications industry valued in the trillions of dollars worldwide.
ABOUT FAMILY QUEST: At Reston Bible Church, we firmly believe that parents are a child’s first and most important spiritual leader. In order to support you that mission, we have created a parent devotional and some discussion starters to go along with each lesson your grade school age children are learning at Quest on Sundays. Our hope and prayer is that this material will help you to engage with your children around the topics they are learning on Sunday mornings, answer their questions, go deeper with them, and find real, day-to-day applications. We are honored to be able to partner with you in the critical task of sharing Christ with the next generation.
Family Quest: The Rock – Peak 1 (Lesson 3)
Come in. You will be safe here…but you’ll never be the same.
“If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
This is one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith. We can find this truth foreshadowed in the events of the Old Testament and these shadows of what was to come are helpful to our understanding. Just as Noah was safe from the flood of judgment in the ark, and Israelites pursued by avengers could be safe within cities of refuge, so it is with us when we are found in Christ. Jesus welcomes us in to abide with Him where we can benefit from the price He paid for our sins. There in Christ we are covered and protected from the judgment that was ours to bear because He bore it for us.
Download Lesson 3ABOUT FAMILY QUEST: At Reston Bible Church, we firmly believe that parents are a child’s first and most important spiritual leader. In order to support you that mission, we have created a parent devotional and some discussion starters to go along with each lesson your grade school age children are learning at Quest on Sundays. Our hope and prayer is that this material will help you to engage with your children around the topics they are learning on Sunday mornings, answer their questions, go deeper with them, and find real, day-to-day applications. We are honored to be able to partner with you in the critical task of sharing Christ with the next generation.
Family Quest: The Rock – Peak 1 (Lesson 2)
What is the purpose of testimony?
Testimony is the solemn declaration usually made orally or in writing by a witness either in a courtroom under oath or elsewhere. Its purpose is to provide information on which to base a decision. Our memory verse begins with these words, “And this is the testimony.” Whose testimony? God Almighty’s testimony. His testimony, or solemn declaration, is that eternal life can only be found in his Son and be had only through his Son. We have already established that God is trustworthy so we know that the testimony is true. What decision then must be made based upon this information? Why did God give us this testimony?
ABOUT FAMILY QUEST: At Reston Bible Church, we firmly believe that parents are a child’s first and most important spiritual leader. In order to support you that mission, we have created a parent devotional and some discussion starters to go along with each lesson your grade school age children are learning at Quest on Sundays. Our hope and prayer is that this material will help you to engage with your children around the topics they are learning on Sunday mornings, answer their questions, go deeper with them, and find real, day-to-day applications. We are honored to be able to partner with you in the critical task of sharing Christ with the next generation.
Family Quest: The Rock – Peak 1 (Lesson 1)
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.
ABOUT FAMILY QUEST: At Reston Bible Church, we firmly believe that parents are a child’s first and most important spiritual leader. In order to support you that mission, we have created a parent devotional and some discussion starters to go along with each lesson your grade school age children are learning at Quest on Sundays. Our hope and prayer is that this material will help you to engage with your children around the topics they are learning on Sunday mornings, answer their questions, go deeper with them, and find real, day-to-day applications. We are honored to be able to partner with you in the critical task of sharing Christ with the next generation.
Family Quest: Kaboom! Lesson 10
LESSON 10: ALPHA AND OMEGA, THE GREAT I AM
Sovereign, independent, and forever the same. This is an attribute we do not share with God in
any sense. He alone is eternal. He is outside of time, He created time, and is therefore sovereign
over it. He does not exist in a succession of moments but instead He simply and simultaneously exists always. He is unlimited by the confines of time and unchanged by the passage of it. In fact, to God, all of his existence is somehow present.
Such an existence is hard for us to imagine simply because it is so utterly different from our own. There is nothing we can see in nature that allows us to make an adequate metaphor.
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ABOUT FAMILY QUEST: At Reston Bible Church, we firmly believe that parents are a child’s first and most important spiritual leader. In order to support you that mission, we have created a parent devotional and some discussion starters to go along with each lesson your grade school age children are learning at Quest on Sundays. Our hope and prayer is that this material will help you to engage with your children around the topics they are learning on Sunday mornings, answer their questions, go deeper with them, and find real, day-to-day applications. We are honored to be able to partner with you in the critical task of sharing Christ with the next generation.
Family Quest: Kaboom! Lesson 9
LESSON 9: THE SAME YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW
What does Scripture mean that God is “immutable” or unchangeable? Simply put it means that God cannot change in regard to His person, His purposes, His promises, or His perfections. God does act in time and space of course. He created both and is Lord of both time and space. It is also clear that God feels emotions differently in different situations. Neither of these however constitute a “change.”
As clear as these facts are in Scripture you may wonder, why spend time on it at all? What possible impact does this truth have on me and my faith? A big one. Let me explain and then leave you to meditate on His Word instead of mine.
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ABOUT FAMILY QUEST: At Reston Bible Church, we firmly believe that parents are a child’s first and most important spiritual leader. In order to support you that mission, we have created a parent devotional and some discussion starters to go along with each lesson your grade school age children are learning at Quest on Sundays. Our hope and prayer is that this material will help you to engage with your children around the topics they are learning on Sunday mornings, answer their questions, go deeper with them, and find real, day-to-day applications. We are honored to be able to partner with you in the critical task of sharing Christ with the next generation.
Family Quest: Kaboom! Lesson 8
LESSON 8: “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY IS THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY”
Holy. A biblical term generally meaning “to be set apart.” The term is used widely in Scripture to refer to a variety of people and objects alike but ultimately points to God as the one who is qualitatively different or set apart from creation. Holy may also be used to describe someone or something that God has “set apart” for special purposes. In the NT holiness takes on the sense of ethical purity or freedom from sin. The fullness of the biblical witness, then, testifies to God’s holiness, understood as God’s “otherness” and “purity,” as well as to God’s prerogative to set people and things apart for God’s own purposes, together with the resulting godliness in the lives of those whom God declares to be holy.
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ABOUT FAMILY QUEST: At Reston Bible Church, we firmly believe that parents are a child’s first and most important spiritual leader. In order to support you that mission, we have created a parent devotional and some discussion starters to go along with each lesson your grade school age children are learning at Quest on Sundays. Our hope and prayer is that this material will help you to engage with your children around the topics they are learning on Sunday mornings, answer their questions, go deeper with them, and find real, day-to-day applications. We are honored to be able to partner with you in the critical task of sharing Christ with the next generation.
Family Quest: Kaboom! Lesson 7
LESSON 7: GOD IS MERCIFUL, BUT THE DEBT OF SIN CANNOT GO UNPAID
According to God’s justice, we are each given exactly what is due to us. That, in fact, is the bad news that makes the “good news” so good. God is righteous, perfectly so, and as such cannot violate his own character. Justice is simply God carrying out His righteousness. God does not do what is righteous but rather, what God does is righteous because God did it. This is an important distinction if we are to avoid confusing the issue with our human ideas of “fairness.”
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ABOUT FAMILY QUEST: At Reston Bible Church, we firmly believe that parents are a child’s first and most important spiritual leader. In order to support you that mission, we have created a parent devotional and some discussion starters to go along with each lesson your grade school age children are learning at Quest on Sundays. Our hope and prayer is that this material will help you to engage with your children around the topics they are learning on Sunday mornings, answer their questions, go deeper with them, and find real, day-to-day applications. We are honored to be able to partner with you in the critical task of sharing Christ with the next generation.
Family Quest: Kaboom! Lesson 6
LESSON 6: GOD IS ALWAYS WITH US – YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN’T HIDE
The Bible clearly teaches that God is ever present. Whether He is present to bless, present to punish, or present to sustain, there is no hiding from God and no point in trying. Just ask Jonah, or David, or Adam for that matter. This simple truth about God should be a warning to the evil doer and a matter of great joy, comfort and even motivation to the believer. This motivational effect will be our focus here.
The 17th century Puritan minister and theologian Stephen Charnock puts it much more eloquently than I.
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ABOUT FAMILY QUEST: At Reston Bible Church, we firmly believe that parents are a child’s first and most important spiritual leader. In order to support you that mission, we have created a parent devotional and some discussion starters to go along with each lesson your grade school age children are learning at Quest on Sundays. Our hope and prayer is that this material will help you to engage with your children around the topics they are learning on Sunday mornings, answer their questions, go deeper with them, and find real, day-to-day applications. We are honored to be able to partner with you in the critical task of sharing Christ with the next generation.
Family Quest: Kaboom! Lesson 5
LESSON 5: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
Being sold into slavery…good or bad? Being chased by a mad King…good or bad? Losing everything you own or hold dear in an utter catastrophe…good or bad?
How many trials and tribulations have you suffered through only to see, on the other side, the good that God intended?
“Natural” forces, life and death, peoples’ hearts, fertility, nations, leaders, battles, good, evil…Who is in control? Is anyone in control of all of these? If so, who and what does it mean to me?
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ABOUT FAMILY QUEST: At Reston Bible Church, we firmly believe that parents are a child’s first and most important spiritual leader. In order to support you that mission, we have created a parent devotional and some discussion starters to go along with each lesson your grade school age children are learning at Quest on Sundays. Our hope and prayer is that this material will help you to engage with your children around the topics they are learning on Sunday mornings, answer their questions, go deeper with them, and find real, day-to-day applications. We are honored to be able to partner with you in the critical task of sharing Christ with the next generation.
Family Quest: Kaboom! Lesson 4
LESSON 4: DIVINE POWER – REASON FOR PRAISE, FEAR, AND COMFORT
The following is taken from “Divine Omnipotence” by Dr. Sam Storms of Enjoying God Ministries:
“A reason for praise – Stephen Charnock explains:
“Wisdom and power are the ground of the respect we give to men; they being both infinite in God, are the foundation of a solemn honor to be returned to him by his creatures. If a man makes a curious engine, we honor him for his skill; if another vanquish a vigorous enemy, we admire him for his strength; and shall not the efficacy of God’s power in creation, government, redemption, inflame us with a sense of the honor of his name and perfections!”
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ABOUT FAMILY QUEST: At Reston Bible Church, we firmly believe that parents are a child’s first and most important spiritual leader. In order to support you that mission, we have created a parent devotional and some discussion starters to go along with each lesson your grade school age children are learning at Quest on Sundays. Our hope and prayer is that this material will help you to engage with your children around the topics they are learning on Sunday mornings, answer their questions, go deeper with them, and find real, day-to-day applications. We are honored to be able to partner with you in the critical task of sharing Christ with the next generation.
Family Quest: Kaboom! Lesson 3
LESSON 3: “EVEN THE HAIRS ON YOUR HEAD ARE ALL NUMBERED”
This is one of those attributes that, if meditated on long enough, can simply cause our mortal minds to short circuit. Kind of like, if the universe ends then what’s after that, and after that, and so on…God knows everything that there is to know about himself. That alone is mindboggling considering the fact that God is infinite, unlimited and eternal. “In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:11b).
On top of that, God’s knowledge of creation is complete and perfect.
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ABOUT FAMILY QUEST: At Reston Bible Church, we firmly believe that parents are a child’s first and most important spiritual leader. In order to support you that mission, we have created a parent devotional and some discussion starters to go along with each lesson your grade school age children are learning at Quest on Sundays. Our hope and prayer is that this material will help you to engage with your children around the topics they are learning on Sunday mornings, answer their questions, go deeper with them, and find real, day-to-day applications. We are honored to be able to partner with you in the critical task of sharing Christ with the next generation.
Family Quest: Kaboom! Lesson 2
LESSON 2: TRUE LOVE IS DIVINE
You may remember from our series on sanctification, “Extreme Makeover,” that God’s brand of love can be defined as follows: “Divine love is eternal and totally independent of the object of its favor. Divine love is an affection which stands in spite of any element of attractiveness, desirability, or even value. It also can be hated by the object of its affection, without damaging its intensity or character.”
Moreover, it is characterized by long-suffering and sacrifice. Divine love is perfect and complete. It is perfectly demonstrated in the cross.
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ABOUT FAMILY QUEST: At Reston Bible Church, we firmly believe that parents are a child’s first and most important spiritual leader. In order to support you that mission, we have created a parent devotional and some discussion starters to go along with each lesson your grade school age children are learning at Quest on Sundays. Our hope and prayer is that this material will help you to engage with your children around the topics they are learning on Sunday mornings, answer their questions, go deeper with them, and find real, day-to-day applications. We are honored to be able to partner with you in the critical task of sharing Christ with the next generation.