Pray with Spurgeon

Daily Newsletter from SpurgeonBooks

VERSE OF THE DAY (COMMENTARY BY SPURGEON)

“How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping your word.” (Psalm 119:9)

Young man, the Bible must be your chart and you must exercise great watchfulness that your way may be according to its directions. You must take heed to your daily life, as well as study your Bible, and you must study your Bible so that you may take heed to your daily life. With the greatest care a man will go astray if another man misleads him; with the most accurate map he will still lose his road if he does not take heed to it. The narrow way was never hit upon by chance, neither did any heedless man ever lead a holy life. We can sin without thought, we have only to neglect the great salvation and ruin our souls; but to obey the Lord and walk uprightly will need all our heart and soul and mind. Let the careless remember this.

PRAY FOR THE NATIONS

This week, we’re praying for the Sangisari of Iran.

The Sangisari are master weavers who make beautiful rugs. They do not know the greatest beauty in the world: the glory of God in the face of Christ.

Pray that the Sangisari would hear the good news of Jesus.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCE

Help kids study the Bible for themselves.

My youngest son is seven months old and he’s starting to learn how to drink from a cup. Every time he tries, it makes a huge mess. And yet, we’re going to keep offering him a cup.

Why? Because he has to learn. If he doesn’t learn how to drink water, he can’t be healthy. We won’t always be around to fill up a sippy-cup.

We need to take this same approach to teaching our kids the Bible. Reading it to our kids is great, but we also need to teach them how to study it for themselves. We won’t always be around and if our kids don’t know how to drink deeply from the living water of God’s Word, they can’t be healthy.

Yesterday, I shared about the three foundations for lifelong faith that we seek to lay with every family devotional from God Centered Family: Bible skills, Bible knowledge, and Bible habits. When I say “Bible skills,” I mean equipping kids to engage with the Bible, ask good questions, and dive deeply into Scripture for the rest of their lives. We aim to equip kids to study the Bible for themselves (not just sit through it for their parents).

Here’s how we do it:

• Listening Guide Worksheets. For each book of the Bible, each kid is given an age-appropriate listening guide worksheet to use throughout our study of that book. These aren't busy work to keep kids quiet. These hands-on worksheets are subtly teaching kids to listen carefully, identifying repeating words and key themes in a passage or book.

• Reading Preview. Each day, we give you a two-sentence script to tell your kids what we're about to read. We're helping kids remember their place in the story and know what highlights to listen for so that they don't get lost in the details.

• Comprehension Questions. Each day, our devotionals will give you three discussion questions. The first question is very simple — to make sure your kids actually heard and understood what they just read. By asking these questions every day, we're teaching our kids how to listen intentionally to Scripture.

If we want our kids to be lifelong followers of Jesus, we need to teach them how to read, study, and apply the Bible with faithfulness.

One subscriber, Jonathan Cruz, told me how he was already seeing his daughter develop this kind of Bible reading skills: “Since we started using God Centered Family, my six-year-old daughter has been more attentive and asking questions.”

A six-year-old who isn’t just sitting through God’s Word, but asking the right questions and seeking to understand it all. And that’s the vision behind God Centered Family: our kids becoming better students of Scripture than we are because they know how to get everything they can from God’s Word.

Learn more about God Centered Family and subscribe right here.