Today’s Reading:
Read Ezekiel 37 and Ezekiel 40
Grab a jigsaw puzzle and scatter the pieces on a table. Work together with your family to put the pieces together to complete the puzzle. When the puzzle is finished, try this: tell the puzzle to come to life. Did it work? Did your puzzle come to life? Most definitely not, I’m sure. Our reading today tells of a vision Ezekiel had where dry bones came together and came back to life.
As one of God’s messengers, Ezekiel trusted God when He told him to do something. Ezekiel had a vision of a land of dry bones. In that vision, He heard God tell him to connect the dry bones to make a body and then to command breath to fill the body. Ezekiel did what God told him to do. In Ezekiel’s vision, the dry bones came to life. Pretty amazing, huh?
God’s message was that Israel was like the dry bones. The Israelites had been scattered and defeated but God was going to put them back together and bring them back to life again. Ezekiel’s message continued as God promised that when Israel was restored that the two kingdoms would be reunited and they would be one nation – not two.
Ezekiel’s vision was one of hope for the Israelites. God had a plan to redeem them and restore them.
Application/Prayer:
Do you trust God as much as Ezekiel did? Ezekiel was obedient to God’s instructions even though they did not necessarily make sense to him. He trusted that if God asked him to do it, he should be obedient. Ask God for that kind of faith today!
September Memory Verse:
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; in all your ways know him,and he will make your paths straight.”
Using the daily reading prompts from George H. Guthrie’s Read the Bible for Life, here’s how to use this devotional:
- Bring your Bible! Your kids need to see that everything you are reading to them or learning about comes from an actual Bible!
- Each day starts with a reading prompt. Read the selection as a family. If your kids are readers, encourage them to read along with you.
- After you’ve read the passage, read the short devotional thought that goes along with each passage.
- Prayer and application are important any time we read God’s word! After each devotional, there is a challenge to help apply what your family has read that day.
- There is a reading for six days of the week. The last reading of the week is a Gospel Conversation Prompt to help you connect the reading from the week with God’s plan for salvation.
Other Resources:
September memory verse coloring sheet