Fully Alive Family Devotional - Week 13

Opening Prompt 

Tell me what you learned about God this week?

Let me share with you what I learned about God this week…

Focus: God opens the eyes of our hearts to know Him. 

• Tell: Tell them who your childhood celebrity hero was! Tell them why they were your hero and all the fun facts that you still remember about that person. 
• Share: Share what you knew about that person is way different than how you know your child. There is a difference between knowing about someone from afar, and knowing someone personally. 
• Ask: Ask your kid, “Who is someone that you wish you could know better, on a personal level?”
  
  

Read this Scripture with your family:

“18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might”

Ephesians 1:18-19

Talk about this devotional thought:

Paul is praying a prayer over the people of Ephesus! Before the verses we read, Paul is thanking God for the people in his life who have shown great faith and love. Paul thanks God for the people who have encouraged him!

But then, Paul transitions into a prayer over the people he loves. He prays that they would know God on a personal level and be changed! Paul believes that if we can know three things on a personal level, that we will be changed

1. If we can know the hope that we have in Jesus!
2. If we can know the eternal inheritance we have from God our Father.
3. If we can know how great God’s power is.

Jesus isn’t like any other person we would read about in a history book. The power of Jesus and his message changes things! John 8:32 tells us that “If you will know the truth, the truth will set you free.” Knowing God is unlike knowing anyone else, because when we know God it changes things! 

Questions to Ask 

• You heard the word “inheritance” earlier, that we have an inheritance from God. What does that word mean? (parents you can help explain this
• What would be the difference between just knowing about Jesus and actually knowing him?
• What is one way that you know God is all powerful? How does that encourage you?
  
  

(Tip for parents: Let kids answer freely. There’s no rush to correct everything. The goal is conversation, not perfection.)

Prayer

Each day this week, pray this short prayer together: 

“God, thank you for sending your Son to die for me. Thank you that I can actually know him like a friend. God, would you help me see his power and the hope that I have because Jesus is my friend? Today, help me to live in that confidence that Jesus gives me. Amen.”

Monthly Memory Verse 

“In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit” Ephesians 1:13