When partnering with your family to know, love, and follow Jesus, we strive to create and share content filtered by the Head-Heart-Hands model.
Head: the knowledge of God and His Word | Heart: the personal connection from scripture | Hands: a missional mindset
HEAD
While God gave us rules to help us love Him and others well, His love is not something we earn or lose depending on how well we follow rules —God’s love is unconditional. People in the Bible (like the Galatians) were always forgetting this! The Galatians thought God would love them more if they kept all the rules all the time —and less if they didn’t! So, they made up a bunch of rules they thought would please God and spent all their time trying to keep them—rules about what to wear, eat, and do on certain days of the week. Paul wrote to remind them that pleasing God is about faith (trust) in Jesus; not our ability to follow all the rules all the time. Only Jesus (God’s Son) is perfect. Paul reminded them that Jesus died for every rule ever broken and defeated death so we could be free from the guilt and fear of not keeping all the rules all the time. Paul told them that because of Jesus’s sacrifice, we become sons and daughters of God too, and no behavior could ever change that. God’s family is forever.
HEART
Who loves you? Think about your family. Do they love you more when you keep all the rules all the time? No! Do they love you less when you don’t? No way! They love you always, just the same! You don’t have to earn the love of safe, trustworthy people in your life, and you can’t ever lose their love either. Do you know that God loves us no matter what?! He does! He loves us simply because He made us and chose us to be His most treasured creation. He calls us FAMILY. We are His children just as Jesus is His child. The Creator of the universe calls us His child. How wonderful is that?!
HANDS
Pair up with an adult in your family and take turns reading these truths below as a reminder of God’s great love for us!
Adult: There is nothing you can do to make God (or me!) love you any MORE than He already does!
Child: Nothing (no perfect test scores, perfect games, or perfect behavior!) could make God prouder than He already is proud of me!
Adult: There is nothing you can do to make God (or me!) love you any LESS than He already does!
Child: Nothing (no mistakes, missed goals, or mess ups!) could make God love me less. I am His child, and He knows and loves me best!
Adult: God (and I!) love you because we’re family.
Child: God’s family is forever, so through whatever, I can trust His love for me
Prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, thank You for calling us Your children. Thank You for always loving us. You take care of us, and You forgive us. You stick with us no matter what. Help us remember how much You love us today. Thank You that we never have to earn Your love and we can never ever lose it either.