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 (James 2:2-4)
James writes to tell Jesus Followers that our faith is best shown through our love. Imagine you have a friend who is lonely and hungry. You could say, “I will pray for you!” And that is good! Prayer is powerful! Now, what if you also gave your friend some food and spent time with them? Well, that’s even better! This is what James is saying; that our belief in God can be seen in the way we treat others.
He gives us a great example in verses 2-4. James says that people who know, love, and follow Jesus treat everyone with love. In Jesus’s eyes, every single person is important and loved. He treated every person he met with great kindness. He didn’t treat some better than others because of how they dressed or what they looked like. We want to see others the way Jesus does —with LOVE! We don’t want to play favorites — befriending some and ignoring others.
James says that saying, “I believe in God!” and not doing things that truly show it, isn’t much good. Our actions should match our faith!
HEART
Let’s think back to that race from our devotion on Monday. Imagine a pair of running shoes. Now, picture one of those shoes as your faith (your belief in God and all that He stands for). Picture the other shoe as your actions. You can’t go far in the race wearing just one of your race-day shoes! You need both to run the race well! The same is true with faith and actions —they go together! To know and love God is to follow him!
HANDS
Talk about some practical, everyday ways we can show God’s love to:
our family members?
our friends?
people who may not look like you or think like you?
Prayer: Dear God, Thank You for loving us always! Help us love others well. We want our words and our actions to show the world that you are trustworthy and full of love. Give us courage to love others even when it's hard! Put people in our path today whom we can show Your great love.