I love doing monthly themed family worship around the holidays. During the month of November we do a thankfulness tree and the nightly devotions center around Thanksgiving. During December we do the Jesse Tree Advent devotions and hang an ornament on our tree for each one. Obviously that month we’re focusing on Christ’s birth as we examine how all of Scripture points to the prophecy fulfilled with the baby in the manger. I love how those months are so focused and repetitive, making them more meaningful for our small children. I also love how our “tree” looks decorated for the season; it’s a great visual reminder & shows our kids what we’re building towards that particular month. Side note: when I say “tree” I’m referring to this wooden cross that my husband built for us a few years back when we first started to do the Jesse Advent Tree leading up to Christmas (pictured below). We wanted a special place to hang the ornaments & my handy hubby made a cross, the perfect backdrop to the advent season. Well then we liked the cross so much that it became a piece of decor in our home instead of being packed away with the Christmas stuff. The next year I got the idea for the Thanksgiving “tree”. And now this year I’ve come up with a way to incorporate it into family worship during the month of February. We’ll use 1 Corinthians 13 to center our family devotions on love. As I prepared this for my little family, I decided to share it in my blog as well in case others want to use something similar for their families.
1 Corinthians 13 is the famous “love” chapter of Scripture. I was inspired to use this chapter (specifically verses 4-8) to come up with nightly devotions centered around “love is…” The list from Scripture gave me 12 descriptors of what love is or isn’t. Love is patient, kind, doesn’t envy, doesn’t boast, is not arrogant, is not rude, doesn’t insist on its own way, is not irritable, is not resentful, rejoices with the truth (not with wrongdoing), bears/believes/endures all things, and love never ends/fails. You could split them up differently, but that’s what I went with. Can we just pause for a second and recognize how teaching these to our children is going to aid us in day-to-day discipline issues that arise in our homes? Examples using my children: “Tate, we’ve been learning that love is patient. We love our family. I know your brother is interrupting your activity, but practice patience with him because that’s what love is…Crew, we learned last night that love is kind. We love our family. It is not kind to hit. What do you need to say to your sister for being unkind? Willow, 1 Corinthians 13 says that love doesn’t insist on its own way. When we have a friend over, you don’t always get to pick what to play. We love our friends, so we allow them to choose too.” Are you with me? How powerful it is to use Scripture when training our children! My husband calls me “practical Polly” so excuse me for nerding out over how practical this little series is going to be for our family 😉
My OCD-self really wanted the list from 1 Corinthians to total 14, which would take us perfectly to Valentines Day on February 14th…But alas, the way I prefer to group the list totals 12. So I thought it would be good to include a few extra nights in the month where we continue to focus on love, but not from 1 Corinthians 13. I thought it would be appropriate to do 1 John 4:7-11 which teaches how God IS love, how He loved us first & then explains how we ought to love one another. Another night we might cover John 3:16, talking about HOW Christ loved us, that He demonstrated His love through His Son on the cross. This will get us about 14 nights of family worship centered on love. To be realistic, we won’t get to them all by Valentine’s Day. If it takes us the whole month, that’s fine. If more Scripture centered on love comes to mind, we’ll continue to stretch it out.
To start, I found these heart printables (by literally searching ‘printable hearts’ on Google) and printed them on red, pink, & white paper. I cut out about 20 so I’d have more than enough. I’m going to write on them & put them on our cross tree. You could do this on a window, door, wall, refrigerator, mirror, etc. as well. I’ll place a “love is/isn’t” phrase on each heart; for instance, one will say “love is patient” and I’ll continue until I get to “love never fails.” I’ll put the extra references from John on hearts as well. If we have blank ones, cool. Maybe we’ll decide to let the kids fill in some of the hearts with why they love God or a family member, etc. We might put a heart on the cross-tree each night, filling it up as we go. Or we might put them all up at the beginning of the month & just write on them as we go. Or maybe I’ll write on them prior to sticking them up. I’m leaning towards putting them all up at once so we can enjoy the seasonal decor all month long. But you do you!
During family worship in our home, we keep it simple. I’ve blogged about this before. We have 4 children four & under. This is no time for theological deep-dives or extensive prayer. We read, we pray, we sing. It is short & sweet. There is usually dancing involved during the singing. There’s almost always snacks. And usually our 2 year old is praying along with Chris “in tongues” as we jokingly call his baby-babble prayers. The songs we choose don’t always go with the topic of whatever we were covering that night. Obviously during December, they’re all Christmas songs and during November I tried to choose ones that centered on thankfulness. For the month of February I’m going to try to choose songs that center around the love of God. Maybe I’ll have it together enough to sing “Your Love Never Fails” by Jesus Culture on the same night that we get to “love never fails” in the 1 Corinthians 13 list; but also, maybe I’ll totally forget. Maybe we’ll sing “Jesus Strong & Kind” when we learn how love is kind. You could match up a song to each item in the list or you could just choose a handful of songs/hymns centered on love & do them repeatedly throughout the month. A few I thought of are: “At the Cross (Love Ran Red)” by Chris Tomlin (maybe on the night we discuss John 3:16!), The Everlasting Love of God by Matt Boswell & Matt Papa, and even though its not my favorite, maybe we’ll even sing Reckless Love. An old hymn called “The Love of God” would be perfect and so would “How Deep the Father’s Love For Us.” If you have song suggestions, I’d love to hear them!
I’m not going to go in-depth on what we’ll say exactly to our kids each night as we work our way through 1 Corinthians. I’m not going to be writing up elaborate lesson plans. I plan to let my husband lead the way & chime in as the Lord leads. We’ll tell them about our theme for the month and how/why we’re decorating our cross-tree. We’ll teach them the book of the Bible and chapter number that we’re referencing. We’ll explain and illustrate in ways they can understand what patience is, what it looks like when someone is insisting on their own way, what it means to be arrogant or resentful, and how we can rejoice in truth as a family, etc. We’ll strive to give down-to-earth, real-life-examples on their level. We’ll probably read the whole chunk of verses from 1 Corinthians 13 every night. Maybe we’ll challenge ourselves to try & memorize the list. Then we’ll pray about what we just learned & for our prayer requests. Finally, we’ll watch the YouTube video & sing along to the song we’ve chosen about love. Voila! Love-themed, scripture-soaked, family worship for the month of February. ❤️
If you decide to do this with your family next month, please share pictures of your setup or share the songs that you chose to sing together! Let me know if you thought of other Scriptures to include or if you divided up the list to make it take you perfectly to Valentines Day 😉
Let us lead our children to the cross & show them the love of God on display. Let’s use Scripture to teach them what love is; not just to transform their behavior, but to transform their hearts.
By His Grace & My Grit,
Hilary Harrison
