One of the things we're hoping to accomplish through our 5-10 minute Bible study time at home, is to help teach Chase respect for God's Word so that he'll adapt better to a Worship Gathering in a church setting (or Bible study for that matter). Of course, it's not the primary goal...but it is one of the benefits of our time.
As much as I love teaching and preaching the Word, contextualizing for an audience of 3 that includes a 4 month old, an almost 3 year old, and my beautiful wife who is much smarter and more spiritual than I am presents its own challenges.
As we set out to tackle 1 John 5:1-5, an interesting parallel came to mind for Chase specifically as he was staring at me as if I had a specific early church gift of the Spirit and he did not possess the other gift required to make it work. Anyway, we were on the thought that our love for God is demonstrated by our obedience to God. James got into this a bit with faith and works (i.e. don't tell me about your faith yet you possess no good works); you get it. Our obedience to God is its own reward. We told Chase that Josiah would know how much Chase loved his mom and dad by the way that he treated us with respect and obeyed our instructions.
Now, as much as I can tell, he seemed to get it. Josiah even made a noise (though I'm not certain from whence it came if you catch my drift...I think I caught his).
Then, I looked at Ashlie as I reminded both of us that obedience is better than sacrifice, because obedience is its own reward. God owes us nothing - we cannot breathe without his permission. Disobeying him is totally insane...and there's enough of that to go around. As for me and my house, we will set out to obey the Lord (and marvel at His grace in the process).
