Family Fun At Christmastime By Ewald & Beatrix Van Rensburg Sample

Hope: The Wind beneath Your Wings Best and worst Give everyone a chance to talk about the best and worst moments of their day. Where did you encounter Jesus today? Talk to each other about how each family member encountered Jesus, and about something or someone that reminded them of Him. • Why can we place our hope in God? • Think about the words in verse 13 again. How does it make you feel when you read and hear them? • Use these words as your prayer for the week. Keep praying them until they settle in your heart and become as much a part of your life as the blood that flows through your veins. Thought for the day Having no hope is horrid! But Paul adds something else in Ephesians 2:12: “. . . without God and without hope” (NLT). Being without hope is, indeed, being without God and that is, without a doubt, awful! Another quote reads: “There are no hopeless situations; there are only men who have grown hopeless about them.” It makes you think, doesn’t it? The problem doesn’t lie in the situations but in the people. Christian hope empowers you to persevere when you want to give up . . . that is the story of those who follow Jesus. Augustine, the church patriarch, believed that hope was the best of the three Christian virtues: Faith tells us that God exists. Love tells us that God is good. But hope tells us that God keeps His promises! Hope is a gift that Jesus gives us. This tells us that new life is available to you and me! Activity When last did you do something together, as a family, that really made you laugh? This week, play a game that will make you laugh. One way of creating laughter is to read out sentences from a magazine while holding your tongue with your fingers. The others then have to guess what you have read. After the game, discuss this question: How do you think joy and laughter are connected to hope? Prayer Dear Lord, help us in this month of December, a time of giving, to support and love one another and to show care and compassion for those who may be lonely or without hope. Amen. Random act of kindness Put your heads together and come up with a way of bringing hope to someone in your neighborhood who is feeling discouraged. For parents only When people were badly discouraged during the Second World War, Britain’s leaders still encouraged their people and gave them hope. This should always be your attitude as parents.