Family Worship: Advent Day 6

Advent: Day 6

Scripture Reading:   Matthew 1:18-25

Devotional:

Q. Do you know what it means to be engaged?

When two people are engaged, that means they’ve promised to marry each other.  Sometimes people break their promise and the engagement will end and the people won’t get married. Usually this happens when one of the people does something bad.

When Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant, he thought that she had fallen in love with a different man. Joseph thought that Mary lied to him. No one wants to marry a liar. Mary was not married yet so she should not have had a baby in her belly, God told us that we shold be married before we have babies. Joseph must have thought that Mary was a very bad girl.

Q. Have you ever had someone believe something bad about you that wasn’t true?

I am sure that Mary told Joseph that the baby in her belly was from God. Joseph probably thought she was biggest liar ever!   No wonder Joseph decided to end their engagement! Joseph was a very good man. Even though he thought Mary had sinned he did not want Mary’s feelings to be hurt by telling everyone about her sin.  So he decided to end his engagement quietly.

Q. When someone does something bad should we tell all of our friends about it?

The Bible says that when we love someone and we find out about a bad thing they have done, we won’t want to hurt them by telling others.  This is called gossip when we talk about bad things others have done.  Gossip is a sin because it hurts the person even if they do not know about it.  Joseph did not gossip about Mary.

Even though Joseph thought that Mary had been bad, we know that she was telling the truth. God had an angel appear to Joseph in a dream. The angel explained the truth about Mary’s baby, and told Joseph to name the child Jesus. Jesus means “the Lord saves.”

Joseph was very happy and he did what the angel told him.

This is the story of Mary bearing Jesus in her belly.  Soon Jesus would be born and God’s light would shine before all men.

Sing: Hymn 16

Prayer:  Ask each person for one thing that they are thankful, include these in your prayer.

Ideas to add to your prayer:

• Praise God for goodness; praise him for His love, and mercy and for giving us the Holy Spirit.
• Confess that we are sinful people, sometimes we gossip and slander, sometimes we belive things about others and it is not true,
• Thank God  for the forgiveness of sins through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
• Thank God for sending the Holy Spirit to work faith in us, and to grow the fruit of  Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
• Ask God help us live a life of thankfulness bearing true fruit in our lives;
• Ask God to strengthen our faith and help us show love to our neighbour not only at Christmas time but all the time.