Head: Know God's Word | Heart: Love God | Hands: Follow God's Way

Read Matthew 1-2

Head

Matthew chapter 1 immediately starts out by giving us the genealogy of Jesus. Genealogy just means family history. To be honest, I always used to skip over genealogies when I would come to them as I was reading the Bible. I just thought it was a long list of names I didn’t know how to pronounce. In all fairness, I still don’t know how to say most of the names, but I don’t skip over genealogies anymore. I make my eyes look at every name even when I don’t know how to pronounce them correctly. While they may be long lists of difficult names, there’s a reason they’re in the Bible. We can learn some pretty cool things from genealogies. This one in Matthew 1 traces the family line of Jesus from Abraham all the way to Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father. It’s given as further proof of the fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah’s promise that the Messiah would come from the family line of David.

Heart

Family is important to God. They look different for everyone, but all of us are part of a family. Family we live with, family we’re related to but only see a few times a year, a school family, a church family, a friend group, etc. God even gave His son, Jesus, an earthly family. But as special as our families are to us, the most important family we could ever be part of is the family of God. The family we are welcomed into when we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior. What an honor to be a son or daughter of God!

Hands

Spend some time reflecting on the people in your earthly families (remember all the different families we are a part of!) and make a list of anyone who needs an invitation into God’s family. Pray over each of those names and ask God to move in their lives and be willing to let Him use you.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, I am so thankful for You! Thank You for giving us families here on earth. Thank You for giving us the opportunity to be part of Your family. Help us find those around us that we can invite into the best family of all, Your family. We love You! In Jesus’ Name, Amen.