Comforting Hearts, Teaching Minds

Family Devotions Based on the Heidelberg Catechism

Starr Meade

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781596384651
• eBook ISBN: 9781596388680
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Starr Meade enables families with school-age children to participate in satisfying devotions together by taking them through The Heidelberg Catechism—explaining its answers in short devotional readings accompanied by relevant Bible passages.

Lord’s Day 1

Q1. What is your only comfort in life and
in death?

A. That I am not my own,

but belong—

body and soul,

in life and in death—

to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood,

and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.

He also watches over me in such a way

that not a hair can fall from my head

without the will of my Father in heaven;

in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.

Because I belong to him,

Christ, by his Holy Spirit,

assures me of eternal life

and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready

from now on to live for him.

Q2. What must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort?

A. Three things:

first, how great my sin and misery are;

second, how I am set free from all my sins and misery;

third, how I am to thank God for such deliverance.

Monday

Do you ever imagine “what if—?” What if things went horribly wrong? What if you were seriously ill and were not going to get better? What if something happened to your home or to your parents? Because of sin, all kinds of bad things can happen in our world. Is there anything that is big enough to comfort us if the worst “what if’s” should happen?

The psalmist imagined “what if” in Psalm 46. He imagined: what if the earth gives way and the mountains fall into the sea? The psalmist comforted himself by remembering that, even then, God would still be our refuge, the place where we can go to be safe. God would still be our strength, and our “very present help,” even in the greatest trouble.

We aren’t ready to face life unafraid and live it fully until we know we have something big enough to comfort us in any “what if.” Read Psalm 46:1–3.

Tuesday

To whom do you belong? If you belong to yourself, there is no one but you to make sure you have all you need. If you belong to yourself, you have to make all the choices about what is best for you. You have to keep yourself well and safe. If you belong to yourself, you have to find some way on your own to pay for all your sin and to be so good that you please God. What a dreadful burden it would be to belong to yourself alone.

It is so much better to know we belong to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He loved us and willingly suffered God’s wrath at sin so we wouldn’t have to. If we belong to Jesus, he has bought us, paying for us with his own blood. Having paid so great a price, he will never allow us to perish. Our bodies and our souls, whether we live or whether we die, are safe in the hands of one who loves us with so great a love. Read Isaiah 43:1b–3a and 1 Corinthians 6:19–20.

Wednesday

We know that our faithful Savior Jesus Christ will provide everything we need because of what he has already done for us. Our very greatest problem is that we are sinners. We can never solve that problem by ourselves. That’s a problem for us in two ways: first, because God hates sin. God is a just judge who can’t simply ignore sin; he must punish it. On the cross, Jesus fully paid for all the sins of all his people, no matter how many sins they have and no matter how bad those sins are. Jesus’ death could do this because he is the perfect, sinless Son of God; his blood is of very great value. Read Romans 5:6–9.

It’s also a problem to be a sinner because it means that the devil, who hates us, is our ruler. The Lord Jesus Christ transfers his people from the kingdom of Satan to his own kingdom of light. Jesus breaks the power over us that Satan had. Read 1 John 5:18. If Jesus has met our greatest needs in this way, surely he is able to take care of us in every way.

Thursday

When we belong to Jesus, we know that he has done two wonderful things for us in the past. He has fully paid for all our sins, and he has set us free from the tyranny of the devil. But our faithful Savior Jesus Christ continues to do wonderful things for us. He watches over us to protect us. Because he is the Lord of all, nothing is outside of his control. He will only allow those things to happen to us that will be for our good and his glory.

Because our sins are pardoned and God the Father sees us through the perfect righteousness of his beloved Son, God the Father loves us too. Jesus taught that not a single hair could fall out of our heads unless it was the good will of the Father. The Bible doesn’t promise that sad and hurtful things won’t happen to God’s children. It promises that, when those things happen, they have been sent by God for our good. Sad, hurtful things will never turn us from God or cause us to perish eternally. Read John 10:11, 27–29 and Romans 8:28.

Friday

Another of the wonderful things Jesus does for those who belong to him is to give them his Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the third person in the one God. The other two persons are God the Father and God the Son. The Holy Spirit comes to live inside those who belong to Jesus. He causes them to know and to feel certain that they are God’s children and will live forever with God. The person who belongs to Jesus is still a sinner, and will be as long as he or she lives on this earth. But with the Holy Spirit living in them, God’s children have a new desire to live for Jesus. They won’t do it perfectly in this life, but the Holy Spirit will make them able to live a new life of obedience they could never have lived on their own. Read Romans 8:2–3a, 16.

Saturday

Only those who know they are in danger want someone to save them. The first thing we need to know to ...

Table of contents

• From the Author
• Lord’s Day 1
• Part 1: Misery
• Part 2: Deliverance
• Part 3: Gratitude
• Afterword
• Also by Starr Meade