I am working on birthday cards for 2022! I like having a devotional to share with the kids for their birthday, and accompanying it with a personalized letter (handwritten for our Manna 4 Lempira kids, and digital for our Compassion International kids).
For our younger children, I am sending a devotion from Louie Giglio's Indescribable book. I wrote the letter on Pages, and put it in newsletter form, sharing some about our birthday traditions on the front page, and placing the devotion on the back! I also changed up the image slightly for girls verses boys.
“The Heart of the Matter by Louie Giglio
“The Lord looks down from heaven. He sees every person...He made their hearts. He understands everything they do.” — Psalm 33:13,15
When you put your hand on your chest, do you know what that thump-thumping is you feel? It’s your heart. Do you know when it started thumping? After being in your mom’s womb for only 22 days! Now that you’re much bigger, your heart has a lot more work to do. It’s grown to about the size of your fist, and it now pumps blood through the 60,000 miles of blood vessels in your body!
Your heart is amazing because the One who hung the stars is the same One who shaped and formed your heart. But when you think about the word heart, you probably think of more than just a body part thump-thumping along, don’t you? You think about all the emotions and feelings it holds—like happiness, sadness, excitement, and fear. And while the physical heart inside your body isn’t really
where all those emotions live, the heart is where people say they feel them. The incredible fact is that the God who’s big enough to know all the secrets of the universe also loves you so much that He knows all the emotions of your heart and exactly when you feel them.
God knows when you are frightened, worried, happy, or sad—and every emotion in-between. And He understands you. No matter how hard life gets or how dark this world seems, God has a plan to help you, and He knows just the right way to comfort you. Check out this awesome promise: “I am the Lord your God. I am holding your right hand. And I tell you, ‘Don’t be afraid. I will help you.’” (Isaiah 41:13). God’s always with you—with every beat of your heart.”
For the older kids, I went along the theme, "Broken Crayons Still Color," and used a devotional written by Don Stubbs.
“Broken Crayons Still Color by Don Stubbs
One of the simple truths that we must understand as a disciple is that we and everyone we disciple are broken. It is the degree to which we are broken that is sometimes hard for us to know and it is our willingness to allow God through the power of the Holy Spirit to work on our brokenness. With all this we must also understand that Broken Crayons Still Color.
The Degree of our Brokenness - My mother would always tell me, “Don, never forget that people are broken. Our job as Christians is to try to get them to see their brokenness and help them to understand that only God can heal them from their brokenness.” She would also tell me that due to sin, the brokenness of some people runs much deeper than others. When we start to walk life with them, “disciple” them, we have to help them try to figure out how deeply broken they are. Jeremiah 17:9 states, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?"
The Willingness to Allow God to Work - We must understand that we are working with people who are really broken, and that our hearts are wicked. It is only when we turn to Christ, and help others turn to Christ, that we can start to be healed from the brokenness that is in us, the brokenness that comes from the sin that is in this world. Titus 2:11-12 states, “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age.”
God is willing and able to do a work in us that we cannot do in ourselves. He is able to transform our brokenness by his power and to work in us through his grace allowing us to become the people that God desires us to be.
Broken Crayons Still Color - Despite our brokenness, God can and will use us. We must never forget that. Ephesians 2:10 states, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” As disciples of Jesus Christ we can never forget that God can and will use us despite our brokenness, even though he is working on us to transform us. He is also wanting to work though us. God desires that we walk in the good works that he prepared for us beforehand.
So even though we are broken and those we work with are broken, God can and will use us to color other people’s lives. We can still be used by the God of all of Creation, we just need to allow him to do the work only he can do.”
