Stir Up One Another

..to love and good works. Hebrews 10:24

Last Sunday St. John's introduced our theme verse for the year. We are following the school calendar so we can coordinate with them. We also had the school kids sing and installed our teachers. There was also a great after party for the staff at our place :)


As each member came into the sanctuary they received a paint stick with the verse printed on it. Here is ours hanging on our refrigerator.

We also had special sermon notes and an extra coloring sheet to take home to pray and color throughout the week.

You can find the print outs of the sermon notes and coloring sheet under the tab Faith Book and Sermon Notes. Scroll down to the Sermon Note heading and look for Stir Up.

Confirmation Faith Books

Here is a look inside the Confirmation Faith Books that St. John's will be using. Each student will also receive a Journaling Bible. The purpose of these faith tools is to help nurture personal prayer and Bible study practices. And to have it all in one place. Also, to encourage each kid to pray, connect and interact with God. Each binder is a blank slate that they have the freedom to express their faith by decorating it. The insert pages used will be available soon on the St. John's church's website.

 Confirmation Information

 Faith at Home Devotions

 PRAYER

 Sermon Notes & Reflections

 Coloring

VBS Visual Faith Statioin

This year we added a Visual Faith Station at Vacation Bible School. So far it has been a big hit and a great experience for our kids.

Our theme is Cave Quest by Group Publishing. We do a 3 day VBS with six stations. Each group of kids visits a different set of 2 stations a day. Rotating through them all by the end. We introduce the fun loving characters and their bible stories one at a time at each station. It's different but it works.

We needed to come up with another station and one of the team members said to me, "How about doing some of the art bible stuff you like to do?" I was super excited! Of course I would!

I decided right away I wanted to some sort of coloring with prayer. Like a combination of the faith based coloring books and Sybil MacBeth's Praying in Color concept. We would color and pray and the same time.
I wasn't sure at first how to do this with kids or tie it into our cave them.

We had also decided to make a journal, booklet like, for their take home project. At the end of each night they would color a page of the characters and their bible verses that they learned about that day. The last night, we'd put them all together into a Visual Faith booklet. I figured their praying and coloring sheet could go in, too.

After much prayer and thought, I had the inspiration of doing a coloring page that looked like a cave with symbols on it. Just like the famous cave painting pictures you see. I drew an outline of a cave and then picked a symbol for each character their bible verse.

At the Visual Faith Station, I talked about cave paintings/drawings and about how symbols were used then showed examples. Then I told them we were going to do something called praying and coloring. I explained that some people like to pray while they are coloring or drawing pictures.

I had them color one symbol at a time. While they were coloring, I read the bible verse for that symbol and then said a prayer.

The kids really seemed to enjoy it. They listened, they loved coloring and I even heard a few say "Amen" with me at the end of each prayer.

After the praying and coloring, we made our journal covers with a spray painted relief hand. Just like the famous cave hand prints, which are thought to be a persons mark or signature. The kids definitely enjoyed that part. Now, they have a nice Visual Faith Journal to remember VBS by. 

More Prayer plus A Verse A Day

We are adding to our House of Prayer. The kids and I completed our Prayer Blessings Sheets. We are now starting a Visual Prayer blob a day and a Verse a Day in our Faith Books.

The Visual Prayer sheet follows the concept created by Sybil MacBeth called Praying in Color. She has a wonderful newly redone website at prayingincolor.com. Each little shape, affectionately known in our home as a blob, is a space to draw or doodle a prayer for someone or something.

The Verse a Day sheet was developed as a way to add more scripture to our Jesus Time. I follow an Instagram account called goosekeeperdesigns. I love her tiny faith illustrations in her calendar. It is like a faith planner and bible journaling combined. Each day we will read a verse and write, doodle or draw what it means to us. We use YouVersion bible app to get our verse of the day.

I can't wait to see the new pages all filled up with the kiddos prayers and faith illustrations. Our Faith Books have been such a great blessing and awesome faith tool. Here is a picture of our Blessings Sheets.

All Faith Book Sheets can be found under the Faith Book & Sermon Notes tab. All are free to use and print on legal size paper. If you cannot print legal size you can print on regular paper and trim to fit.

Praying for France

This was the best way to express my desires to God tonight. The world needs Hope, Peace and Grace. Please pray for France and all victims of violence. Here is the file: Sermon Notes

Luke 10 Resources

"Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, strength and mind." Luke 10:27

I have new Sermon Notes for this Sunday's Gospel Lesson, Luke 10:25-27.

I also have a new bible journaling worksheet for the lesson.

Sermon Notes Luke 10

Bible Journaling Luke 10

Becoming a House of Prayer

Phew, 1 month of summer vacation down! And lots of outdoor projects left to finish. It has been a busy summer so far. Definitely not the relaxed, chill break I was dreaming of, praying for. But it is all good, especially since it involves a pool. Although we have been busy, we have been doing some important things in our home.

We have been using several different prayer tools during out "Jesus Time." My kids have a small check list that they kinda sorta follow every day. "Jesus Time" is part of their routine. Back at the beginning of the year, we introduced them to a specific personal prayer list for every morning. Taken from Ann Voskamp's Soulutions. We took this awesome twist on resolutions and made it a personal prayer list that hangs on each of the kids' wall.

Influenced by the Powerful Prayer sermon series at St. John's, I decided to offer my kids and myself more creative options when it comes to connecting to our Lord through prayer. We started mid June with Prayer Cards. Simple index cards with the name of a family member with doodles and drawings of prayers for that person. We learned this style of visual prayer from Sybil MacBeth's Praying in Color book. While making each card, you are saying prayers of thanksgiving and blessings for that person.

My husband and I also have a prayer area on the side of our fridge with a drawing of our town and church, prayers for our children and other events, like VBS. It's right next to our coffee maker, an essential stop to start our morning routines. The prayers for our children are from a wonderful blog and precious child of God, Connie Denninger's Vintage Grace. Here is the link Prayers for My Children

For July we have started what I like to call a Prayer Grid. It is a simple layout on an insert for our Faith Books, read more about those here. This was also influenced by Praying In Color and Connie, off a book I saw at a Visual Faith workshop. It used a sketch book to create a page to record a daily gratitude and another page to pray in color. I call it our Blessings Sheet. There is room for two weeks of writing something that is a blessing to you on the left side of the sheet and then on the right side a hexagon to pray for something or someone to be blessed by God. As you can see, they are excited and thankful for the pool that's going in.

We have also used the Prayers Sheet from the Faith Book tab. There is also a Prayer List sheet that I have been using to keep track of my prayers for others. I also developed a Prayers for People with rectangles about the size of business cards to do praying in color on if I want to spend a bit more time in pray for that person. The sheet helps to keep it all together in my Faith Book instead of having separate cards. Another sheet is called Visual Prayer. On this one I started with a 'dear God' in the middle, like Sybil Macbeth does, then I added what are affectionately known as, blobs, around it. You put your prayers for people or events in them. 

As the summer keeps flying by, I hope to introduce the other Faith Book Prayer sheets to the kids. I also want to add another personal resource called a Prayer Tin. I've seen some at gift shops, it is an empty Altoid mint tin decorated and little blank notes inside. I'd like my kids to use them to write their personal needs to God in them. I also picked up a neat address book last fall that matches the decor of our house. I want our family to fill it with the names and prayers for our family and friends. That way we can flip through it's pages and offer prayers to our Lord for those we love.

Prayer is such a precious part of our relationship with God. It is the main way we communicate with Him. A strong prayer life builds a strong connection. Which ultimately helps us to know God's grace even deeper. I pray that our home will continue to become a House of Prayer over the summer.