Looking for a family devotional?
Rediscovering the Adventure, Suspense,
and Mystery of the Bible as a Family
Old Story New makes it easy for families to focus
on the Gospel with 10
minute daily devotions
Who can resist a story filled with adventure, suspense, drama and
mystery? A story with these elements easily captures our attention, no matter how
old or young we may be. However, we often forget that the gospel story has all
these characteristics, and it’s a true story that has the power to save. Longtime
children’s ministry leader Marty Machowski brings the entire family together to
rediscover the excitement of the gospel by taking a deep biblical truth and
presenting it in an easy-to-understand weekly devotion in his latest release, Old Story New: Ten-Minute Devotions to Draw
Your Family to God (New
Growth Press, October 2012, ISBN 978-1-936768-66-0, $19.99).
As adults, we often struggle to figure out when to do
our own devotions and where to start, so regular devotionals for family Bible
study can seem especially daunting. Machowski frees parents from the pressure
by giving them everything they need for five daily devotions per week, focusing
on a weekly story and covering the entire New Testament in a year and a half
(78 lessons). Each week’s gospel-centered lesson helps children understand and
remember Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, as well as the beginning of the
church. The devotional program is designed to explain God’s plan of salvation
throughout the New Testament. Every lesson asks the question, “where is the
gospel?”
Old
Story New walks
children through the great truths of the Christian faith through New Testament
stories and offers simple discussion questions (and answers) for each day’s
devotion. By focusing the family for only
10 minutes, parents can keep the attention of their young children and reign in
their busy teenagers. Machowski
even offers parents suggestions of how to make the gospel-centered devotionals
relevant for all grade levels, and the lessons are suitable for children from
preschool through high school. These kids
Bible materials are perfect for morning routines, after dinner discussions, or
bedtime rituals.
“Each week starts off with a
creative activity, exercise, or bit of trivia to introduce the passage,”
explains Machowski. “On days one through four you review a portion of the
week’s Scripture passage. Special attention is given on day three to connect
the current passage to the gospel. On day four we’ve added a question for your
older children to ask you, and on day five you and your family will investigate
a Bible passage from the book of Psalms or an excerpt from one of the prophets
to discover how the passage points forward to Christ.”
Although Old Story New can be used as a standalone devotional, the stories
coordinate with each New Testament story from The Gospel Story Bible (released last December) and the entire line
of Gospel Story for Kids Bible curriculum. Long
Story Short, the first volume in Machowski’s family Bible study series
covering the Old Testament, was one of the 6 finalists for the Evangelical
Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) 2012 Christian Book Awards in the
Inspiration category. Using the two books together, families can go through the
entire Bible in three years and gain a better understanding of the whole
storyline of redemption.
The Gospel Story Curriculum for churches
and Christian schools is now available for the Old Testament, and the New
Testament portion will release in January 2013. When used in coordination with
the church curriculum, Old Story New is
a wonderful tool for families to follow-up on each week’s Sunday school lesson.
About the Author
Marty Machowski is a Family Life Pastor at Covenant
Fellowship Church, a Sovereign
Grace Ministries church in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, where he has served on the
pastoral staff for more than twenty years. As leader of their children’s
ministry, Promise Kingdom, he has worked for many years to develop kids Bible curriculum
and devotional material that connect church and home. His passion is equipping
families to understand the Bible as one gospel story and help them share that
with their children.
“We get to tell God’s story to
our children—the mighty life-transforming message of the gospel,” says
Machowski. “We are sowers who plant the seeds of faith each time we speak the
truth of God’s story to our children. Like a farmer sprinkling the newly
planted seed with his watering can, we send our prayers to God while we keep
our eyes fixed upon the soil of their lives, waiting to rejoice with the first
sprouting leaves. Even then, though we’ve sown the seeds of the gospel, we
still marvel and wonder about how they sprouted. That is where I hope Old Story New can help make sharing the
Bible with your children a whole lot easier.”
Machowski is
the author of The
Gospel Story for Kids series
including:
·
The Gospel Story Bible
·
Long Story Short: Ten-Minute Devotions to
Draw Your Family to God (OT)
·
The Gospel Story Curriculum: Finding
Jesus in the Old Testament
·
Old Story New: Ten-Minute Devotions to Draw
Your Family to God (NT)
·
Gospel Story Curriculum: Following Jesus in
the New Testament (coming in January 2013)
Marty and his
wife Lois and their six children reside in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Visit http://gospelstoryforkids.com, for more information
about the Gospel Story for Kids series and curriculum. The website is also home
to Marty’s blog on family, children’s ministry and more.
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