This coming Sunday is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church (IDOP). Over the past few years we've been so grateful and blessed to use the resources offered through Voice of the Martyrs (VOM).
This year we are taking the entire week prior to IDOP to focus everything we can on God`s persecuted church. For school that means we are modifying our schedule a bit. We`ll stick to our morning OT Bible reading but then discuss it within the context of persecution....not too hard since we`re in Exodus right now.
Today`s writing assignment is writing letters. Justin wrote a personal letter to one of the Pastor`s listed in the persecution alert from VOM and Noah wrote a business letter to the Chinese government on behalf of the same Pastor. The rest of the week we`ll be doing written prayers, an essay on why God allows persecution, and an oral presentation on a Christian martyr.
Novel Reading this week will be in VOM`s `Extreme Devotion.` Which is not actually a novel, but a compilation of devotional stories about real persecuted Christians around the world. This has really helped put things into perspective for us. I`ve had the boys pray the Scripture out loud that is listed at the side of each devotion. I hope it will help them to not only be able to pray the Scriptures (which can be powerful), but also to place God`s Word in their hearts regarding those who are suffering for sake of His Kingdom.
Lastly, we`re using the Scripture that the IDOP website has listed for their theme this year, taken from Psalm 10:7. We typically use a new Scripture passage each week to use for memory, penmanship, spelling and grammar, so this was easy to plug in.
Well, that`s what we have planned out (oh, and of course daily Math assignments.) I`m praying that through this the Lord will bless our efforts to lead our children closer to His heart. We desire mostly that they would love how He loves and learn to walk in His truth.
``Remember the prisoners as if chained with them--those who are mistreated--since you yourselves are in the body also.`` Heb. 13:3
