JOIN THE JOURNEY JR.
Families Abiding in Jesus together
With shorter reading assignments and kid-specific focus areas, Join The Journey Jr. is designed to help parents disciple their kids and engage with Scripture in the best ways for their age.
This month's memory verse
All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.
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and when they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.
27Then they brought the apostles before the high council, where the high priest confronted them. 28“We gave you strict orders never again to teach in this man’s name!” he said. “Instead, you have filled all Jerusalem with your teaching about him, and you want to make us responsible for his death!”
29But Peter and the apostles replied, “We must obey God rather than any human authority. 30The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead after you killed him by hanging him on a cross.*31Then God put him in the place of honor at his right hand as Prince and Savior. He did this so the people of Israel would repent of their sins and be forgiven. 32We are witnesses of these things and so is the Holy Spirit, who is given by God to those who obey him.”
As we learned, Acts 5 was all about how the apostles chose to listen to God even when others didn’t like it. They were told to stop teaching about Jesus, but they kept obeying God and sharing the good news.
The same thing still happens today.
When we say the word church, we think of the building we gather in on Sundays where we sing a few songs and listen to a preacher. While a church is a building we can go to, The Church is what we call the group of people who believe in and follow Jesus. These people don’t only live where we do but are all over the world.
Some of these believers live in places where following Jesus is hard. Some people are told to stop following him and are treated badly because they love Jesus. And some are told it’s against the law to own a Bible! These people are part of what we call the persecuted church. Even though people may want to hurt them because they love Jesus, these believers choose to listen to God just like the apostles did.
What to do: