As I’ve gone from devotional to devotional and read guide after guide regarding individual worship as well as trying to find good resources for family worship – I have never been able to find what I was looking for. So, I’ve now decided to make it myself.

My goal is simple – I’m going to create a devotional for the Book of Ephesians that provides a basic framework for weekday devotions (5 days per week) with a whole host of items that can be cherry-picked for your specific comfort level. The hope is that the busy person can complete the basics (scripture reading, devotional, questions for reflection, prayer) in less than 15 minutes, but can also be used to tie together all the spiritual disciplines in your life into a cohesive study. My plan is for the devotional to contain the following elements:

  1. Weekday readings
    • Short passage from the book of Ephesians
    • Short reading of what I believe are important elements in the passage
    • Short description of the passage for children
  2. Meditative Selection – one very short, memorable verse from the selected passage that can be used as a point of meditation throughout the day
  3. Questions for reflection
    • 2-4 questions for individual or family reflection
    • 1-3 questions specifically geared for children
  4. Points of prayer – no written prayers here – just things for you to consider in your own prayer for that day
  5. Topic for Journaling – something related to the reading that you can use to journal with for the day
  6. Challenge for missional application – this will be something directly related to the passage designed to make you think of ways to apply this in an outward way to the people you encounter on a daily basis. It’s about taking the gospel and making it real. This challenge can be the same for the entire week.
  7. Topics for further study – this could be books to read, other passages to study, commentaries to review, whatever I believe has been helpful in my development of this specific passage.
  8. A weekly project for families with small children to explore the concepts of the gospel being presented in the book (borrowing heavily from the more narrative portions of scripture).

My plan, audacious as it may be, is to read through Ephesians multiple times and study it intently on my own as well as through referencing well-known commentaries and other notable works. I would then divide the book into a certain number of 5-day weeks and create a devotional plan for each of those weeks so that the entire book of Ephesians is consumed with some detail at a steady pace with different helps along the way. Not every element in the above list would be daily, but every element would be included. My hope is that this would help many people to begin implementing spiritual disciplines into their daily lives as well as provide resources for fathers and mothers to engage their children on a regular basis with the meat of the Gospel.

Am I crazy? Perhaps. But I have to try. As each section is complete, I’ll be submitting it to my church and some select friends for feedback prior to posting it publicly. We’ll see how it goes and I may add or cut sections based on feedback. I would then post those vetted sections to this blog for your review and comment. I have no plans to sell this or to try and make any money off of it – this would be a free resource to anyone and everyone to use. I would release each section as a PDF that could be downloaded and printed section by section.

Your prayers are appreciated – both that God would be glorified and that I would keep my shoulder to the plow and actually finish this incredibly huge undertaking.