January 25 | Job’s Response to His Friends

Today’s Reading:

Read Job 14-17

Have you ever had a bad day? I’m sure you have– we all have! When we have bad days, it is helpful to
have friends we can share our sadness with, isn’t it? Job shared his sadness with his friends, but they
were not helpful to him. Actually, in Job 16:1, Job says, “You are all miserable comforters.” Job’s friends
were not helping him feel better about his circumstances. They were actually making him feel worse!
Job asked his friends for advice and for help and they did not help him at all.

Do you know what it means to ask for advice? Asking for advice is when we talk to someone about what
we should do in a certain situation. We need to be very careful when we ask someone for advice that
we are asking someone who will give us good advice– advice that matches up with what God would want
us to do. All the advice we get should always be compared to what the Bible would say. The Bible is
what we have that lets us know how God would want us to act or think. If someone tells you something
that goes against that, then they have not given you good advice. Job’s friends were not full of good
advice!

Application/Prayer:

Who are some friends in your life that you know would give you good advice that would line up with
what the Bible tells you to do? If you can’t think of any, ask God to give you a good friend like that.

January Memory Verse:

“All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

2 Timothy 3:16-17

Using the daily reading prompts from George H. Guthrie’s Read the Bible for Life, here’s how to use this devotional:

Bring your Bible! Your kids need to see that everything you are reading to them or learning about comes from an actual Bible!
Each day starts with a reading prompt. Read the selection as a family. If your kids are readers, encourage them to read along with you.
After you’ve read the passage, read the short devotional thought that goes along with each passage.
Prayer and application are important any time we read God’s word! After each devotional, there is a challenge to help apply what your family has read that day.
There is a reading for six days of the week. The last reading of the week is a Gospel Conversation Prompt to help you connect the reading from the week with God’s plan for salvation.