We are grateful this month of July for Lift Up Your Hearts Devotional contributions from Caroline Seed.

Caroline and Richard Seed have been mission partners with the Church Mission Society (Britain) for the past two decades and have taught in colleges and universities in West, East and southern Africa. They are now based at George Whitefield College in Cape Town from where they run Theological Education Development Services (TEDS), a mission service that provides training in teaching and learning for theological colleges in Africa. They are also working with the Gafcon Theological Education Network (TEN), to provide lecturer training in Spanish and Portuguese for theological colleges in Chile and Brazil. 

Over the past four years, Caroline has been assisting a team of authors from East Africa to write a commentary on 1 John for use by pastors and theological students who live in non-Christian majority contexts. Although these devotions are not rooted in that specific context, the illustrations have all been drawn from experiences of theological education in Africa and are in that way, contextual. You will find yourself eager each day to read the next story setting the stage for the devotional. 

Caroline’s team has written the commentary with the assumption that 1 John is written for oral delivery as a sermon-letter. She refers to the key idea “Do not be like Cain who was of the evil one and murdered his brother” (1 John 3:12), which enables oral hearers to remember the message by pegging it onto an already well-known Old Testament story. This structuring device will be explained in Devotion 12 that reflects on 1 John 3:12.

Although each devotion has a key verse, readers and listeners are encouraged to read the set passage as this will make it easier to follow the thoughts.   

Para leer las devocionales en Espanol, haga clic aquí.
Para ler os devocionais em Português, clique aqui.