If your family is as busy as mine, you know that it is difficult to set aside time to do family devotions. It is, however, vital to a Christian family. As parents, it’s our job to teach our children about God and to help them love His word. During devotion time we do these things.
For my family, we have done it differently at different times. Our church used to meet on Saturday evening, so we would use Sunday morning to do family worship. My husband learned to strum a few kids’ worship songs on his guitar and we would all join in. Then we would read from the Bible and discuss what we read. After that, we prayed together. It was not a big “To do.” Most of the time we were in our pajamas and the smell of bacon was still lingering in the air.
For a while I was reading the Bible to the kids in the morning, then at dinnertime my husband would ask them what they learned. We would pray with them before bed.
Since September my husband has been studying the Bible with our two oldest children a few evenings a week, and I try to spend some time praying with the kids in the morning. We want our children to be excited about worshiping God. We pulled out our worship CDs and the plan is that each day the kids and I will put in a CD and sing a song or two together. Occasionally all of us will all sit down together and do devotions together, but we just can’t count on that happening each week. So, we are taking a team approach.
I don’t know what devotions looks like in your family. I know some families that do devotions at the dinner table before or after their meal. Some families will do them before bed and some will wake up early to do them. Maybe you do them once a week or maybe you do them everyday. What matters the most is that we all are faithfully teaching our children about life in God.
Check out Lisa Kennedy’s blog for some tips on how to study the Bible with your children. Next time I will share some of my favorite family devotion books with you.