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Raising Real Men
Teaching the Bible to our kids is part of your family’s daily spiritual life, and it’s easy to get discouraged–other people seem so spiritual and organized, and our family … well, we all seem better at catching the vision than getting it done, don’t we? The good news is that family devotions don’t have to be that hard. Here’s what we’ve discovered in our own family of ten:
1. Just start! Frankly, between the temptations of the Devil and the laziness in our souls, it’s ever so easy to give up or never even try. Instead, just make up your mind and begin again as often as needed. If you start over 15 times a month and stumble the next day every single time, you’ve still had devotions 15 times.
2. Find a time that works for your family. We really do know a family which rises in the dark morning hours for devotions. That’s not our schedule, though, and we find we’re more alert and receptive at other parts of the day. It may be first thing in the morning, or around the dinner table, or just before bedtime. Choose a time you can reserve for devotions, then keep it!
3. Keep it simple. When your children are young, they don’t need deep apologetics or word studies–they need to hear the stories, learn the history, and grow familiar with basic truths about sin, grace, faith, and forgiveness. Do the complex studies with your teenagers, but family devotions should focus on the basics.
4. Keep it short. Don’t think you need to expect an hour and a half of intense study and worship every day. When the Spirit’s close and our hearts are warm, you might find it easy to spend extra time–but it’s better to spend a consistent 15-minutes every day than once a month for two hours.
5. Start with the Bible but remember other parts of worship. A devotional commentary like Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening is a great help for leading family devotions, or you can go verse-by-verse through through the Bible yourself. Even if you only have time for a few verses to read, set aside a few of those minutes for honest prayer. At different times we’ve also learned hymns together, memorized Bible passages, or worked through a catechism–a question-and-answer form of teaching found in both Catholic and Protestant history. The best of these are full of the Bible and can help us remember key doctrines and how they relate to one another.
6.Use the time to train behavior, too. When will your little ones learn to sit still for church? When you teach them to sit still for 10 or 15 minutes of family devotions! We’ve been able to take all our young children, even when two or three years old, into the “big church” with the grown ups, partly because we’ve been able to teach them worshipful behavior at home.
There’s no greater gift we can give our children than to fill their hearts with the Word of God!
You can help us keep sharing God’s Word and practical help with people by shopping at our Merry Christmas Shop, where we have tons of new character-building gifts and resources including a new Radio Theatre version of A Cry From Egypt (with over 50 actors!), practice swords, new audiobooks, and finally, Hero Tales 5! Please visit and share.
Merry Christmas!
Hal & Melanie and all the Youngs
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