Making Family Devotions Work

I didn’t realize how hard family devotions were until I had a family. I can remember that my parents would try to do family devotions. It never really stuck, but my parents made a few valiant efforts that normally lasted a few days. I appreciated the effort, and was a little bummed that we didn’t keep it up. Dad would read a few verses, and then we would sing. In fact, I still remember that for a while we worked on “King of My Life” as a family. While my parents often prayed with us before bed, for the most part anything beyond that wasn’t a part of our normal rhythm of life. I never really understood why not, until I had a family. Then I realized how challenging it is to maintain family devotions.

The family is the basic building block of the church and ultimately civilization itself. If you are Satan or his army, and you want to destroy what God is doing, you need to go after families. And if you want to take down families, the first step is to separate them from God’s Word and prayer. I was at a men’s Bible study a few months ago and a father in the church that I respect made the off-hand comment that if you try to have family devotions get ready for everything to go wrong. His comment immediately resonated with my experience, and that makes sense if you think about it. If you decide that you are going to do family devotions, prepare for hell to mount a counterattack.

I’m no expert in family devotions, but after several years of parenting, my wife and I have found some things that work and some things that don’t. We’ve also been privileged to have great counsel from our mentoring pastor, which will be liberally sprinkled throughout this post. So if you are trying to start family devotions, or if you are trying against all odds to keep them going, here are a few tips and a few suggestions.

A few tips

1. Something is better than nothing.

Some people think that if they haven’t spent half an hour preparing family devotions then it’s not worth it. Or they think that if they don’t spend half an hour in family devotions, they might as well not do them. Don’t believe it. A poorly run evening of family devotions is better than no family devotions. Five minutes reading a few verses from Proverbs and praying briefly is way better than being so tired you just send the kids to bed. Don’t let Satan use a perfectionist standard to keep you away from God. Offer Him the best that you have, and trust Him to take your loaves and fishes and do more with them in the hearts of your kids than you could imagine.

2. Simple is better than complex.

Much of this advice will be geared toward families with younger children, simply because that’s what I know. Having said that, when working with kids we have found that simple works best. Kids have short attention spans, and my goal is to get them thinking on the truth rather than having them learn to sit through ten minutes of Bible reading. I also find that simpler is more likely to be consistent than complex. When reading a few verses or pulling out a Bible storybook “counts” as Bible time, it’s a lot easier to keep our streak alive.

3. Variety is better than boredom.

We have found switching things up to be really helpful. This is advice, of course, and not law. We will try something for a while, and then if it starts feeling stale we will switch it up. This can be done on a weekly schedule, where different days of the week look different. This can also be done over longer periods of time, where you do something for a month or two and then switch up your schedule. Again, there is something to be said for routine, so if it works better for you to do the same thing week in and week out, go for it. For us, a little variety has been helpful.

4. Flexibility is better than rigidity.

Find a time to do devotions, but be willing to flex that time if things aren’t working. We have alternated between right before bed and right after dinner. For a while we would announce that it was Bible time and our kids would wail “Not Bible time!” because they didn’t want to go to bed. So… we switched up our schedule. We started doing it after dinner. This worked reasonably well, but as they got older they got pretty hyper by the end of dinner. Then we realized that if we have them get ready for bed first and then have Bible time, they don’t wail and complain. Sometimes if we are doing something fun as a family, we will have them get ready for bed and do devotions first so that if the fun event goes long we aren’t cramming Bible time in at the last minute.

A few suggestions

What follows is a very unglorious list of things that we have tried and would recommend on some level to those trying to get into regular family devotions.

1. Read through a passage

As someone with younger kids, we have had a harder time straight up reading through large passages of Scripture. We have tried some sections with Proverbs, which has been interesting because Proverbs are built on analogies and kids are pretty literal. We have read through Bible stories, but it can be a challenge with short attention spans. I look forward to the day when we have teens and can read through a New Testament letter and dig into it together, but we’re not there yet. All the same, we have at times simply read through a passage of Scripture and made a few comments on it.

2. Retell Bible stories

Especially when our kids were younger, I would simply tell Bible stories before bed. I would normally skim the story quickly on the phone to refresh the details, and I would tell the stories of Abraham, Joseph, David, and the Gospels. Honestly, this was one of my favorites and I thought it was one of the most helpful ways to get the kids excited about the stories of the Bible.

3. Get a book to work through

We have had several books that we have read through for family devotions. We like the Tales that Tell the Truth series, which work well as a one off for nights where time is maybe a little more pressed. When our kids were younger, we really enjoyed The Beginner’s Gospel Story Bible. We’ve also been given Long Story Short and Old Story New, and have found them to be helpful although they can be a little long (ironically enough). These are not affiliate links and I don’t make any money off these recommendations, but these are some titles we have found to be helpful that can perhaps be helpful to others.

4. Have your kids lead Bible time

We haven’t done this a lot, not yet. But this is one of the pieces of advice we were given by our mentoring pastor that made a lot of sense. Give your kids one night a week and let them lead family devotions.

5. Memorize a passage

Pick a classic passage, like Psalm 1, Psalm 23, or the beginning of 1 Corinthians 13, and memorize it with your family. This can be done simultaneously with something else, but take a passage and memorize a verse a week. There’s no race, but if you can memorize a verse a week, you will end up with a handful of passages a year. Doing that year after year can really add up.

6. Sing a song

If you have someone musical in your family (or even if you don’t!) you could always pick a song for the week/month and teach it to your kids. Explain to them what the words mean and encourage them to sing out. It can be rewarding when they hear it in church, break out in a smile, and start singing along.

7. Pray as a family

Wednesdays and Sundays we normally get home from church late, and so on these nights we simply pray as a family and send the kids to bed. On other nights, we pray as a family. Normally I or my wife lead, but we’ve also had the kids pick something to pray for or something to ask God for. It’s been cool to later hear them follow up and ask if someone was feeling better or if a certain request was answered.

 

Maybe you haven’t been as consistent in family devotions as you want. Maybe you haven’t started at all. The good news is that if you still have kids at home, you can start today. We serve a God that is always willing to give grace to His children as they stumble along trying to do those things that please Him. To be honest, even as I have written this article God’s Spirit has been tugging at my heart about some things we can do to improve. So if you don’t know where to begin, spend a few moments praying and asking God for guidance. Then pick something and go with it. It’s easier to direct something in motion than something standing still.

A single missed night of family devotions will probably not be the difference maker between heaven and hell for your child. But the difference between the family that reads the Bible and prays together regularly and the family that rarely cracks open a Bible at home will eventually be obvious. This isn’t to say that if you do family devotions regularly, your kids will turn out perfect. But it is to say that coming before God as a family will have a huge impact on your kids, and for that matter on you. Family devotions are a chance for dads and moms to show their kids that the God we claim to worship at church is the Lord of our home as well.