Family Devotions Among Other Things

We drove 40 miles south on a dark night in a rain storm to go to a family conference. Two things were presented to me. One, I should get rid of my TV. Two, maybe I was a little lax on family devotions? After going a week without turning on my TV, I decided maybe I didn’t need to get rid of it. (A subject for another day.) But when it came to family devotions, I was convicted.

The speaker’s we went to see were the Maxwell family. A large homeschool family most famous for an organization book Mrs. Maxwell had written. They talked about giving up playing youth and high school baseball and other activities for they could be home at night in order to do devotions. They talked about doing devotions even when guests were over. They meant that the family did devotions every night, and not just two or three times a week when convenient.  It struck me as a radical concept, putting God first in our lives by actually putting God first in our lives even if that meant eliminating activities.

When it came to devotions, I had fallen into a common trap of thinking. The trap of believing God grades on a curve. We think that just because we know someone else that does not do something, in this case family devotions, that we must be doing well since we occasionally do them or at least think about doing them.

With help of my wife, we have managed to get on a better track with family devotions. Though in no way do we think we have them nailed down, nor does anyone gain greater favor with God by doing or not doing devotions, but they draw us closer as a family to him and focus us in the right direction on him.

Here are some things we and a few others we know have found to have worked when it comes to family devotions:

- Place the Bible on the table at dinner. Dinner is a great time for devotions.

- Go through a Book of the Bible. And to get off to a good start, try an Epistle. If you are worried about not having time to prepare? Use a Bible that has notes. All of a sudden you have commentary and a lot of times the notes answer a question your child may ask. You don't have to be perfectly prepared.

- We enjoyed going through Kevin Swanson’s Proverbs study at Generations with Vision.

- Lately, we have been using a book called  365 Days of Praise by Julie Lavender. It works surprisingly well. Our smaller children really like it. It works especially well when you get home from a hard day and you don’t have the faintest idea of what to talk about. This is my greatest challenge to devotions. The challenge of being plain worn out when it comes time to do them.

- Go through one of the Catechisms just like families throughout history have. For little kids, there is the Westminster Shorter Catechism , and for "bigger folks" there is of course the longer Westminster Catechism.  And the one that I have enjoyed going through at our church is the Baptist 1689 London Confession of Faith.

- Check out the Maxwell's themselves. They have resources on family devotions at Titus 2.

What works well for you when it comes to doing family or "even individual" daily devotions?