Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. – Psalm 119:105

Fairly regularly, I have someone ask me about personal and/or family devotions either on a Sunday morning or via email. Now seems to be the right time to walk through some suggestions for developing a regular routine for devotions. I will speak here primarily of family devotions, but personal devotions are very similar and with a few tweaks this article serves as a primer for that discipline as well. With that, here are my humble suggestions:

To begin, it is important to find a time of day that works best for your family. If your children are young, the time that works well for you and your spouse (or for you individually if you are a single parent) is the time that works best for your child(ren). I suggest a regular bedtime routine as the most appropriate time for family devotions, and mornings as the best time for individual devotions. Routines are important for children, and quality devotional times can be looked forward to as a cap to the day. Obviously, work schedules, sleeping patterns, and other variables play into the selection of the best time for devotions.

Second, select the location for your devotions. The where is not as important as the simple consistency of location, especially for children. There’s no reason to be dogmatic here, but again, routines are helpful.

Third, determine the general schedule not only for devotions but for the time leading up to devotions. My daughters knew that bedtime began with a bath, then an occasional snack, followed by brushing teeth and then to their bedroom for a devotion (the devotional material varied with their ages, but we focused on our oldest daughter and then tried to explain things more fully to our youngest daughter briefly at the end of the reading or discussion). More often than not, it was simple Bible stories followed by questions and answers, then prayer (which I led but occasionally invited our daughters to pray for a specific person or situation so they would get used to praying vocally and intentionally), and finally reading time. Reading time generally was not Bible based, rather, it consisted of classics like The Chronicles of Narnia, Little House on the Prairie, The Boxcar Children, Little Pilgrim’s Progress, and yes, even The Hobbit and Sherlock Holmes when they were old enough to handle the storyline. As the girls matured, the reading material matured with them. I think I read close to 150 books to them over their growing up years.

Fourth, as your children get older, include memorization. Our girls memorized Bible passages, answers to catechism questions, prayers and the Nicene Creed. With steady work, very little is impossible for children to memorize.

Finally, be realistic. No one can make this happen every single day or night without interruption. But do everything in your power to be consistent. Habits can be deadly, but they can also be enriching, and they tend to drive things deeply into our minds. Devotions and regular time in God’s word are worth embedding into the lives of our children.

Some will have multiple reasons why consistent devotions are not possible in their lives. I concede that there are exceptions in some lives that make time for devotions more difficult to develop. For most people in our culture, however, setting aside 15-30 minutes a day is more about desire than anything else. We make time for the most important matters in our lives. Devotions, particularly family devotions, are far more important than sports, television programs, video games, “vegging out,” and even personal time. None of these practices are sinful in moderation, but when we allow them to squeeze out time in our lives for teaching and equipping our children, or prayer, or personal growth by spending time in God’s word, they become spiritually deadening and roadblocks to Christian maturity. Most of us can do better. Your child may become a millionaire sports hero, but if they do not know Christ, sorrow upon sorrow will be compounded in their lives.

There is no magic formula here. Some will have consistent devotions with their children for many years only to watch them reject the Lord. Others will never take time for spiritual practices with their families, and by God’s grace, children will come to know and grow in the Lord by some other means. God’s sovereignty and human responsibility and how they mix remain a mystery to us. That does not alleviate from us the responsibility to see to our own spiritual growth and to the growth of our children. I have said this consistently; start with five minutes a day. It will be thirty-five minutes more that you spend in the presence of the Lord this week than you did last week. That is a good start.

Please feel free to contact me directly if you have specific questions or concerns.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Jym

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