Family devotions to disciple your children

Apr 10

6 min read

Updated: Oct 5

Parents have a calling to disciple their children. I'm a parent and I know that this can feel overwhelming for many parents. Where do they start? They don't feel equipped or gifted to do this. The reality is that it only take intention. Like a lot of parenting, you just need to be willing to show up - to be present, and to fill the gap. If you aren't actively seeking to form your kids into followers of Jesus, the world will shape them into something else. The church can help but Sunday mornings or 1-2 times a week won't be sufficient. Your kids need you.

Here are a few helpful reminders and tips to help you feel a little more equipped. If you are in the Fort Mill, SC area, we'd love to have more conversations and help equip you further. At One Hope Community Church, we are passionate about helping raise up the next generation and equipping families to raise children with vibrant life-long faith.

On important thing to know: your devotions won't go perfectly. That's okay! I remember when my kids were young that I expected the perfect devotionals and quickly found that they often didn't seem to be paying attention or even sitting still. I've also taught in children's ministry and found that children often are listening even when it doesn't look like. The important thing is to just keep trying and don't give up. You'll be amazed at times when they repeat something to you when you didn't think they were listening.

The Basics: Read, Pray, Sing

So how do you do family worship? That's that's a question sometimes that I get and there's a lot of ways that you can do it. A lot of times people have simply read from a devotion book. For younger kids that's perfectly fine. In addition, I'd say there are really three things that I think that you want to eventually move toward. These are simple and have long been used throughout church history. They are: a short devotional, a song, and a prayer. Now, that might not always work but I think you'll find singing a song when your kids are young goes over easier than the actual devotional.

If you are dealing with different ages of children, your family worship time is going to look very different based on the age. I remember when our kids were really young it was very difficult when they were two or three years old to actually even get through any bible story at all and it just seemed like almost frustrating at times. Sometimes we would just sit and sing "Jesus loves me" or something really simple.

If they don't seem to be going well, let me encourage you not to be discouraged in that because you're starting a model for them and you're starting a model for yourself. The worst thing you can do is get angry. You don't want your kids remembering that devotions were a time when you were angry. Keep it light hearted. But, let's talk about some the various ages of life and what it might look like.

Very Young Children

First off i would say that that some of the bible stories we did early on when they were young were very illustrated. You are reading a story in about 60 seconds and it's very simple. When your kids are really really young this is a really great thing. You can use a very simple illustrated book to help kids envison and see the story. Then, sing a simple song like jesus loves me and then just a very simple prayer time. It's a great way to end the night.

Elementary Age

As your kids get a little bit older, you can move into sort of maybe more of a devotional book. A devotional book is nice because it provides a particular devotion and a couple illustrations or applications to help it stick. At this point, you are getting a little more practical application and our songs might reflect a little bit more of what we're seeing at church. Also, during our prayer time, I would ask my kids as they were getting older, maybe five, six, or seven years old, 'do you have a prayer request?' Kids are now getting familiar with the process. You can invite them to pray. But, it's also good for you to sometimes model prayer to them.

Older Kids and Teens

As my kids got a little older, I found we moved to full-on devotional time. Once your kids are about ten or older, they are able to better grasp and even sit through a Bible story. I often like to take a story, ask a few questions about it, and then apply it. This also helps your kids get engaged with the text. You don't need to do a lot of prep in advance. Choose a book with simple teachings or stories and just ask questions or observe things. After some discussion, you'll likely develop an application from it. This is often known as the inductive method of Bible study. It's easy and doesn't really take any advance preparation.

At this point, we also started singing from hymnals. Why hymns? They are one of the few types of songs that can be sung without instruments and still sound fine. They are often made to be sung rather than performed.

You can often find old hymnals at used bookstores or churches sometimes are getting rid of them. They are great because you alwys have the words right in front of them. They're really rich with classic songs like "Amazing Grace," for example. Who wouldn't want their kids to know such a classic and rich song. Yet, when is the last time you heard it sung? We often only know the first verse of some of those hymns and yet you'll learn the additional ones as you sing together. It will become a tradition that sticks in your kids' memory banks! Side note, not all hymns are great and we even found some pretty odd and funny ones too! It makes for a little laughter as we look for songs together.

From there, our family moved into reading straight from the bible. We would take a story and read it together. It helps familiarize them with the stories but also provides some discussion. I'd suggest a story in the new testament about the life of Jesus or old testament books such as Ruth or 1 Samuel.

After we read a Bible story, I like to ask, "what do you see or notice in this text?" That provides some general discussion. We often wind up asking a few questions about the text and talking about it. Then, we talk about how to apply. At times, I will ask some of the following questions to help us apply it.

What does this teach us about God's character?
Is there any sin we should avoid here?
How do we find the Gospel from this text?
How does this text point to Christ and his church?

Many times as kids are getting older, the questions will bubble up and that time actually can start to get really rich as they get older and questions start cognitively developing in their minds.

Having Grace and Keeping It Joyful

Those are some of the the ways that you can walk through a family devotion. Once again, I would recommend moving toward a goal of sining, reading, and praying in your devotions. In all of this, have grace for yourself and have grace for your kids. If you make this something that's so structured and so rigid that that there's no laughter and there's no joy, it won't be something that lasts. Be sure the time isn't just structured religiosity and I think your kids will will eventually come to not love and enjoy it.

Let the time be filled with love and with grace and with joy! Let it be fun. Let laughter come in and sing the songs and teach your kids. Move them in the direction to be worshipers and allow them sometimes to be the people who pray as they get older. Be sure to invite them to always participate. Let them select the songs, give them some ownership, and you will be moving your kids to be worshipers of God themselves.

Here are a few additional resources:

Preschool (Ages 3–7): The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones. It's very popular and every story points to Jesus.
Elementary: The Big Picture Story Bible by David Helm. Great for helping kids see how the Bible fits together as one unified story.
Preteens/Teens: NLT Student Life Application Bible. It has "Life Application" notes that help kids answer the "So what?" of the Bible.

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