Fresh Family Devotion Ideas

To be honest, it's our lifeline. We treasure it. The children have fond memories from it.

Family devotion time

Our entire family treasures this special time each evening. We like to keep this time fresh and exciting. Sometimes we change up the routine.

Do you need some ideas of how to keep family devotion time precious, fruitful, and memorable? Check out what we do.

We always start with prayer. We take prayer requests and then we also pray for one of our supporting churches. We have a container with index cards that have the name of supporting churches on them. We draw one card each devotion night.

Then we do one of the following devotion styles:

1. Regular Devotion Time
   Most devotion times, Dad leads. He often picks a book of the Bible and we work our way through it.
2. English Singing Night
   Sometimes we really miss singing in our native tongue! There is nothing like singing the songs and understanding every word. There are five members in our family. Each person gets to choose a song on this night.
3. Q & A Night
   Daddy introduced this night a couple of months ago. He told the children and me that if we had any questions, to write them down and be ready to ask them on this night. I didn't realize how much the children would love this! They have asked questions about verses they came across during private devotions. They have asked questions about standards and convictions. The topics are wide ranging and great! Daddy is up front with them about topics that will take a little study before answering. He makes sure he gets back to them as soon as he can.
4. Prayer and Share Night
   On this night, everyone takes turns sharing things God has been teaching them. It can be something that they learned during personal devotions or something that impacted them at church or through an online sermon. It's like a personal testimony time.
5. Online Sermon Night
   Sometimes we miss listening to preaching in English. We miss listening to different preachers during revivals, camp meetings, and missions conferences. We also miss the depth of preaching that can be done in the States. Most preaching here has to be kept very basic (milk) for the sake of the people. These concepts are all new to them. Sometimes it is great to get strong meat!
6. Child-Led Devotion Night
   Sometimes we encourage the children to be ready to lead a devotion. This will help them in the future when they teach their own family and when they teach others. They have to study and prepare.
7. Check-Up Night
   Occasionally we do a spiritual check-up. Daddy and I ask the children how they are doing in their spiritual lives, if they are having struggles, how faithful they are being in private devotions, and if there are areas in which we can help counsel them or pray for them.

Resources Our Family Has Enjoyed for Devotions

Most of the time in our devotions we only used the Bible, but when our children were younger we occasionally used the Miller Family books. The devotions were simple stories centered around a practical Bible verse or passage. My youngest child has used these for his personal devotions on occasion as well. The Scriptures are KJV. The Miller family in the stories are Amish Mennonite, but the devotions through the following three books did not present any doctrinal conflict.

Prudence and the Millers

Wisdom and the Millers

Story Time with the Millers

    

We use Sermon Audio frequently for our online sermon resource. Some of our family's favorites?

Pastor Kenny Baldwin
Pastor Lou Baldwin
Pastor Todd Abbey

We have a couple of hymnals at our home for singing nights.

Majesty Hymns
Bible Truth Hymns

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by Charity, Southern Asia

Author of Heart-At-Home Mom