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Family Emotions (I mean devotions)

I heard somewhere that if you want to be a spiritual giant, you need to have family devotions. All the great men of the faith did; at least that’s what everyone says. Apparently, they got up a couple of hours before dawn, gathered the family around the table, read the Scriptures for two hours, prayed for three, and then sang great hymns of the faith, while the children listened quietly as mice.

Well, this is one spiritual “guppy” whose family devotions look more like a blue light special at K-Mart. One kid is standing on his head on the couch, one is hidden under a blanket, one is “quietly” strumming a pint-sized guitar like the lead guitarist in a heavy metal group, and another woke up grumpy at life while I babble away like a Baptist missionary preaching to a bunch of Papua New Guinea natives who have no idea what I’m saying!!

We try singing, but it’s hard to sing, yell at kids, and worship God at the same time. Sometimes I have to stop in order to send one child to the bathroom for me to deal with later. “Sam, why don’t you close us in prayer before someone gets hurt.” Amen.

Ahhh… wasn’t that relaxing and uplifting? NOT!

So, you know what I’m going to do?

Try again tomorrow.

That’s all I can do. I know spending time together as a family for “devotions” is best. It must be because it’s so hard, and all the good things are hard.

How about you? You up for God’s best?

Here are Todd’s Tips for Semi-Successful Family Devotions:

  1. Take charge and make it happen. You ‘da dad!
  2. Keep it short – think baby steps.
  3. Ease into it. Why not just pray as a family? Take prayer requests, have different people pray, and that’s all. Later, move on to step 4.
  4. Make it simple-There is no magic recipe for making family devotions a piece of cake. Just read a few verses out of the Bible, talk about them, and pray.
  5. Throw away all your expectations of heaven on earth.
  6. Keep at it.

You ‘da dad!

This Post Has 4 Comments

  1. God has impressed upon me that as the spiritual leader, I have to actually lead – not just suggest it would be nice if we [fill in the blank]…. It does not matter if everyone is in agreement with my ideas. It does not matter if everyone is in a good mood. It does not matter if I am in a good mood. It does not matter if we get resistance from the wife or kids. We have to lead.

    I always had a dream that my wife (who is extremely musically talented) would play the piano and the family would gather around and sing great praise and worship songs and hymns. And then we’d settle down and read the Bile and discuss it with great enthusiasm, and then we’d go forth into the day brimming with excitement for God, His Word, and Love, seeking out ways to share each of them. Reality set in. My wife is shy. My kids… are kids. They don’t like getting up in the AM. They have short attention spans. No one wanted to do devotions. I tried an online resource that sent a couple of Bible verses and a story to go with them and even sang a song and read the story to us. Yeah, we were getting up. But I don’t think my kids got all that much out of it, really. I KNOW my wife and I didn’t. I quit after a while — even thought I had good excuses, the reality is that it gets old hearing moaning whiny kids and wife every morning when you’re trying to do what you think God wants you to do — even though YOU don’t want to get up so early in the morning either. Eventually God convicted me of my lack of leadership in this area. God showed me that it does not matter how everyone feels about it, it needs to be done — and I am elected by GOD to get it done.

    Being a leader means seeking God’s vision for your family and His plan for getting your guys there, and then moving the family forward towards the goal. Sometimes it means being firm. Sometimes it means being patient. Sometimes it means lecturing. Sometimes it means focusing on one child’s needs right now. Sometimes it means finding your child’s learning style and doing something to help that child learn something new. Sometimes it means being the bad guy. God put us in the position of spiritual leadership for a multitude of reasons. We each have to present our wife to God pure and radiant, as Christ will do with the church (HE is our model). We have to raise our children in the Word. Our wives might do a lot of the hands on stuff, if they are with the kids more than we are, but we have the ultimate responsibility. We have to step up to the plate, even if it makes us uncomfortable – and sometimes it does. Being the spiritual leader in the home always means exemplifying God’s love towards our family and teaching God’s Word. Sometimes we can do it while disciplining. Sometimes we do it while fishing. Sometimes we do it while cleaning house. Sometimes we do it while studying the Bible.

    These days, I get me and my wife up about 5:30-5:45am (sometimes there’s one or more children already in bed with us). We pray for everything and everyone — including the kids, their future spouses, and kids. Then I turn on the heat, and the lights, and walk around to everyone’s bedroom and wake them up. I go back downstairs and turn ojn the DVD player and the TV and select a song from one of the IWorship @Home DVDs (with the lyrics shown on screen), and we sing a song. Then I pray (or sometimes have one of the kids open us with prayer). Then I read 5-12 verses from where ever we are in the Bible. (currently we’re in Ephesians 3). Then I take them through it, asking questions about ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ”where’, ‘why’, and ‘how’. What do you see? What do you understand? What does it mean to us today? How do we apply it. Its amazing the insight some of these kids have at 6am in the morning. Then I close us in prayer. It generally takes about 30 minutes. Sometimes I have to make someone quit whining, or playing, or day dreaming. I often have to get people’s attention back on the subject. shrug I’m coming to realize it is all just part of being a leader. God uses our family to help us learn to be the leader HE has called us to be in all aspects of life.

    Be faithful. Be consistent. Be loving. Be strong. Be kind. Be a role model. Be the leader.

    Reply

  2. Thank you for saying what I have been feeling. I’ve procrastinated because even though I know what I need to do, my “realistic” mindset tells me it’s just a waste of time. I pray for discipline and direction yet still feel inadequate to handle the task of being the spiritual leader I am called to be. So I want to say thank you for blasting me with a dose of reality that allows me not to be overwhelmed or lay idle. God will be in control of what my kids learn/understand/remember from devotions, I just need to be “da Man” and put the information in front of them to soak in…day after day after day regardless of my feelings of success.

    Reply

  3. I appreciate your comments. I travel a lot so it has been hard to be consistent. I have tried to do topics like the Fruits of the Spirit in Gal 5 and then we would take each fruit and think of a way that we could practice it the next day. Like you said keep it simple. I believe it worked, however I am still looking for the fruit.

    DF

    Reply

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