Rissa asked:
2. Do you have family devotions (or the like) together? How does it work with young children?
No. We don't. Stop that! Put your telephone down! I know you were about to call every Christian we know.
The truth of the matter is that family devotions has been something I've wanted to do for.ev.er.
The hard part is, neither Jake or I had any kind of model to work with from our own childhood. We haven't known how to go about this, and so as a family we have not done it. Bad excuse right? That's the truth though. If you ask questions here, you will get answers.
Also, in our family history you throw in the military training and deployment and the insane schedule my husband works and we don't have a consistent time each week.
However, remember the book I quoted in my last answer? In All The Way Home
by Mary Pride she talks about "doing" a church service at home. To not only have a family worship time and teaching the word to your children, but also for them to practice their church manners.We both liked the concept so much that we are going to start. I'm sure this will be revolutionary to our kids but I'm happy about that. And I promise to update you as we introduce this to our family and let you know how it goes, what worked, and what didn't.
Also, this year the homeschool curriculum we chose is so biblically based in everything you teach I feel like that will definitely help us catch up on all the devotional time "lost" in the last 6 years.
6 comments:
We go off and on with devotions. . . My husband would usually take 5 minutes at the end of dinner and read a story from the Bible and engage our kids, take prayer requests and pray together. It doesn't have to be elaborate for it to be meaningful.
THANK you! We don't have family devotions either. I'm lucky if I even get devotions! Church is a good idea :) I so need to get something going though.
And I agree with you, it is a LOT harder to model something you yourself have never seen modeled. My husband's family never did it. Neither did my family. We are clueless. But I do have my kiddos memorizing Scripture...that's something right? :)
We had always made it a point to have Bible reading and prayer right before bed, and our oldest keeps us accountable on it. Some nights it's just an excuse to stay awake, but how can you say no to: "Oh! Daddy, we need to read the Bible!"
I feel as though it's something we really need to get going before Gideon is much older. You're right about not having a set work schedual for the husband, it makes it so much harder to find a family routine.
One thing that does make a positive difference for us is our "Steve Green, Hide em' in your heart" Kids CD, it has 20 bible verses put to song, I can honestly feel the difference in our home on the days when we've listened to it. I've been encouraged by it, I can now quote by heart over 20 verses. :) It's totally cheesy and a little annoying when it's been playing non-stop all day, but the word of God is so powerful, I think it's worth it. :)
I just wanted to add on to my Dave's comment. We also have a worship / VBF music cd we dance with and sing during breakfast with the kids. Yes, we dance in our seats usually, and sometimes standing. =) The big push right now is serving, with a big emphasis on family. And, our oldest holds us accountable there too. He wants his breakfast music, clothes on his body and tie up shoes to start his day! Haha.. My goal is to have some time like that before breakfast, but maybe when they are older. Now they get out of bed and are like little birdies at the sides of our bed saying "eat, eat, eat...." So we're lucky to get them dressed and changed fast enough to not make them mad about our slowness.
I love the book "Leading Little Ones to God." Short chapters laying out Creation, who God is- Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Sin, Salvation. You can just keep going through it. My five are ages 11 months-almost 8 years
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