Devotion or Disaster?
By Merle Brock, M.S.
Have you ever pulled the family together to have
family devotion only to have the devotion turn into
disaster? If you have been doing family devotions for
very long you probably have experienced it. There are
so many things that can interfere. Your youngest is
too hyper, your teen gets a phone call from a friend,
you get a business call, someone's favorite show is
on, or maybe the devotion just didn't carry the impact
you hoped it would. As your family goes through the
life cycle, your devotions also follow a life cycle
that changes the face of what devotions look like in
your family.
The easiest years to have devotion are when your
children are young. When our children were toddlers my
wife asked me to handle bedtime. At first, being the
normal male that I am, I thought she was just trying
to get me to do the work of getting them ready for bed
and settled down. But it didn't take long for me to
realize that getting them dressed for bed, reading a
Bible story, and saying their prayers with them was a
joy. This is a gift my wife gave me that I otherwise
would have passed up.
Then there are the wiggley, squirmy years of
childhood. During these years the challenge is to make
devotions as creative as possible. The more active and
fun you can make devotions the better at this stage.
This is a challenge to do consistently but there are
devotional books designed to make this easier. Then, I
remember the time when the girls had grown older and
busier and our family schedules seemed to dictate that
the only time we could all get together was at 6:00
a.m. We plunged on with 6:00 a.m. devotions and had
some productive ones.
However, we reached a point that we became fearful
that our sleepy-eyed, inattentive daughters were
becoming too tuned in to a legalistic ritual that we
called devotion instead of meeting God. Being less
concerned about us forcing them to have a devotion and
more concerned about their relationship with God, we
opted to tell them they were old enough to have their
own devotion at a time that was most convenient for
them. This was one of those letting-go stages when you
hope you are doing the right thing and doing it at the
right time.
If you have not experienced it yet, you will
discover that the older your children get, the more
difficult it is to have a real family devotion with
all the family there. They become busier and more
independent. Also, if you have children with much age
spread, it is difficult to have a devotion that is
enjoyable for all of them. In today's society the
emergence of so many stepfamilies create a new dynamic
that further complicates family devotions. In these
families, children may be with mom part of the time
and with dad part of the time. Every time you sit down
for family devotion during the week different parts of
the family may be present.
Whatever difficulties you may experience in having
family devotions, I encourage you to persistently
pursue them. Do not give up easily. And when you find
you have not had devotions as regular as you had
hoped, never hesitate to start again. I recommend that
you browse the shelves of a Christian bookstore and
find a good devotional book to help you along. The
family devotion accomplishes many objectives. Among
them, it; 1) draws the family unit closer to each
other, 2) draws the family unit closer to God, 3)
gives your children a foundation for making right
choices, 4) creates lasting memories for the whole
family, 5) models for them what a family should be
like.
As important as family devotions are, do not limit
your teaching and discussion of God to only devotion
time. Make it the common conversation of your daily
life. Deuteronomy 6: 6-7 instructs us "And these words
which I command you today shall be in your heart; you
shall teach them diligently to your children, and
shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when
you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you
rise up.
Merle Brock
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