Last weekend I mentioned on Twitter that I had finished planning out my kids’ daily devotions for another week; this led a few people to ask what these devotions look like. Though I am by no means an expert in this area, I am glad to share how I lead my children in their personal devotions.

I have always wanted my children to form the habit of doing personal devotions, but it took me a surprising amount of time to realize that if they were going to do this, I would need to take leadership—not just one time but on an ongoing basis. I find that the kids are quite eager to do devotions, but also very quick to lose the habit if I do not help them maintain it. It was not until I stepped up my leadership that they began to do it with regularity.

I aim to have my children do personal devotions at least 5 times per week (we also do family devotions every evening following dinner). Ideally I would love to have them doing devotions every day, but experience shows that this will be the exception more than the rule. On Wednesday evenings, for example, we have a mid-week service at church and are typically not home until well after the kids’ usual bed time. So for practical reasons, 5 seems like a reasonable target.

My children are currently 11, 8 and 5. The 11-year-old and 8-year-old are good readers and are largely self-sufficient when it comes to devotions. The 5-year-old is not reading much yet so we have a different system for her. Let me tell you what these look like.

Devotions for Children

Every weekend I budget a few minutes of time to sit down and organize a week’s worth of devotions. I begin with David Murray’s Bible Reading Plan for Kids. David has very helpfully put together a plan that takes children a few verses at a time through books of the Bible. You may like to read about the philosophy behind his program here. Essentially he emphasizes brevity, variety, simplicity, accountability and unity, seeking to have his children spend just a few minutes each day reading the Bible and reflecting on what they have read. I am indebted to David for this program but even more for modeling a father’s involvement in leading his children in their personal devotions.

David offers the devotions in two versions. The first is for families that will have their children doing morning and evening devotions and the second is for families that will have their children doing only one or the other. I have opted for just one time of devotion per day.

In eleven years of parenting my wife and I have often discussed our responsibility to train our children in their understanding of money. We have often spoken of giving them an allowance as just one component of this training, but we’ve always lacked the “big picture” of how we should do this, and why.

Recently I read Family Money Matters by John Temple and in that book I found just what I needed. The final chapter is dedicated to this topic of training your children in their use of money. What I came to see is the importance of training the kids not just to use their money well—to be frugal and wise and generous—but to honor God with their money. And in order to train them in this way I will need to ensure that they a) have money and b) have a realistic context in which to use it well or use it badly.

With that big picture finally in place, I was left with 2 questions: How will giving my children an allowance train them to use their money in a way that honors God? And how much should I give them? Let me show how Temple helped me answer these questions.

How Much?

How much pocket money or allowance should be given? This is a tough question and one that needs to take all kinds of factors into account such as where the family lives and how much the family earns. It should probably not take into account what other children receive as this teaches from an early age that they should seek to keep up with the neighbors.

Temple provides a spreadsheet that I’ve found very useful. It “sets out a suggested range of allowances on a unit basis. Families can then translate these units into their country’s currency as appropriate.” The spreadsheet will not tell you how much to give to your children, but it will help you as you attempt to increase the amount you give them and as you attempt to teach that with greater age comes greater responsibility. If you need a little nudge, though, I can tell you that we’ve begun with 4 as a logical multiplier (based on a monthly, not weekly, allowance). Having said that, my two oldest children each have a paper route and earn money on their own, so their needs may be less than some.

You can download the spreadsheet right here (scroll down and look for “Children’s and Teenagers’ Allowances”).

Here is what you need to know to use the table:

First, the table assumes that an allowance should increase by 15% each year since this is generally thought to be the minimum noticeable amount. The table also accounts for inflation at 5% per annum. Here is how it all works:

Assume you have two children who enter the allowance scheme in the base year. One is four years old and the other is eleven. The four-year-old will start off with an allowance of 1.00 unit per month (or week), and the eleven-year-old will start off with an allowance of 2.66 units. After one year the four-year-old will get 15 percent more, taking him or her to 1.15 units, but he or she will also get the inflation increase, which will give him or her 1.21 units, as can be seen by following the shaded diagonal line downwards to the right.

When this four-year-old reaches twelve, he or she will get 4.52 units. The eleven-year old will likewise go from 2.66 to 3.21 units. Now, assume that in this, the second year, another four-year-old sibling joins the scheme. He or she will start at 1.05 and will then follow the diagonal line below the lightly shaded line—that is, 1.27, 1.53 and so on. This table can be used for all children between the ages of four and twelve.

Are you still with me?

Last week I posted a review of The Death of the Grown-Up by Diana West, a book that takes a hard look at our cultural obsession with immaturity. That review garnered quite a bit of attention, so I thought it might be interesting to go into the archives and pull out a review of another book I read some time ago, one with a fair bit of overlap—Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax. It takes a look at what may well be some of the background to some of this immaturity.

Something strange is going on with boys today. My memories of boyhood revolve around the great outdoors--running through fields with hockey stick guns, climbing trees, playing any and every sport, getting sunburns, heatstroke, ticks, sprained ankles and all the other bumps and bruises guaranteed to come to an active, rambunctious boy. Though today I live in a neighborhood filled with boys, rarely do I see them out and about; rarely do I see them engaging in the activities we'd expect of them. Something has changed. So many boys are inactive and unmotivated.

The changes go deeper than just the activities of young boys. "Fully one-third of men ages 22-34 are still living at home with their parents--about a 100 percent increase in the past twenty years. Boys nationwide are increasingly dropping out of school; fewer are going to college; and for the first time in American history, women are outnumbering men at undergraduate institutions three to two." This lack of activity or lack of motivation seems to continue through life. Parents, educators and doctors are concerned.

Leonard Sax is a family physician and a research psychologist who has witnessed this change. He has seen it in a close and personal way through his busy medical practice. In his book Boys Adrift Dr. Sax offers his explanation as to why boys and men are failing in school and at home.

There is a vast amount of Christian music targeted at children. The problem is that there is a lot of junk as well—stuff like this. My kids are not particularly drawn to music so we have probably overlooked a lot of the great resources out there. Nevertheless, there are a few that we’ve come across that they continue to enjoy. So here are some of our favorite kids’ albums. I’d love you to read through and add your own suggestions in the comments.

Seeds Family Worship

Seeds Family Worship sets Scripture to music. It’s that simple. They do it with fun, pop music. All of the lyrics are drawn straight from the Bible (NIV). If you are a Friend of the Blog, you’ll find one of their albums there as a free giveaway. This is music your kids will listen to, but they’ll also get up and jump around or dance to it. My kids love it.

seedsfamilyworship.net

Sovereign Grace Music

Sovereign Grace Music (a ministry of Sovereign Grace Ministries) has recorded two albums for children: To Be Like Jesus and Walking with the Wise. To Be Like Jesus contains twelve worship songs that teach the fruit of the Spirit in a creative and memorable way while Walking with the Wise look to Proverbs to teach wisdom. At Grace Fellowship Church we sing several songs from these albums at our Wednesday evening services.

sovereigngracemusic.org

Getty Music

Keith and Kristyn Getty have released one children’s album titled Songs that Jesus Said. As you can discern from the title, it focuses on the words and the teachings of Jesus. It has lots of fun, catchy tunes that the kids enjoy. If you’ve seen the Getty’s live, you may have seen them set some of these to actions.

gettymusic.com

A few days ago I was talking to some friends about fatigue. It is a popular topic when you’re in the stage of life that includes young children (though, from what I’ve overheard, it also seems to be a popular topic as you begin to hit old age). I got to thinking about the topic and found something I had written about fatigue a couple of years ago, apparently after a particularly tough night.

*****

I got to bed just a little bit later than usual last night. But when I settled into bed, I felt that kind of comforting fatigue—the kind that is not so overbearing that I’m exhausted, but the kind that means I’m really looking forward to a good night’s rest. You know the kind, I’m sure. It’s the kind of tired that makes stretching out between the sheets a real pleasure.

There was one false start before I got to sleep. I was just drifting off when I heard the bedroom door rattle and Abby walked in. She told us that she couldn’t sleep. Aileen got up and tucked her back in, turning on a light to make sure she wouldn’t be scared. A few minutes later we were all asleep. But then, probably around 1 AM, I heard Abby calling for me. She was scared again and was crying. I have no memory of what happened next, but I guess I must have tucked her back into bed, convinced her that everything was fine, and crawled back into bed. A couple of hours later it was Nick’s turn. He marched into our room and woke me up, telling me that his ear was hurting so badly he couldn’t sleep. All things pain-related are Aileen’s department, so she dosed him with some kind of medication, put some hot cloths on his ear, and we went back to sleep. An hour later Michaela was awake, scared by the sound of the strong winds blowing through the trees outside our window. We awoke to her cries of “Mommy!” She ended up in bed with us—all twenty five hot, pointy, squirming, fuzzy pounds of her. At this point I turned off my alarm and figured I’d just have to let myself sleep in so I wouldn’t be completely comatose all day. And so the night went. I awoke at seven in the morning (which is sleeping late for me) feeling not the nice kind of tired, but the exhausted kind of tired that comes from too little rest; too little sleep. It’s the kind of tired that leaves circles under my eyes and requires an extra kick of caffeine to be able to go about the usual routine. It just wasn’t a very good night.

A few weeks after Nick was born, our first child, Aileen and I were facing the exhaustion that comes with a newborn baby. We were just learning to be parents and still assumed that every cough and every sigh meant he was dying. He was a restless baby and didn’t settle into good sleep patterns for a long time. Aileen and I both spent many nights pacing the floors with him. I remember talking to my mother around this time and the words she said stuck with me: “The next time you feel well-rested, you’ll be in heaven.” They may not have been particularly comforting words, but they were realistic. Mom said that, by the time the kids really settled into good sleep patterns, I’d be too old to sleep well anymore. When we had that first child I guess I threw away any hope of really feeling well-rested.

It’s worth it, of course. I wouldn’t trade my children for any number of good night’s sleeps or any amount of rest (though if you asked me in the middle of the night I might occasionally answer differently). But as I lay in bed last night, in those moments where I was just too tired to get to sleep, I began to wonder about heaven. What will it be like to feel really, really well-rested? What will it be like to be able to feel one hundred percent? Will there be fatigue in heaven? Will there be rest? Heaven will, of course, be rest…but will there be sleep?

As I tend to do when I’ve got questions about heaven, I opened Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven this morning and, sure enough, he had some things to say about this. He says:

Our lives in Heaven will include rest (Hebrews 4:1-11). …

Eden is a picture of rest—work that’s meaningful and enjoyable, abundant food, a beautiful environment, unhindered friendship with God and with other people and animals. Even with Eden’s restful perfection, one day was set aside for special rest and worship, Work will be refreshing on the New Earth, yet regular rest will be built into our lives.

To be honest, I am a little skeptical when it comes to Alcorn’s reasoning here, but he does make an interesting case. But what really stood out to me were his next words:

Part of our inability to appreciate Heaven as a place of rest relate to our failure to enter into a weekly day of rest now. By rarely turning attention from our responsibilities, we fail to anticipate our coming deliverance from the Curse to a full rest.

“Make every effort to enter that rest” (Hebrews 4:11). It’s ironic that it takes such effort to set aside time for rest, but it does. For me, and for many of us, it’s difficult to guard our schedules, but it’s worth it. The day of rest points us to Heaven and to Jesus, who said, “Come to me, all you who are weary … and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

Rest is innately good. God Himself rested after completing His work of creation—a perfect being resting after completing the perfect work of creating a perfect world. God built rest into this world. And God gave us one day to practice rest—to learn how to rest. How good it is to set that day aside and to use it just to rest. But beyond that day, God also gives us little glimpses of the rest that is to come. When we used to own a cottage, one of my favorite things to do was to head out alone over the lake in the canoe. And halfway across the lake I would just sit back with a Coke in one hand, a book in the other, and the sun shining on my face. And I’d just relax and let the water take me where it wanted. It was such a beautiful time of peace and rest. And maybe it was a foretaste of the rest that is to come. Today a similar feeling comes as I kick back on a Sunday afternoon with a cold Coke, a good book and a comfortable couch. It is rest and it is good.

I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that only rarely will I really feel anywhere close to one hundred percent while on this earth. To be an adult, to be a parent, is to be tired. But as life goes on, I begin to look to those moments of rest as more than just a chance to rejuvenate. I see them also as a glimpse of what is to come. I see them as opportunities to learn how to rest—to learn how to enjoy the rest that will come with the new heavens and the new earth. They are a taste, even if only a faint one, of the true rest.

According to George Barna, there have been approximately 75,000 books on parenting published in the past decade. I sometimes feel like I have read all of them. It strikes me, though, that publishers must feel the same way and that, hopefully, they think hard before releasing yet another book into such a crowded marketplace. I at least wanted to give the benefit of the doubt to P&R with the release of William Farley’s Gospel-Powered Parenting. And I’m very glad that I did.

This is a topic I’ve written about before, but one that has been on my mind again lately. I’ll be interested in your feedback on it.

Ted Wallis, a doctor in Austin, Texas, recently came upon a lost child in tears in a mall. His first instinct was to help, but he feared people might consider him a predator. He walked away. ‘Being male,’ he explains, ‘I am guilty until proven innocent.’” As awful as it sounds, I sympathize with this guy. As terrible as it might be to see a young child lost and alone, as a man in this society I feel like accusing eyes would be upon me if I was I to walk up to that child and offer my help. My instinct would probably be to look for an authority figure—a police officer or mall security guard—or a harmless-looking stranger, perhaps an elderly woman or a pregnant mom. These people could help the child without making others assume that they have evil ulterior motives.

Jeff Zaslow of the Wall Street Journal has written a couple of compelling articles dealing with our society’s view of men as predators. They are well worth reading (Are We Teaching Our Kids To Be Fearful of Men? and Avoiding Kids: How Men Cope With Being Cast as Predators). He asks, “Are we teaching children that men are out to hurt them? The answer, on many fronts, is yes. Child advocate John Walsh advises parents to never hire a male babysitter. Airlines are seating unaccompanied minors with female passengers rather than male passengers. Soccer leagues are telling male coaches not to touch players.” An ad campaign for Virginia’s Department of Health features a picture of a man’s hand holding a child’s hand with these words plastered over it: “It doesn’t feel right when I see them together.” The message seems clear. “The implication is that if you see a man holding a girl’s hand, he’s probably a predator,” according to Marc Rudov who runs a father’s rights site.

Clearly there are going to be consequences to making society (and children in particular) fearful of men. “Fathers’ rights activists and educators now argue that an inflated predator panic is damaging men’s relationships with kids. Some men are opting not to get involved with children at all, which partly explains why many youth groups can’t find male leaders, and why just 9% of elementary-school teachers are male, down from 18% in 1981.” Children are beginning to be distrustful of men and society in general is becoming increasingly distrustful of men. Men, meanwhile, bear the weight of feeling like they are always on the edge of being accused of some deviant behavior. “The result of all this hyper-carefulness, however, is that men often feel like untouchables.” “While we don’t want sexual predators to harm our kids, we do want our kids to develop healthy relationships with adults, both men and women. Instilling a fear of men is a profound disservice to everyone.”

Here are a few examples of how this is working itself out according to the testimonies of men who responded to Zaslow’s articles:

In Cochranville, Pa., Ray Simpson, a bus driver, says that he used to have 30 kids stop at his house on Halloween. But after his divorce, with people knowing he was a man living alone, he had zero visitors. “I felt like crying at the end of the evening,” he says.

At Houston Intercontinental Airport, businessman Mitch Reifel was having a meal with his 5-year-old daughter when a policeman showed up to question him. A passerby had reported his interactions with the child seemed “suspicious.”

In Skokie, Ill., Steve Frederick says the director of his son’s day-care center called him in to reprimand him for “inappropriately touching the children.” “I was shocked,” he says. “Whatever did she mean?” She was referring to him reading stories with his son and other kids on his lap. A parent had panicked when her child mentioned sitting on a man’s lap.

I am of two minds about this. On the one hand I don’t want to feel (and don’t want my children to feel) that all men are perverts who are untrustworthy simply by virtue of being men. At the same time, I have too often seen the harm done to children through predatory men. Though it may be the case that only the smallest percentage of men are predators, the fact remains that the vast majority of predators are men. Early on in our marriage my wife and I established a couple of ground rules pertaining to our children (such as not allowing men or boys to babysit our children and being exceedingly cautious about sleep-overs). To use these seemed like common sense rules and not ones born out of a great fear of all men. They are rules that we do not tell the children so as not to make them overly fearful toward men. We are cautious towards relationships between our children and other men, but rejoice when godly or otherwise concerned adults show a genuine interest in them.

I would be interested in hearing from the people who read this site to hear how you cope with these situations.

1. Would you leave your children with male babysitters?
2. Would you allow your teenage boy to babysit other children?
3. Are you immediately hesitant or nervous when a man shows friendly interest in your children?
4. For the men: if you saw a child standing alone and crying in the mall, would you stop to help the child? If so, would you do so with confidence or with some level of fear?

I woke up early this morning, a long time before my alarm was set to start buzzing. I woke up with a phrase bouncing through my mind—a phrase I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Some time ago I was thinking about children who have the privilege of growing up in Christian homes but was drawn to the many I know who have fallen away from the faith. Despite the great honor given them in being raised in a family where they were taught the Christian faith, they fell away and rejected the faith of their parents. What a horrifying thought it is that these people will have to stand before God knowing that they rejected a gift of inexpressible value.

I thought about this for a little bit and then turned to the lesson I’ll be teaching tonight at our mid-week services. Aileen and I lead a class for junior high kids and are working our way through a Children Desiring God curriculum. It just so happens that this week’s lesson is one that challenges these children not to neglect the gift they’ve been given. This week’s focus statement is “Man is without excuse when God rightly withdraws His restraining grace and gives man over to his sin.” As you might expect, the key verse is from Romans (Romans 2:4 - “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”).

The phrase that was bouncing in my head this morning and the phrase that summarizes this lesson, at least in my mind, is this: “living on borrowed grace.” Those children who are born into Christian homes—children who from their earliest days learn stories from the Bible, who watch their parents living the Christian life and who attend church week after week—are living on borrowed grace, at least until they turn to Christ in repentance and faith. This is true of all unbelievers though in a particularly pronounced way with the children of Christians. They enjoy a grace given by the God in whom they do not believe. As Jesus tells us, God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). Grace abounds in this world and grace abounds in a special way in the homes of those who love Him.

Those who do not love the Lord, those who do not serve Him, are living on borrowed grace. They are living in light of a grace that is not rightly theirs; they have not turned in love and faith to the One who gives such grace. They live like this grace will continue indefinitely, eternally, while in reality the clock is ticking down.

My heart longs for my children and for all of the children in my church that they would embrace the faith that is being taught to them and modeled for them. The consequences of such a rejection are terrifying. “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” For those who turn away, this borrowed grace will begin to be withdrawn. God will withdraw His restraining hand and give them over to their sinful desires. Paul says as much in Romans 1:24-25: “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” I have seen this and you undoubtedly have, too. I have seen young men turn away from Christ, turn away from their families, turn away from the faith, and embrace lifestyles of gross immorality. That borrowed grace that had restrained sin was gradually loosened as they rejected the source of all grace.

And still they continue to live on borrowed grace. Though they have rejected the Savior, rejected the Creator, they continue to enjoy the beauty of this world and so many of the graces it contains. This is what Christ would say to them: “But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed” (Romans 2:5). A time will come when all grace will be removed. Rain will no longer fall on the just and the unjust; the sun will no longer shine on those who have rejected God. God will demand an accounting of the grace that gave them life, the grace that sustained them through life, and the grace that was freely offered to give them everlasting life. May they, in that day, be found in Him.

I made my children cry. A short time ago my son and daughter came to me and Abby, representing both of them, I suppose, asked the kind of question little girls ask. It was a question they must have been thinking, or perhaps arguing, about. “Daddy, who do you love more, Mommy or us?” I thought for just a moment and told them the truth. They cried.

The fact is, I love their mother more than I love them and I told them as much. I did so gently and lovingly but with confidence that I am right to feel this way. I love my children desperately. I love them with the kind of love that wants only the best for them and which seeks to protect them from the pain and anger and evil that are so prevalent in this world. I pray for them continually, asking that God would protect them even from me and from my ineptitude and sin and ignorance. I never chose to love my children. From the moment Aileen and I learned that they were growing inside her, I loved them. I spoke to them and sang to them and prayed for them before they were born; I walked the house with them night after night when they were tiny; I love them fiercely and love to spend time with them. And still their mother has first place in my heart.

There are undoubtedly different kinds of love and we cannot necessary equate the passionate, romantic love I have for my wife with the parental love I have for my children. Where I never chose to love my children, I did choose to love Aileen, or I did as much as anyone can exercise his will in such matters of the heart. There came a time when I set my heart on her and committed myself to loving her for better or for worse.

When my children asked me who I loved more, I explained to them that the primacy of my love for their mother is a good thing that will give stability to all of our lives. They may be too young to really understand this, but some day it will make sense to them. If I were to love my children more than my wife, I might allow them to stand between me and her; were I to love them more, I might allow them to disrupt my relationship with my wife and divide our family. I have seen that happen in too many families. Because mom and dad are not first and foremost committed to each other, a child can stand between them and divide them. Too many family have been torn apart in exactly this way. Mom chooses daughter over dad and the family is ripped apart.

But I am not going to allow this to happen in my family. Because Aileen is my first love, I will not allow anyone or anything to stand between us—even people we love as much as our very own children. Our love for each other does not enter us into some kind of competition with our children; rather, it is an expression of our love and concern for them. It is exactly what they need most to grow up in a stable home where mom and dad will remain together, committed under God to each other and to them. And I pray that some day they will find loving spouses whom they love more than us and more than anyone else.

So tell me. Would you have answered the question as I did? Or is it really the kind of question which, because it crosses categories, should not be answered at all?