Of all the habits Aileen and I built into our family over the years, none was simpler than family devotions. None, I’m convinced, was more precious. For the twenty-six years we had children in the home, we gathered most days to read a little of the Bible and to pray together. Some seasons we did it well and some seasons we barely did it at all, but we kept coming back to it, and today I count it among the sweetest of all our family traditions.
This page gathers the best of what I’ve written on family devotions into one place. Whether you are just beginning the habit, restarting it after a long lapse, or simply looking for a little encouragement to keep going, I hope it will serve you well.
The Simplest Family Habit
The best way to learn family devotions is by example. Find out what other families actually do and to imitate them as a starting point. So in How We Do Family Devotions I told the two stories of our own practice: how we imagined we would do family devotions, and how we actually do them. The reality involves kids draped over the furniture at 7:00 in the morning, interrupted prayers, and plenty of missed days:
Some days we just plain forget to do family devotions all together. Some days we have great intentions but life throws a bit of a curveball and we get distracted. On a few occasions we have had unbelievers in the home and I have allowed shame to keep me from doing our devotions. On a few more occasions I just haven’t felt like it so have made some flimsy excuse. For some reason we never do them on Sunday. But by and large, on most days, under most circumstances, we begin our days together with the Word and prayer. It’s the simplest family habit, but I believe it is the most beautiful as well.
The whole thing takes five or ten minutes. Through many years of success and failure, Aileen and I came to realize that “there is no good way to measure the success of family devotions except by this: Did we do it?”
What’s the Point?
After twenty years of the habit, I sat down to answer an honest question in What’s The Point Of Family Devotions? It isn’t a law we obey since no commandment demands it, and it hasn’t even been the main way we’ve discipled our children. So why do it?
So again, what is the point of family devotions? The main purpose in our family has been simple: to gather the family together with God.
A family that reads the Bible together every day is also doing something slow and cumulative, whether or not any single morning feels significant:
A third purpose has been to slowly but deliberately drip the truth into our children’s minds and hearts. By reading and re-reading the Bible together, we have introduced them to its primary themes, its main characters, and its central truths. By explaining the Bible as we go, I’ve been able to teach them how to personally apply the Bible’s truths. We aren’t just reading history or poetry together, but hearing divine truths that are meant to change the way we think and the way we live.
In What’s the Purpose (and the Benefit) of Family Devotions? I added the benefits that surprised us most: declaring the family’s priorities, building closeness, anchoring our shared life, and modeling the very practices we want our children to carry into adulthood, for “Through family devotions we model personal devotions, for the two closely resemble one another. By relating to the Lord as a family, we teach how to relate to him as individuals.” And there is grace even in the missed days:
And I think we also declare something about our priorities when we show that we are unintimidated to miss a day here and there as circumstances dictate—we show that devotions are not the means through which we gain the favor of God but through which we grow in relationship with the God who has already extended his favor to us. We combat the notion that God’s opinion of us ebbs and flows with the quality and consistency of our devotions.
Why We Fail (and Why You Can Begin Again)
Whenever I write about family devotions, I hear from people who have tried and failed, or who are still trying and are convinced they are failing. I gathered their stories into Why We Fail at Family Devotions, and the first reason towers over the rest. What is it? That we make it too hard:
I am convinced a lot of people fail because we feel that Word and prayer are not enough. We read books and blogs by people who do so much more and feel that we do not measure up. We finish, see that only 5 minutes have elapsed, and feel like that can’t possibly be enough. It is easier to not do devotions at all than to do them simply. Don’t fall into that trap. Word and prayer are enough. Word and prayer are awesome. Make the fact that you do them more important than how you do them.
We also fail because we give up too quickly, measuring the habit in weeks when its blessings accrue over decades:
But we need to measure long, not short. We need to think more about eighteen or twenty years of exposure to the Bible than eighteen days or eighteen weeks. We need to think about our own lives and how we need to hear things a hundred times, not one or two times, before we respond to that conviction. We need to remember and believe that God works through these simple means, but that he does so at his own pace. We need to believe that God honors the means he provides.
And we fail when we act out of guilt instead of conviction: “Guilt can motivate for a while, but not for long. When times get difficult or when the guilt begins to fade, it is only conviction that will keep us going.” If you have started and stopped a dozen times, don’t let pride keep you from starting a thirteenth. “Mostly, just do them.”
Keep It Simple, Keep It Fresh
Read, teach, and pray is the whole foundation. In 10 Ideas and 10 Tips for Family Devotions I offered practical counsel for doing it well: “Five engaging minutes are far better than twenty rambling ones”, and “Focus on engagement, not entertainment.” The ideas range from reading the Bible’s great narratives to working through a catechism to savoring the book the Bible wrote for young people:
The proverbs contain timeless wisdom and are written specifically for young people. Young Christians need the proverbs! Proverbs are meant to be treated like a lozenge or hard candy, to be savored over time rather than quickly chewed up. Consider reading the proverbs slowly over the course of weeks or months.
Our family sometimes leaned on good devotional books along the way, and I still enjoy pointing parents to new ones, as I did recently in An Ideal Resource For Your Family Devotions. “It is never wrong to simply read Scripture, but sometimes we found it helpful to supplement with other material.” But remember the first of my ten tips: “More important than how you do family devotions is that you do family devotions.”
Praying With Your Children
Half of family devotions is prayer, and our children learn to pray chiefly by praying with us. I learned this the hard way one evening when my girls padded down the stairs to ask for the prayer I had skipped, and I offered them a hasty, joyless one. I wrote about it in When You Pray With Your Children, You Are Teaching Your Children to Pray:
If my girls had come to me for formal instruction, if they had said, “Daddy, teach us to pray,” I would have taught something far different from what I modeled that night. I would have told them to approach God boldly and confidently, trusting in the finished work of Jesus Christ. I would have told them to approach God enthusiastically. I would have warned them of the danger of perfunctory prayers which can all too soon tip over into superstitious prayers. I would have warned them against all the things I did.
Now I try never to forget: “When I pray with my children, I am teaching my children to pray.” But should we teach children to pray at all before we can be confident of their conversion? I took up that question in Teaching Our Children to Pray:
I think the Bible gives us some guidance on how and when to teach our children to pray. While it is wise to be discerning with our children as they grow up and to not give them a false sense of security if they’re not actually Christians, I don’t know of any place that the Bible warns parents to beware of teaching children to pray too early. Rather, we are told to teach them and this includes not just facts, but also practices. By encouraging our children to pray, we are teaching them the language, the practice, and the importance of prayer.
And don’t neglect to ask your children what you can pray for them. As I wrote in Praying With Children, their requests may be funny and they may be poignant, but either way, “They are learning that when something is important to them, they ought to take it to the Lord and plead their case with him.”
More Is Caught Than Taught
I grew up in a home that practiced family worship, yet many of the friends who grew up in homes just like mine have since walked away from the faith. In The Most Important Thing My Parents Did I reflected on the difference, and it wasn’t the devotions themselves, but that “I saw my parents living out their faith even when I wasn’t supposed to be watching”:
Here is one thing I learned from my parents: Nothing can take the place of simply living as a Christian in view of my children. No amount of formal theological training, church attendance, or family devotions will make up for a general apathy about the things of the Lord. I can catechize my children all day and every day, but if I have no joy and no delight in the Lord, and if I am not living out my faith, my children will see it and know it.
Family devotions gather the whole family, but each child also has his or her own soul to care for. “By the time we have taken care of every other responsibility in life, the hearts of our children can too easily become an afterthought.” In Faith Hacking: Individually Shepherding Your Children I passed along one pastor’s simple plan for meeting with each child, one evening a week, to read, talk, and pray together.
Raising Children Who Love the Church
Devotions in the home were never meant to stand alone. Instead, they flourish alongside a family’s life in the local church. Now that our children are grown and have joined gospel-preaching churches of their own, I looked back in Raising Children Who Love the Church at the principles that helped us raise children who actually wanted to go to church:
As a family culture develops, parents are wise to make church attendance a part of that culture. It doesn’t need to be explained or defended—this is what you do because this is who you are. It doesn’t need to be considered or debated, because when Sunday comes, you simply go to church. It is a non-negotiable part of your family culture.
Because so much of what children learn is caught rather than taught, “we wanted to raise them in such a way that they saw us put these principles into practice and live them out in our family life.” The church will also teach you how to parent, if you let it. In The Parenting Book Too Few Parents Read I argued that the best parenting book is the one written in the lives of the families around you. “It would be foolish to spend time with a book when I could spend time with a family, to learn from a stranger when I could be mentored by a friend.”
The Long View
Our nest is empty now, and I can tell you what I miss. I wrote about it recently, looking back from the far side of all those mornings in the living room:
There is a lot I miss from the days when our children were young. High on the list is family devotions. Nick once described our family as having a “Spartan-like commitment” to them, though I remember as much failure as success and as many misses as hits. Still, there’s no doubt that over the 26 years we had children in the home, they were a staple practice for our family. I have fond memories of gathering around the living room or around the table to read a small portion of the Bible, discuss it, and then pray together.
So take the long view. A single episode of family devotions will rarely feel significant. But as I wrote back when our children were still stumbling down the stairs each morning:
The thing is, we are building for the long-term here, not the short-term. A single episode of family devotions can so easily seem like a complete waste. But I am confident that when we measure by the hundreds spread over the 20 years the children are in our care, we will see that God worked powerfully in the hearts of our children and their parents. And I am confident we will see that he worked through the commitment we made to such a simple, wonderful tradition.
Start Here: Essays on Family Devotions
- How We Do Family Devotions. The habit as we imagined it and the habit as it actually is.
- Why We Fail at Family Devotions. We make it too hard, we measure too short, we act out of guilt.
- What’s The Point Of Family Devotions? The purpose the habit has actually served in our family: gathering the family together with God.
- What’s the Purpose (and the Benefit) of Family Devotions? The unexpected benefits: declared priorities, family closeness, and a model of personal devotion.
- 10 Ideas and 10 Tips for Family Devotions. Ten ways to structure your devotions and ten tips for doing them well.
- When You Pray With Your Children, You Are Teaching Your Children to Pray. Every prayer with your children is a lesson in prayer, for better or worse.
- Teaching Our Children to Pray. Should children pray before they profess faith? On teaching the language, practice, and importance of prayer.
- Praying With Children. What children’s prayer requests teach them and what they teach us about how God hears ours.
- The Most Important Thing My Parents Did. Not the devotions, not the catechism, but a faith lived out when no one was supposed to be watching.
- Faith Hacking: Individually Shepherding Your Children. A simple plan for caring for each child’s soul, one evening at a time.
- Raising Children Who Love the Church. The principles that helped us raise children who wanted to go to church.
- The Parenting Book Too Few Parents Read. The best parenting book is written in the lives of the families in your own local church.
- An Ideal Resource For Your Family Devotions. A look back at our years of family devotions, and a resource to keep yours fresh.
Explore More
You can browse everything I’ve written on these subjects in the parenting topic archive and the family topic archive. My recommended books on parenting gather my favorite titles for moms and dads. And for guidance on protecting your children from pornography—including the Porn-Free Family Plan—see the For Parents and Families section of my pornography guide.
This guide is one of a series. You can find them all on my guides page.
