Daily Family Devotional

[elizabeth5]

I need advice on how to go about having daily family devotionals. It seems that we can never all get together in one place for very long except when we are schooling but that leaves my oldest son and husband out.
I read my Bible and pray constantly but my husband and oldest son do not. Please help me with this.
IN His Care, Elizabeth

 

[SumTinWong]

Why not try this. Find a devotional online and print out as many copies as you need for the day and put them on the kitchen table. Put their names on them and let everyone get theirs when they can. You will know who isn't getting theirs, and who is.

If you all cannot do this all at once, then perhaps try to do a one on one with someone else in the family. You may not get them all the time but keep trying. If you need some links to some pretty good devotional sites, you can try these:
Our Daily Bread
Quiet Time Bible Study
Bible.org which has them seperated out for you by author, subject, etc...

Hope this helps

 

[Gold Dragon]

Daily familiy devotions is tough. Maybe have both a daily and a weekly time. Make sure Dad and eldest son can make the weekly time. Maybe they'll enjoy it so much that they'll work their schedules around the daily time so they can enjoy that too.

 

[aReformedPatriot]

This is something I want to do with my future wife and family. If your husband and eldest son view it as goofy then it may be hard to really get off the ground. You and your husband should really sit down and have a heart to heart on the Christian life and faith, get on the same page and both of you set down a time each day when you will do it, even your son. Its something I think that will take a little discipline.

 

[SonOfThunder]

When I was growing up my parents set aside one evening a week after dinner for family devotions. If any of us joint a sport that had practice on that night, we simply could not join or practice on that night and would tell them so on joining up. I think the only times we didn't meet were when someone was very sick or death.

For prayer we had a nightly ritual of gathering for ten minutes before bed, usually 10pm when us kids were grown up. We were encouraged to talk to Jehovah God from a very young age and be real with him. More formal prayer was reserved for meetings with others.

I loved this freedom to be real with Jehovah as I think our 'jargon' gets in the way of true prayer and becomes habit.

I have a younger brother, but my dad always spent a lot of time with us individually to pray together, usually when we went to bed. He was a good dad.


James

 

[ZiSunka]

Subscribe to a devotional magazine and leave it out where everyone can get it, like on the refrigerator door and everyone is responsible to read it, except the little ones who can't and you could read it to them. Then, one evening a week, talk about the devotionals at the dinner table. If you don't have one dinner together a week, then get rid of some of the activities--you are too busy! Better to drop out of soccer or ballet than to neglect to teach the kids the importance of being devoted to God!