Category: Bible Study

Fun Family Devotional About Hezekiah

Hezekiah is one of those people in the Bible your children may never learn about in Bible class or church. Yet he is one of the more well known kings of Judah and has several fascinating stories of his reign told in the Bible.

Perhaps the most well known story about Hezekiah is found in 2 Kings 20. Hezekiah had become ill. The prophet Isaiah came to him and told him we was indeed dying. Hezekiah pleaded for the Lord to spare him. Isaiah told him that God had decided to let him live for fifteen more years. Here’s where it gets really interesting. Hezekiah asked for a sign that the Lord would indeed let him live several more years. Isaiah offered to make the shadow on the steps move either direction. Hezekiah wanted it to move backwards, because that was more difficult – and it did.

Your kids may not understand the idea of shadows going backwards and forwards. Making a sundial is a great way to teach them how shadows move and why Hezekiah knew going backwards was more difficult than forwards. You can find instructions for making a simple sundial here. You can also take note of how the shadows move over time on the steps of your porch if you have them. (If you want to go deeper, try making a wall sundial and note how you have to position the numbers differently for it to be accurate.)

As you reflect on the lesson and activity, discuss the power of prayer. Ask them to think of other times when God did what seemed impossible in the Bible. Talk about the amazing things you have seen God do today. End with a prayer asking God to help your family remember the power of God and the importance of praying to Him.

You and your children may want to explore the next story about Hezekiah in chapter twenty. Note not only the pride Hezekiah had and the consequences of it, but Hezekiah’s somewhat strange reaction to God’s consequence. How can our pride be our downfall? Why is it easy to pretend not to care about negative consequences that will happen in the future? Have they ever done something they knew would have negative future consequences, because they wanted to do what they wanted to do so badly? What happened when the consequence finally came? This is a great second lesson to introduce the concept of making good choices, in part, so you don’t have to experience those negative consequences in the future.

Fun Family Devotional and Service Project

There is a passage in Acts that provides not only an interesting devotional topic, but an opportunity for a family service project. In Acts 19, Paul is in Ephesus. Several interesting things happen, but starting in verse eleven (through verse twenty), it really gets intriguing.

Evidently, Ephesus was an area where the people were heavily into magic (not the entertainment kind) and it appears even some of the Jews considered themselves exorcists. When they tried to replicate the miracles Paul had been doing, however, they were unable to do so. Eventually, the people became convicted that what they were doing was wrong and brought out their magic books (scrolls) to be burned.

This story makes a great springboard for discussing with your children the influence books can have on their hearts and minds. What are some books that they believed changed their thinking or attitude about something? Was it a change of which God would approve? Have they ever read a book they believe wasn’t good for them to have read for some reason? Why? What kinds of books might it be smart for them to avoid reading? What types of books should they read more often? This is also a great time to remind them the Bible is a library of 66 books and reading each book is important because they contain things God wants them to know.

Don’t let the conversation veer too far away from self censoring the books they read. This is not the time for a political discussion on censoring others. The discussion could extend, of course, to the content they stream, the music they listen to, etc. Remind them every creator has an agenda. Some are helpful and some not so much. Very little content is as neutral as we want to believe. You may even want to teach them how to evaluate a book for beneficial or harmful content before reading it.

Finally, start collecting good Christian and other books to donate to a ministry that could use them. Urban ministries and faith based tutoring programs rarely have enough books. Ministries that work with children in other countries may have a hard time finding children’s books in their language or bilingual ones in their language and English. Or raise money for children’s Bibles (many languages only have one version – usually in language equivalent to the old KJV and need children’s Bibles to make the Bible more understandable for those who are young) or Christian books for children and teens (remember, not every Christian book contains truth either).

Have fun with it, but make sure your kids have the tools to make wise choices about the books they read.

Fun Bible Survival Activities for Families

One of the challenges for families wanting to have Bible studies together is how to make it more fun when they have time for more than just reading scripture and discussing it. We may have just the solution you need.

On our website, we have hundreds of fun activities directly tied to specific Bible stories which you can use to reinforce the spiritual meaning, application principles, academic subjects or even do family service projects connected to scripture readings.

One fun category is sustenance and survival. Originally devolved for children living in lower income countries, the activities can be fun and different for kids in higher income areas. Not only will they learn some helpful skills if they are ever caught in the wilderness, they can also use them to teach others in the mission field.

The activities are all tied to specific Bible stories. What kid wouldn’t want to learn how to make a battery from food, purify water, make food using the heat from the sun, use the stars as a GPS and more? More importantly, they will have opportunities to better understand the themes behind many of the Bible stories they have heard before and many ones that may be new to them.

Currently, we have over forty activities in this category and are adding more. Best of all the lessons are all free! So the next time you have the space for a longer devotional have some fun with one of our survival activity Bible lessons!

(Here’s the link http://teachonereachone.org/activity-ideas/. Just scroll down until you see the survival category on the left and click on it for the list of activities and links.)

Family Fun With Bible Proverbs

Proverbs is a great book of the Bible to explore with children and teens. It has great, godly advice in easy to understand snippets. It has colorful and sometimes funny imagery. It even has thirty one chapters so each day of any month has a chapter to focus upon. Why not make studying Proverbs a fun family project?

Decide whether you want to read the proverbs aloud or independently. Although reading them to your kids is great, because Proverbs is a relatively easy book to understand, it also makes a good one to begin transitioning your kids to independent Bible study. If your kids haven’t been studying the Bible daily, you may want to start with covering only a few verses a day. Older children and strong readers may be able to process a chapter a day. Proverbs is packed with so much good information, that trying to focus on more than one chapter at a time can become overwhelming and undermine the possibility of specific proverbs taking root in the hearts and minds of your kids.

Regardless of how you decide to read the daily passage, choose a time of day when everyone can come together for at least a few minutes to discuss it. Attach the discussion to something you always do – like eating breakfast or a bedtime routine. The anchored habit will serve as a reminder to discuss the scriptures for the day.

When talking about each passage, focus on a few basic questions:

  1. What stood out to you in these verses?
  2. What do you think God wants you to learn from this passage?
  3. What is one thing you are going to change because of these verses?
  4. What is one thing you can share with your friends about these verses?

Notice that the questions are designed to encourage paying attention to the scripture, understanding the meaning of the scripture, putting it into action in their lives and sharing their faith with others.

On days when you have more time, do some fun activities based around the Proverbs. Make scripture art to display around your home. Find all of the fun imagery in Proverbs and explain why God might have used those vivid word pictures. Create a children’s book where each family member writes and illustrates a page or two about different Proverbs. Write and perform a puppet show for neighborhood or church children about Proverbs. Design and create tee shirts of a favorite Proverb. Make bookmarks with a proverb on them and give them away. Focus on living one Proverb each day and talk about what happened when you focused on living out that Proverb.

Have fun with it, but make sure your kids know, understand and live Proverbs. It’s a great way to instill Christian character traits and attitudes in a fun, easy to understand way.

A Cozy Way to Encourage Your Kids to Read the Bible

The Danish have a term “hygge” that is an extremely popular way of creating a warm and inviting environment in a home. While the word doesn’t have a true translation into English, the word cozy is most often used to try and communicate the idea of hygge to English speakers. Think of the most welcoming, comforting environment you have ever experienced. It was probably a home with hygge.

One of the challenges for encouraging children and teens to be daily, independent Bible readers is to get them to sit still and focus long enough for them to read and process a few verses of scripture (or more!). They’re either super busy running from activity to activity or lost in a virtual world on a device. Enticing them to sit and read their Bible for a few minutes each day can seem impossible.

The answer may just be in helping them create their own corner of hygge reserved only for spending time with God. You can call it their Bible corner. Help each of your children find a literal corner of your living space where they can create a permanent Bible study and prayer corner. Some people have even used a closet as a private, quiet place to sit with God.

Allow each child to design their corner so it is comfortable, inviting and has everything they need to read the Bible – including an easy to read version of the Bible like the NIrV or a study Bible, a journal, pens, etc. Many kids will choose to have pillows and a blanket and sit on the floor. Others may find some sort of chair that is inviting. They may even want to keep a bottle of water and some snack foods in their corner. The key is for them to want to sit in that spot when they see it.

The other key to success for a Bible corner is to try and place it where they will walk by it several times a day. Seeing that inviting Bible corner can encourage them to stop and take a few minutes to rest, calm and spend some time with God in scripture and prayer. If your schedules allow, you might even want to create some Bible corner time in your schedule each day, when everyone goes to their respective corners and spends time reading scripture and praying.

Will your house look a little more cluttered? Perhaps, but isn’t it worth it if your children develop the habit of spending time reading their Bibles and praying every day?!