Category: Family Devotionals

The Spring Project Every Christian Family Needs

One of the best projects your family can do – that will also help you teach your children about the Bible, encourage the growth of godly character traits in your kids and can be used to teach children how to serve others and share their faith is a garden. If you live in an urban area or apartment, don’t stop reading. Almost anyone in any living situation can have some sort of garden with their children.

Involve your children in the planning of your garden. Where is the best place to put it? If you don’t own land, what kind of containers can you use? Will you need indoor lighting? What plants do you want to grow? As you plan your garden, share with your children the scriptures in the Bible about making plans and getting good advice. You may want to set a good example by talking to a master gardener or reading books about gardens.

Maybe your family wants to grow the items mentioned in the Bible. You can Google for a list, but it’s actually rather extensive. If you choose to go the Bible garden route, you may even want to try making some authentic recipes with the resulting produce. When searching for produce in the Bible, why not teach your kids any stories surrounding the mention of those items? It’s a great way to review familiar Bible stories and teach them some new ones.

Planting and caring for a garden isn’t easy – especially for younger children. Give them plenty of age appropriate responsibilities for the garden. Along the way, they will be practicing numerous Christian character traits like patience, perseverance, personal responsibility, hard work, working without grumbling and complaining and more. Have conversations about why God wants His people to have these character traits and share related scriptures and Bible stories.

When your plants produce their fruits and/or vegetables, share some with those who have food insecurity or who are lonely. Discuss ways you can point the recipients of the food you have grown to God. Encourage your kids to think of other ways they can use the food to serve people – perhaps by using it to cook a dish of food and delivering the meal to someone who has been ill or just had a baby.

Have fun with it, but used intentionally, your garden will produce a lot more than just fruits and vegetables!

Fun Way to Teach Your Kids About Inner Beauty

You know that God only cares about the inner beauty of your children, but how can you help them understand and embrace that truth when they live in a culture obsessed with outer beauty? There’s a fun activity that doubles as a family devotional you can do with your kids to help.

Before the devotional, you may want to go to your local library and check out books with photos and drawings of fashion trends from various times periods and cultures. Or you can bookmark websites with the same information (be sure to do this in advance to avoid accidentally showing your kids inappropriate content).

Call your kids together and have fun looking at the various fashions. Note the changes over the years or between cultures Are there some fashions that return in a later time period or a different culture? (Note: Including male fashion and unusual fashion trends can engage kids not as interested in fashion or history.)

After having some fun, explain to your kids that King David had a son who was obsessed with his own good looks. He was particularly proud of his magnificent head of hair. (You may want to include hairstyles in your fashion exploration.) Read or tell them the stories found in 2 Samuel 13-19. Afterwards, ask them why God didn’t support the idea of Absalom as King.

Point out that while Absalom may have been very handsome on the outside, he was not so handsome on the inside. Ask your kids to list the characteristics in Absalom that would have made him ”ugly” to God. Can they add other character traits to the list that perhaps weren’t part of Absalom’s character, but would also be ”ugly” to God? Feel free to add any they may forget.

Then have your kids list character traits that God would consider beautiful. Give them each a large sheet of white paper. Have them draw a self portrait. As they draw their physical portrait, encourage them to write words (you can write them for pre-writers) describing their character in and around their portrait. Family members may want to suggest additional words.

After the portraits are completed, discuss each child’s privately with him or her. Which character traits make them beautiful to God? Which character traits do they need to improve or which negative character traits do they need to eliminate to be more beautiful to God? You may choose to revisit these self portraits from time to time to encourage your kids to focus their energies on improving their inner beauty.

Fun Activity to Teach Kids About God’s Timing

Kids can be impatient. They want what they want, when they want it. Understanding that God sometimes shows His love for them by making them wait for something they ask Him for can be frustrating. There’s a fun activity you can do to help them understand God’s timing a little better.

Grab some seeds, some little disposable cups and some dirt. Start seedlings when it is still too cold to plant them safely outside. Plant only a couple of seeds per cup. As soon as the seeds start to sprout, place one cup of them outside in the cold. Have your kids check on it each day. If it’s cold enough, it should die within a day or two. Depending on how many seeds you planted and how long it is until actual planting weather, place another cup of seedlings outside as soon as the previous seedlings died or at least once a week. As the weather gets warmer, you may want to plant the seedlings in your garden instead of just setting the cup of seedlings in your garden.

Once seedlings start to live and grow, talk to your children Ask them what would have happened if you had planted all of the seedlings that first week or so when it was still too cold. Ask them why farmers wait until a specific time each year to plant their seeds. Explain that the proper timing means it is more likely those seeds will grow to produce crops.

Ask older children if they can think of any Bible stories when following God’s timing was important. Even stories like Noah and the Ark would have turned out differently if Noah had taken longer than God wanted to finish the Ark. Or the story when King Saul sacrificed without waiting for Samuel as God required. What negative consequences could have or did happen if God’s timing wasn’t followed?

Explain to your kids that God still has some things He wants to happen at certain times. There are a lot of different reasons for that. Sometimes the people and circumstances aren’t ready and we will understand God’s timing better later. At other times, we may not understand God’s timing. We need to trust, however, that God knows what is best for us.

Could Accountability Make It Easier to Reach Your Christian Parenting Goals?

In her book, Better Than Before, Gretchen Rubin discusses four basic type of people when it comes to goals. You can read her book for the details, but one of the conclusions she reaches is that all but the ”rebels” (who recoil at the mere idea of rules or accountability), can benefit from having accountability for working towards and reaching their goals.

Which made me wonder. Are we not as effective at reaching our Christian parenting goals because the church is no longer structured where we are to hold each other accountable as commanded in scripture? Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not talking about controlling the lives of others or rigid accountability with serious consequences for not meeting goals. Those are cultish and not Christian practices.

What if, however, you and a fellow young parent agreed to touch base twice a week and share if you had been having family devotionals that week? Or an older woman agreed to have coffee with you once a week and hold you accountable for whether or not you were encouraging your kids to read the Bible independently or were praying together more as a family? What if you were in a small group of parents who committed to study specific Bible stories with your kids each week and then spent a few minutes of each small group meeting discussing how it went? Or what if you and another family agreed to sit together in church or go out to lunch after Bible class? Maybe even made reservations to a restaurant to add some more accountability to the mix?

According to Rubin, accountability can help if we are willing to share our goals with an accountability partner. Since her book was secular, she promoted hiring someone like a trainer, teacher or coach, because they would be more demanding and consistent than a friend or relative. If you can build it into a relationship where you already have consistent times in touch with each other, and you both agree on ground rules for the type of accountability and encouragement or “fussing” allowed, it could work almost as well.

If you have a Christian parenting goal that you struggle to reach, try adding accountability to the mix. It might just be the boost you need to finally give your kids those spiritual things you know they need.

Fun Way to Spark Your Kids’ Curiosity About the Parables

Curiosity is one of the keys to a child’s enthusiasm about learning something new. The parables in the New Testament provide great opportunities to engage your child’s curiosity with simple activities.

The Parable of the Mustard Seed found in Mark 4:30-32 is a great example. Mustard seeds in the grocery spice aisle won’t work. Retailers like Amazon, however, sell packets of mustard seeds for planting. You want to find the variety brassica nigra or something similar that can grow to six feet. This particular variety has yellow flowers.

This Spring, (earlier if you want to start the plant indoors) read the parable to your kids. Show them the mustard seeds. Ask them how big they think the plant from the seeds would grow if they hadn’t read the parable. Plant your seeds. Once they appear above ground, regularly measure them to see how tall they grow.

Over time, as the plant grows, have conversations about what the parable means. Discuss what faith is and how to have it. Talk about the things they can do to have a strong faith. Ask them for the questions they have as they think about the parable and faith. If you don’t have the answers, teach them how to find accurate answers to their questions about the Bible.

Many of the other parables in the Bible also have possible activities that can spark their curiosity. From learning about where pearls come from, to understanding the importance of an oil lamp when there is no electricity, to learning about ancient weddings, take advantage of the natural curiosity of your kids and explore the parables in engaging ways. It’s a great way to teach your kids about God.