Category: Family Devotionals

Fun Way to Teach Your Kids About Friendship

Friends are a huge influence in the lives of many children and teens. You can’t just assume your kids know how to choose close friends who will support and encourage them. Nor can you assume your children will automatically know how to be a good friend to others. It’s important to have regular conversations about friendship. Fortunately, there are some fun things you can do with your kids while having these conversations.

Find a recipe you want to teach your kids how to make. It can be for one of their favorite dishes or something fun like cookies. Take the time to show them the recipe and talk about the importance of following it well if you want the food to turn out great. Talk about what would happen if you put a cup of salt instead of a cup of sugar in your cookie recipe or didn’t follow the recipe in other ways.

While your recipe is cooking, read or tell your kids the story of David and Jonathan found in 1 Samuel 20. Ask your kids to point out the clues in the story that Jonathan and David were good friends to each other. How did they support and encourage one another?

Give your kids some blank paper and pens, crayons or markers. Explain that just like your recipe, there is a recipe for what makes a great close friend. (For some children, you may want to explain the differences between acquaintances, casual friends and close friends.) Give them time to create and illustrate their “recipe” for a great friend. After they have finished, discuss their answers. What else should they add? What things would be nice, but aren’t essential? Why are the best friends sometimes different from us in key areas? Which of these characteristics do they see in their current friends? If they don’t have close friends, where might they begin trying to find them? What are some good ways to make new friends?

Like many other conversations about important topics, you will have to revisit friendship multiple times over the years. If not, you may find your kids are choosing friends who are gradually pulling them away from God.

Fun Way to Help Your Kids Think About Faith Journeys

Full disclosure. I can’t take credit for this idea. Our minister did it with our congregation Sunday, and I thought the idea was so great, I wanted to share it with you.

One of the ways to help your children become intentional about their spiritual growth is to introduce them to the idea of a faith journey. As you probably know, growth in faith can be like a long journey. There are ups and downs and bumps in the road. If you stay focused on where you want to end up, however, you can usually get there eventually.

Peter is a great example of a somewhat typical faith journey in many ways. He showed faith by following Jesus, when it was unclear what that would mean in its entirety. He continued to follow Jesus and learn from him along the way. He served others when the disciples were sent out by Jesus to preach and teach for a bit without him. He had the faith to step out of the boat and try walking on water towards Jesus. But he also had some colossal mistakes along the way. He took his eyes off of Jesus and started sinking into that water. He lopped off the ear of a Roman soldier. And of course he denied Jesus three times. Yet in the end, he preached to countless people, wrote two books of the New Testament (and possibly contributed heavily to one of the Gospels) and was martyred for his faith.

Call your kids together and tell them the story of Peter’s life. Explain the idea of a faith journey. Talk about the people that can help us grow stronger in our faith or encourage us to disobey God. Have colored strips of paper that you can use to make a paper chain. Encourage each person to think about their faith journey until this point in time. Have them write the name of a person or an event that has happened on their spiritual journey on a slip of paper and then link them together in order.

Have each person tell the stories connected to their links. You don’t want to rush this process, so this may take more than one session. Ask questions of those sharing. Why did that event make a difference? How did those people put themselves in a position to have an influence on the sharer’s faith?

After everyone has shared, have them create links for the future. What types of activities or people can help them continue to grow spiritually? Don’t forget to discuss the ultimate goal of spending eternity with God in Heaven. Many young people never hear that at church or at home and therefore think of Christianity as an activity or a set of rules with no “benefits” for them. (Or in this case, no arrival at the end of their journey.)

If your children already have a strong faith for their age, begin talking about how they can become a link in the faith journeys of others. What are some things they can do to help others grow spiritually? What are some things they can do that might hamper the spiritual growth of someone? Encourage them to become intentional about providing links for others in positive ways.

Have fun with it, but help your kids understand the importance of an intentional faith journey with an eye to the destination. While telling your stories, they can also see how God works in the lives of people and how Satan tries to throw stumbling blocks in their paths. Awareness can make their journeys more intentional and ultimately more successful.

Fun Family Devotional on Priorities (Especially on cool days!)

Your children will make thousands of decisions in their lifetime. Often their choices will be informed by their priorities. What is most important to them will often sway their decisions. While you want their top priority to be pleasing God, if you aren’t careful, other things can creep in ahead of God. There is a fun family devotional you can do to begin a discussion about priorities.

Before you begin you will need the ingredients to make a lentil stew. You can use any recipe, but this one claims to be somewhat authentic. (Note: If your children aren’t used to these spices, you might want to adjust the recipe slightly.) For extra fun, have your kids help you make the stew. While you are eating, share with them the story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis 25:29-34.

Ask your children what would have made Esau give up something as important as his birthright for a simple bowl of stew. Point out that Esau would have gotten twice the inheritance of Jacob as well as being the ancestor of Jesus (whether he knew it or not) had he not traded it for a bowl of stew. Ask your children what Esau’s priorities were when he made that important choice? Was he taking a short view or a long view of life when he traded it away?

Explain to your children that if your priorities aren’t right, you will often choose what seems best in the moment. You forget to think about how the decision might impact you over time. Often that leads to making poor choices. Explain that in your family, the top priority is pleasing God. You hope that it will always be their top priority, too. Ask them to think of choices people make that they might make differently if their top priority is pleasing God.

End your meal and conversation with a pray, asking God to help your family always keep pleasing Him as your top priority. Pray that he helps you make wise decisions by always considering what He would want you to do. Revisit the topic of priorities, short and long term thinking and making godly decisions regularly. Help equip your kids to make godly decisions their entire lives.

Activity to Get Your Kids Thinking About Their Social Media Posts

You don’t have to look very hard to find lists of guidelines and rules you should have for your kids regarding social media. While that can help, there is a bigger issue at hand. They won’t have you policing them or even be truly accountable to you in a few years. Do they really care about how what they post impacts others? Do they think about the consequences or are their posts stream of consciousness, letting the chips fall where they may?

There is a mini family devotional and conversation you can do with your kids to get them thinking more deeply about their social media posts. Start by asking your kids if they can think of anyone in the Bible who was rather upset and embarrassed when God or Jesus asked them about what they had done? Ask them why, for instance, King David had Uriah murdered when he knew it was wrong and how he reacted when he was confronted by the prophet. There is a tendency to forget God sees and hears everything we do and knows what we are thinking. Read 2 Corinthians 5:10. Would any of the people in the Bible they mentioned earlier have acted differently had they remembered they would have to answer to God for their choices?

Explain that social media posts are seen by God. In fact, He knows what we are thinking, before we even post it. What would God’s opinion be of what they have posted? Would they be embarrassed to show God their posts? You may even want to take a look at a celebrity’s social media posts. Are there things they would be proud to show God? What about their motives for posting certain things? Or the honesty of them? Are they promoting products that are chintzy in order to make more money for themselves…knowing their followers are wasting their money? Have fun with it, but try to get them thinking deeper about what they post, too.

End the conversation by asking them to think of ways to remember that God cares about what they post. How can they use social media to honor and serve God? How can they still have fun on social media without hurting others? How does God want them to use their social media platform?

Helping Your Kids to Have Hope in Rough Times

Life can be rough – even if you are a kid. Sure, as an adult, you know most of their problems on any given day aren’t that serious. They don’t have a lot of life experience, however, so something that seems minor to adults is quite possibly one of the worst things they have ever had happen to them.

It doesn’t help them to mock their feelings or downplay their emotions. They are very real and very painful, even if they seem overly dramatic to you. What can help is teaching them how to find hope when times are rough. Learning this critical Christian life skill will also help them when they grow older and the problems are much more serious.

Begin by telling them the story of Paul and Silas found in Acts 16:16-40. Explain what jails were like during that time. (This link contains a rather graphic article on Roman prisons that you can soften a bit for your children. Or you can use information from this Wikipedia article.) Ask your children how they think Paul and Silas might have felt to be in such horrible conditions. Then ask them why they believe Paul and Silas were singing, something we often associate with being happy.

Explain that Paul and Silas knew they were living in a fallen world where life often isn’t fair and bad things can happen to people who we think don’t deserve them. They knew, however, that this was only a very small part of a much larger picture. They knew eternity was a lot longer than any time on Earth and that by following and obeying God, they would spend it in Heaven with God – a place so perfect we can’t even really imagine it.

Have your kids think of things they can do to have attitudes and faith like that of Paul and Silas when they encounter bad times in their own lives. They can create artwork or a list they can refer back to the next time they are having a rough time. End by reminding them that their hope is in God and a future in Heaven and that by focusing on that God can help them survive and even thrive during difficult times.