Devotions
Family Devotions
A friend recently asked me about what we are using for family devotions in the evenings. Here is the email I sent her.
The book is “Leading Little Ones to God” by Marian Schoolland. Here is the opening to the book, which I like…
The book is divided into 14 parts with each part having 4-8 devotions.
1. Looking for God
2. God is Very Great
3. All that God Does is Good
4. Sin Spoiled the World
5. God’s Law
6. God Loves Us
7. What Jesus Did
8. About the Holy Spirit
9. How We Become Children of God
10. How God’s Children Live and Grow
11. God Helps His Children Live for Him
12. When We Pray to God
13. About God’s Church
14. Things That are To Happen
For example, Part 12. “When We Pray To God” contains these devotions: What it means to Pray, Praying in Jesus’ Name, Where we should pray, How we should pray, What we may ask for in prayer, How God answers our prayers, The most important prayer.
****Something else we do, that I forgot to mention on the phone last night, is memorize scripture & prayers. We used this idea for our scripture memory system and it is working beautifully. http://simplycharlottemason.com/timesavers/memorysys/
Love that it uses things you already have or can find at Wal-Mart.
We started memorizing last spring when Nathan was a young 4 and he has picked up quickly. I would bet that your son could memorize some of the shorter verses pretty easily.
Some that we have memorized are Prov. 28:13, Phil. 4:13, Luke 1:37, John 14:6, Genesis 1:1, Ephesians 6:1, Psalm 119:11.
They are currently working on memorizing this prayer: (Mary has it down pretty good, Nathan is almost there)
A Child’s Prayer
Lord, teach a little child to pray,
And then accept my prayers,
For thou can hear the words I say,
For thou are everywhere.
A little sparrow cannot fall
Unnoticed, Lord, by thee;
And though I am so young and small,
Thou does take care of me.
Teach me to do the thing that is right,
And when I sin, forgive;
And make it still my chief delight
To serve You while I live.
To help them memorize: I simply say a portion out loud, have them repeat it, I say the next part, they repeat it. We do it once or twice a day until they have the whole passage memorized. It takes almost no time. For example:
Ephesisans 6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right.
Me: Ephesians 6:1
Mary: repeats above.
Me: Children, obey your parents
Mary: repeats
Me: in the Lord
Mary: repeats
Me: for this is right.
Mary: repeats.
We might do this twice in the evening.
******In addition to LLOTG, scripture & prayer memorization, the children are also memorizing the Catechism for Young Children.
http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/documents/cat_for_young_children.html
I initially printed out the entire document above but that was a little bulky for daily use so last year I bought it in booklet form- these are 2 small booklets and I keep them with the above memory system. There are 2 booklets and they are $2.75 each- pretty cheap.
http://www.doorposts.com/details.aspx?id=8
So far they have memorized questions 1-20- SUCH a good foundation for basic knowledge of the Christian faith. As we work through the catechism, if there is a question/answer we disagree with theologically I will either skip it or design my own “answer” for them to memorize. So far it hasn’t been a problem.
*****I’m sure you have a good Children’s Bible but I thought I’d mention this one just in case. After hearing several recommendations for Egermeier’s Bible Story Book we bought one and are very pleased with it. Nice illustrations. Short stories that are readable in 5 minutes or less. BUT- best of all- so many Bible Story Books only contain the main Bible Stories- what I like about Egermeier’s is that it starts at the beginning, works through the entire Bible- it is VERY comprehensive.
***MUSIC- We use Wee Sing Bible Songs- I pick one song and we learn a stanza at a time in the evenings. We sing through it once or twice at the end of devotions until we have it memorized. Pretty simple.
http://www.amazon.com/Wee-Sing-Bible-Songs-Book/dp/B002V1GZAU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262992914&sr=1-1
*So, we do a little of all of the above. We try to work through LLOTG once a year and the rest of the year we read through Egermeier’s. It only takes 15 minutes or so to do the reading, practice the current memory verse & review an older one, go through the Catechism questions and work on our Bible Song. We don’t do it EVERY single night- we strive for 5 nights a week but it is often closer to 3 or 4 nights.
