Family Devotions: 3 Simple Tips for Success
I vividly remember meeting an older friend for lunch shortly before becoming a parent. I asked her everything from how to do family devotions with toddlers to how to stay connected with teens.
After rambling through my questions, my friend looked into my eyes and said, “You won’t be the perfect parent. But if you love Jesus with your whole heart, your love for him will help your kids grow to love him, too.”
Fourteen years later, I can attest that I am far from the perfect parent.
My husband and I are still very much in the process of raising our kids. Nevertheless, we’re both pursuing Christ with our whole hearts (imperfectly, yet devotedly). We’re also doing what we can to raise our kids in the love of Christ.
Today, I’m sharing three simple tips to help you practice family devotions with your kids. I pray these insights will bless your family.
Family Devotions: My 3 Best Tips
The pewter light of dawn spills through the curtain, and I gather our three children in the living room for morning devotions. I have great ambitions to help these little ones grow in their faith. Sadly, our devotional time often feels like a failure.
Like me, you might want to help your children grow spiritually and engage in meaningful family devotions. However, teaching our little ones to walk with God can be challenging.
Most mornings, I have to break up at least two arguments about who is going to sit in the recliner.
The youngest two children often end up rolling around on the floor making animal noises.
I generally cannot get through more than 30 seconds of our devotional reading before someone needs to use the bathroom or interrupts me with a question that has nothing to do with what I’m reading.
I often end up snapping at my kids in frustration and feeling like I’ve failed them.
Helping Our Kids Grow With God
As Christian parents, we want to help our children grow spiritually, but we spend more time managing their behaviors than memorizing Bible verses. We want to teach them to walk with the Lord, but we’re so busy breaking up their squabbles that we find little time to discuss meaningful biblical principles.
How do you help your children grow spiritually when you’re living in survival mode most of the time?
Our family has established three consistent rhythms that are helping our kids grow in their faith. We don’t practice them perfectly, but we turn to them consistently. These three practical ideas can help your children grow spiritually as well.
3 Tips for Family Devotions
Before I share these tips, let’s take a moment to define family devotions. Family devotions consist of a short period of time spent praying, reading the Bible, reading from a devotional book, or undertaking any spiritual practice that helps a family draw near to God together.
Here are my tried and tested tips:
1. Carve out five minutes daily for family devotions.
There are 1,440 minutes in a day. This number helps me reframe the “sacrifice” of finding five minutes per day for daily devotions with the kids.
We don’t do this perfectly. With early morning sports practices and a pre-teen who likes to sleep in, we don’t pull off devotions as a family every single day. However, I do my best to gather everyone in the living room for a short devotional reading as often as possible.
Our devotions include reading a short commentary from a children’s devotional book and reciting our weekly memory verse. We conclude by giving each child a turn to thank God for one specific blessing and ask God for one request.
There’s no right way to do family devotions. Making it a habit is a great step in the right direction—even if your kids roll around on the floor making tiger noises.
I encourage you to look at your days. When might you logically find five (not 30 or even 15!) minutes to talk to your kids about God? First thing in the morning and before bed are often ideal times.
The key is to weave this time into your normal daily routine so that it becomes a habit. For this reason, pairing it with a meal (breakfast or dinner) can be helpful.
There are 1,440 minutes in a day. This number helps me reframe the “sacrifice” of finding five minutes per day for daily devotions with the kids. #familydevotions #devotionaltime Share on X2. Memorize one Bible verse per week as a family.
We know God wants us to hide his Word in our hearts, but if we aren’t intentional about this discipline, it’s easy to overlook.
Our family memorizes one verse per week. The process is simple. I find a verse every Monday, write it on a blank sheet of paper with colorful markers, and hang it on the fridge. Every morning throughout the week, all three kids practice repeating the verse as a part of our five-minute devotional time.
This is a simple and quick way to begin the practice of hiding God’s Word in our hearts.
Some weeks turn into two or three weeks before the kids can recite our verse. When this happens, we keep practicing until they know it. This discipline isn’t about memorizing as many verses as possible. Instead, we aim to truly let God’s words sink into our souls.
3. Establish biblical core values for your family and discuss them often.
A few years ago, we asked the Lord to help us establish a few biblical values that might serve as our family’s core values. We came up with the following three values:
- Always remember that you are loved by God (see Romans 8:38-39).
- Always be kind (see Colossians 3:13).
- Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart (see Colossians 3:23).
We wrote down these three values, put them in picture frames, and displayed them on our kitchen wall. Often, we talk about them while we eat dinner or prepare for the day ahead. These core values have become a regular discussion point during family devotions and at other times, too.
We remind our children that they are God’s beloved children, encourage them to be kind (which is always a good reminder at the dinner table), and encourage them to give their best as they sit at the table laboring over schoolwork.
Pray about establishing and displaying several family core values in your house. You will have a built-in conversation starter to remind your kids what is most important to your family.
Don’t Lose Heart When It Comes to Family Devotions
Lastly, let me gently encourage you. Teaching our kids about Christ is a lifelong process. Keep doing the best you can.
One of the best ways to help your children grow spiritually is to simply talk about Christ often throughout your days. Talk about God when you drive to the store and when you tuck them into bed.
You are doing the important work of making disciples. Jesus never promised it would be easy, but he did promise to go with you and help you.
A Free Daily Devotional for Kids
Do you want to help a younger person in your life grow in faith? Check out our 7-day kids’ online devotional, Live Your Faith, right here. This devotional contains seven devotions written with the help of our tween daughter, Bekah, and is a great book for families to read together. 
Attention, all moms and daughters!
Additionally, my teen daughter, Bekah, and I are passionate about helping moms and daughters grow closer while connecting with God. We have written two mother-daughter devotionals together. Girl to Girl: 60 Mother-Daughter Devotions for a Closer Relationship and Deeper Faith is written for girls ages 7-12. It includes 60 devotions with Scripture, conversation starters, and a shared journaling section after each devotion.
Heart to Heart: A Mother-Daughter Devotional With 50 Devotions for Teen Girls is for teenage girls ages 13-20. It includes 50 devotions, each with a shared journaling section to help moms and daughters connect through writing. This is a great book for moms who want to communicate about awkward topics—like dating, purity, peer pressure, and more—but don’t know where to start. We will help you!
Multitudes of mothers, daughters, mentors, and younger women are being transformed by these books! You can buy them as paperbacks or get your free Kindle Unlimited eBooks on Amazon right here.
