Parent Resources: Family Devotions

I’m in the middle of compiling a bunch of links, free resources, and book recommendations for topics within the area of parenting to provide for our church members. So I figured I’d put them on the blog in a cleaner format to make it accessible to others as well. Since everyone’s time is precious, here is a list of links with a short summary and commentary to help you navigate through the material.

1. PODCAST: How Do You Do Family Devotions? (Piper)
   Short, also transcribed. Piper gives resources, content, examples on how to do devotions. Good to glance through to get ideas for you.
2. BLOG: Discipling Your Kids Is More than Family Devotions (Brown)
   Gives a good balanced perspective to family devotions, reminds parents to emphasize “All-Day Discipleship,” not just one part of the day.
3. BLOG: Doing Family Devotions (Raymond)
   An emphasis on fathers, but good for both parents. These are eleven “How To” suggestions on improving your family devotions. Good principles to incorporate.
4. BLOG: Parents: Should You Mandate Bible Reading for Your Children? (Raymond)
   The potential benefits and pitfalls in mandating personal Bible reading for your children. Thought provoking, also gives additional links to related material.
5. BLOG: The Value of Asking Questions During Family Devotions (Raymond)
   Raymond gives the reasons behind asking questions and examples of what types of questions to ask in family devotion time. Very helpful.
6. BLOG: How We Do Family Devotions (Challies)
   Tim explains how they do their family devotions with a busy schedule. But gives encouragement to thinking long term when we miss one family devotion here and there. Possible ideas to incorporate in your own family.
7. BLOG: 10 Ideas and 10 Tips for Family Devotions (Challies)
   Gives tips on content and contexts (time, location, etc.) for family devotion and ends with principles and attitudes to have in the midst of executing family devotions. Helpful to read the points at least.
8. BLOG: Why We Fail at Family Devotions (Challies)
   An article on avoiding pitfalls and being aware of them and how it will help us to endure and keep more consistent with family devotions.
9. BLOG: How I Lead My Children in Personal Devotions (Challies)
   Insight into how Tim leads, encourages, and equips his kids to do their own personal devotion time. Really good ideas.

List of Books and Other Resources

• Family Worship by Joel Beeke
• Big Truths for Young Hearts by Bruce Ware
  (Equips parents to guide their young children through all major doctrines in an understandable, chapter-a-day format.)
• Bite Size Theology by Peter Jeffrey
  (Easy-to-read theology book for the ABCs of the faith. Also has a Bible reading plan for reading the New Testament and the Psalms in a year).
• Wise Up: Ten-Minute Family Devotions in Proverbs by Marty Machowski
• Long Story Short: Ten-Minute Devotions to Draw Your Family to God by Marty Machowski
  Devotionals on the story of salvation through the Old Testament good for preschool through high school.
• Old Story New: Ten-Minute Devotions to Draw Your Family to God by Marty Machowski
  The New Testament counterpart to Long Story Short.
• David Murray’s Bible Reading Plan for Kids
  • David Murray has planned out personal devotions for kids to go through both Old and New Testament books. They’re also sold on Amazon in a cleaner form. He makes these PDF’s available on his website and they come with questions that you can print out for your children to work on their own.