3 great devotionals for kids

Devo’s – building our relationship through time spent with our Creator God through prayer and reading scripture.

It will never be an easy thing to establish daily Bible reading in your family. But it’s worth fighting for that time in the word and helping our kids establish a devotional pattern. It’s worth it because staying in scripture is life-giving and life-changing. Satan knows this and he doesn’t want our kids to know and love God through time spent with him. As a family we still struggle to make this a daily practice. Sometimes we are on a great consistent streak and other times not so much. But we keep striving and trying. That’s all we can do. So here’s what has worked for us….

Finding great material is super important.

Sophie is currently working through Luke by She Reads Truth for kids. I love this book because it’s filled with short readings and a few questions for reflection. She writes in her Luke book and journals her prayer requests as well.

To mix it up, on some days I have her read a faith based article out ‘Can you Relate‘. I love everything that Vickie Courtney puts out and this book is gold. Sophie reads an article and writes a paragraph or so about what she learned in her journal. I let her choose which articles she wants to read to make it more interesting for her. They are Christ-centered and address relevant issues. There are two teen versions as well.

Our son is older and he’s reading James right now and will move to another book soon. He reads and then takes a few minutes to write what he read in his journal. He has enjoyed looking back at the things he has prayed about and the things he learned years ago. Looking back is such an important part of our faith and it’s so enlightening. If you don’t have your kids journal consider buying them a very cool leather journal from Barnes and Noble – one that’s different from the ten million others he/she already has. Make it just for recording faith findings through devo’s and prayer requests. Then encourage them at some point to look back at their journals to see what God was teaching them and to see if there are any answered prayers.

Our kids like using their phones to access the Bible App which also has great reading plans on it. I’m learning that the kids really love the feedback they receive when they’ve accomplished their goal. They don’t want to break their daily bible reading streak so they read every day. I know…..what’s the motivation in that – to get their streak or to get to know Jesus. Because God’s word never returns void I’m not sure it matters. I have shared my sentiments about them using a paper Bible but I’ve decided it’s not something I want to turn into a “thing” because the big picture is this: to know and love Jesus. And their phones will be a forever part of them from now and until they die most likely. To have immediate free access to the Bible on their phones is pretty awesome.

Another great resource I want to tell you about is called Treasured.

Sophie and I are working through this study together. It has been really good. I’ve chosen to watch the short dvd’s with her when she has a friend over to spend the night. So we watch them together and then talk about it over lunch. It’s been a good thing so far.

 

Some days I’ll give the kids a link to watch like this one or this one and that is their devotion time. I’ll ask them to jot down the answers to three questions I write out for them and they record their insights in their journals. The videos I linked to may not be age appropriate for your kids because of the nature of the content but our kids are at an age where they need to hear about these things so they can take part in praying for their persecuted siblings.

This post is all about not letting Summer pass us by without helping our kids stay in God’s word. It’s important and it’s hard. Keep fighting to foster faith in your family.