As we prepare for the New Year, I want to encourage you to begin family and personal devotions if you do not yet have this regular practice at home. The Westminster Confession of Faith 21.6 teaches that, “…God is to be worshiped everywhere in Spirit and Truth. He should be worshiped daily in families, and privately by individuals…”
We see this modeled for us in Scripture as families gathered during the Passover Feast to worship God and remember his saving grace. There was also personal worship in the Old Covenant: Moses, David, Daniel, and Job all worshipped the Lord privately. Jesus himself often went away alone to pray. And with regard to families, the Apostle Paul teaches that fathers should bring their children up in the “discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4), and that husbands should take an active role in leading their wives spiritually (Ephesians 5:22-33).
My pastoral advice if you plan to begin personal and family devotions (or if you are struggling to maintain these practices in your home) is to first: keep them simple. Use a combination of Scripture, reflection on the reading, and prayer. Once you find a simple pattern, it’s easier to stick to it.
Second: keep them short. It would be great to read for hours and pray long prayers, but that is not a good way to begin. Start with short readings and brief prayers, and increase your devotion time as you are able, much like a runner trains his body over time to prepare for marathons.
Third: plan ahead. When our kids were small, our family devotion time was always right before we put them to bed. It was an effective way to help them wind down at the end of a long day. Now that they are teenagers with different schedules, I need to think ahead each day to find a time that we will all be together, which is usually around our kitchen table. So, for example, if I know that volleyball practice will run late on a certain day (which means we won’t be eating dinner together as a family), I’ll plan to lead devotions during breakfast that day before we all go our separate ways.
Fourthly: don’t give up. If you miss a day, or two, or more, don’t give up. It happens. Life gets busy, especially during certain seasons. Instead of giving up, just resume where you left off and keep going.
Fifth: use good resources. As I mentioned earlier, devotions usually involve a combination of Scripture, reflection on the reading, and prayer. You may add to this as you see fit. The bulletin insert each week provides daily Scripture readings from the One-Year Bible reading plan, along with readings from the Westminster Standards and prayers for church members. There are many other resources you may use to guide your reading and to help you reflect on it. Using a good devotional resource can also help point you to Christ each day as you read Scripture, especially as you read through the Old Testament.
For family devotions, the Family Worship Bible Guide (edited by Joel Beeke) is fantastic. This guide provides summaries of each chapter of the Bible along with thought-provoking questions for application.
My kids use Paul Tripp’s New Morning Mercies for their personal devotions. This book might be a good gift idea for Christmas to give to your teenager or someone in your life that you know would benefit from a practical daily devotional.
After many years, I still use The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions (edited by Arthur Bennett). It has helped me learn how to pray for things that I would not have considered on my own.
May the Lord bless you as you seek by his grace to worship him daily!