Tommy's Notes:
This week in Family FX we talked about sharing the Bible at home with our children. We discussed the importance of having family devotions at home. We have goals in mind for our children as they grow up (intentional or unintentional), but if we want them to be godly young men and women we have to lead them in that direction.
If you want your child to be a great baseball player; you would have them play on teams, practice all the time, take them to watch big league baseball, buy them good equipment, etc. But what if you want your child to be a godly young man or woman? What do you do? Go to church? Is that enough to lead your child to be godly?
The bible teaches us in Deuteronomy 6 that the parents are to pass on their faith in God to their children. We are to do so as we get up, as we walk throughout our day, and as we lie down at night. I believe one of the greatest things we can do with our children is have a weekly time together of learning God’s word.
Yes, we all need daily reading and prayer, but a weekly family time gives us an outlet to teach our kids biblical truths as they grow up in our homes. Imagine if you did weekly family times every week for 18 years. You would not look back and say; “I wish I would have told them about…” You would have more than enough opportunities to cover most of the choices and temptations they will face in life. It is one of the best ways to guarantee that we get ample time to teach and train our children.
We pay $60 - $100 to sign our kids up for soccer, piano lessons, basketball, etc. Why not make an investment in family time and get some tools to help you teach your kids biblical truths in a fun way. Below is a list of resources we discussed this past week at Family FX.
Parent Resources for Family Devotions
BLAST lessons (weekly lessons from Sunday morning)
Review lessons with family devotional at home during the week. You can find them online and a weekly hand out at BLAST
www.famtime.com
These are great family time activities for children of all ages. You can purchase these books online or download their free on per month. We have some listed on our church website under Family FX. These are about $20 per book and they would last several months.
Family Devotional Books (we had several books on hand for parents to look at)
Family Night Tool Chest
Family Devotions2
Focus on the Family Activity Books
Unit Studies – www.christianbook.com and search for family devotion. For under $20 you can find some great family devotional books that will last for months and some all year long.
10 Tips for a successful Family Time
- Make it fun
- Make it relevant – it needs to be age appropriate
- Make it short and meaningful – it should not be long and boring
- Pick a theme or a topic – it is great to have a family calendar and place your themes or key words on your calendar. Your kids will know what is coming and look forward to that time.
- Add your family extras – quiz night, game night, special dessert night, theme song, quick –no-mess dinner, etc.
- With older kids – let them help lead and pick future topics
- Be consistent and faithful – yes you will have some duds, but pray for God’s guidance as you lead your children. They will remember more than you think. Be faithful to protect your family time.
- Change the scenery – it’s OK to leave the house, some of their best memories will be when you took them downtown to visit the homeless and teach them about helping others
- Share the passion with others. It’s OK to invite friends over to be a part. You may change a family simply by opening your doors on family night.
- Dad – lead the way. It is biblical and best when dad is leading. If that is not an option, then mom feel free to take start the ball rolling.
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