Daily Devotionals

Over at Peter's blog, we're discussing the value of daily devotions in the Christian family. In our family, we've been doing a short daily bible reading and prayer time for about 10 years now. I can't say that it is ALL of us as a family though. D is a relatively recent Christian and I don't think has come under conviction in this area. It would be nice though.

I started having a brief time of prayer and Bible reading when the boys were about 2 and 3. It *used* to include singing a couple little songs but I've stopped doing that, probably around the time I started singing at my children instead of yelling all the time. Yes, I'm working on fixing one thing at a time but I think singing, "You'd better stop it or there will beeee lots of trouble la la laaa..." sounds a lot better than someone screaming. Maybe. But now if I'm singing otherwise my six-year-old will cower and say, "You're yelling at me!" *sniff*

Each child and I take turns for "bible week" and the whole week will be spent reading the next passages in that person's Bible. The Emperor (5) still has a 'bible' with smiling fluffy rabbits and flowers near Jesus. It has descriptions of real Bible events, such as, "Now Haman is sad because he made a bad choice. He will have to be punished." I think that page features a sad turtle or something. I'd have to look that one up LOL! I think it gets the children used to the differing versions and I'm hoping they realize KJV is the best. Not that you're some sort of horrible unsaved person if you read NIV, just more like the KJV has been very carefully translated and not *all* Bibles have been. There are whole cults out there who have their own "translation" of the Bible. But I digress.

One thing we have NOT done as a family is scripture memorization. I always figured I was not really bright enough to memorize scripture. Silly lines from Spongebob are so much easier to remember, even though I *know* the Bible is much more important. I have started the Bob Jones curriculum with Elf and Emperor and you'd be amazed at the verses they remember. I can remember a few as well. I can't tell you enough how this curriculum has helped me as a parent connect some of those dots. I think more because I changed churches a lot as a new Christian, and I never learned a coherent doctrine. I was always moving to a new state, or in one case there was a horrible church split and I *just* couldn't see myself growing as a three-month-old Christian in that environment. There was too much venom and backbiting going on and I wasn't reallly grounded enough in the word to know how to defend things or figure out why person A would have it in for person C etc. Drama!

You know what I would do in that situation now? If I felt I could make no positive change... I would just leave earlier LOL! Now that church is part of a denomination that accepts gays into the ministry... so just as well I'm not around as a voting member to deal with *that.* I just can't see even paying my tithes anymore if someone's even THINKING of such a thing. I have enough problems of my own without having to deal with everyone else's you know.

In any event, this curriculum presents the Bible stories in ways I hadn't thought about. For the story of Samson, the teachers' manual talks about Samson's pride. Now, I had never thought about it before. I always thought that Samson was just thinking with the wrong area of his body and God only just got around to punishing him after his hair was cut. Being gracious sometimes God dillydallies hoping that you'll get your act together yourself or something.

But this curriculum talks about Samson's pride and the more I think about it (on an adult level; this is a second-grade curriculum), they may be right. Samson thought he could just do *whatever* time after time and get away with it. He had disobeyed the laws of God by trying to marry outside his faith, eating honey (did you know that??) and being with a prostitute. He also was very prideful in the bet he made at the wedding feast. It was only when he was HUMBLE that he was able to knock down the entire temple. God's word tells us he was able to kill more Philistines that way than he did during the rest of his life. (Judges 16:30) Yay Samson... he finally *got* it!! Plus killing Philistines would be, as Martha Stewart would say in those days, "a good thing."