Teaching Your Kids To Have Personal Devotions

You may read the title and think, how in the world do I go about teaching my kids to have personal devotions when I struggle with them myself as an adult? I understand. Let’s talk about it.

Devotions Can Be A Struggle

Quiet time with God is the daily spiritual nourishment of a Christian. It’s a time when the Holy Spirit can reveal himself by speaking through His Word or speaking to us as we pray.

As we read the Bible and pray each day, God can teach, correct, guide, and encourage us along our journey. We grow close to God having our daily devotions. It’s how we have a personal relationship with Him.

The Struggle Is Real

This is why the enemy fights our devotional life so much. He knows if we pray, there is power in prayer. He knows if we read the Bible, we learn what God likes and dislikes and we will follow God’s plan for our lives. 

The enemy of our soul will try to distract us as we pray. He will try to get our thoughts somewhere else, therefore our prayer time turns into a to-do list and nothing but distracted thinking instead of something powerful and meaningful. 

Let’s be honest. It’s normal that we all have a struggle at times in the place of prayer or reading the Word of God. So in knowing this, what if we were to give our kids a slight advantage and teach them early on to make it a habit in their lives? Therefore, when they are older it’s such a routine that they don’t think twice about having their own devotions.

Will they still be fought by the enemy of their soul like everyone else? Yes, absolutely, but I feel like having the daily habit ingrained in them from an early age gives them an advantage.

Personal Example

Growing up, my parents had family devotions in the evening. We read the Bible, talked about what it meant, and we prayed.

This routine came from my dad’s parents.  To this day, when I take my own family to visit with either my parents or my grandparents, they still have the whole family gather in the living room and have family devotions before we all go to bed. 

Because this routine was so ingrained in my life it was easy to implement it for my little family. I didn’t know any different. It wasn’t until I was much older did I realized that not all Christian families do this.

Start by selecting family devotionals that will help the whole family and read God’s Word.

Let each family member who can read have a turn reading during family devotions. We allow our kids to take turns different nights reading and it helps them pay attention to what is being read and helps them grow.

The Inspiration Behind Teaching My Kids To Have Personal Devotions

When talking to a friend about personal devotions she mentioned that she was never taught to have a personal devotional life. Her parents encouraged her to have devotions but never showed her how or what it looked like.

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to make sure my kids had every opportunity to succeed in this area that everyone struggles in at times. So I determined that I would put devotions into my child’s daily routine from the get-go.

I wanted to make Bible reading and prayer such a daily habit for them that they didn’t know anything else. (Like me with family devotions.)

Yes, I want their time spent with Jesus to be deep and personally beneficial for them.  But, I also want them to already have the habit ingrained in them early on. Therefore, as their relationship grows with Jesus they won’t have as much of a struggle to have their devotions. 

When I Started Teaching My Kids Devotional Time

Reading The Bible

When I first had my babies I had a little children’s Bible I would read to them every day. When my oldest was able to sit still and work the Youversion bible app for kids, I would let him do the Bible app on my phone (which reads the bible to them) while I had my devotions beside him. He knew we didn’t watch shows, play games, or do anything else until we “put God first”. 

Teaching them to pray

Teaching my kids to pray every day before they could talk was important to me as well. I would go down through a list every night of the same things, therefore when they got old enough they had an idea of how to pray and who to pray for.

Eventually, they would add in what they wanted to pray for when they were big enough to understand. The good thing is the repetition of the past prayers helped to give them a structure on how to pray.

There have been times when my kids didn’t feel like praying. We would encourage them by letting them know that Jesus created them to have a relationship with them. We have asked them how would it feel if someone didn’t want to talk to them, and most of the time this helped. 

The bottom line, you can’t force your kids to love Jesus and want to talk to Him, but you can do everything to encourage them and to set them up for success early on.  

​Different Tools We Use

As the two older boys learned to read they started with the NIrV Adventure Bible. They had to have this particular bible for the Christian school they go to and it’s a great Bible to start with for younger children. They also like to read their Bible that’s just their size.

Other tools they use are a devotional book for boys and the Action Story Bible which they love to read. They also have fun books such as The Amazing Bible Factbook that can help mix things up and make things more interesting for them. 

I’ve also ordered them prayer journals for Christmas so they can write in and jot down thoughts that they have from what they read that day or they can write down a prayer list. It came with stickers and gel pens for them to write in and decorate their journal making to make it fun for them. 

Set A Routine

We went through a short time when family devotions were all the big boys seemed to get in until the weekends because they had to leave so early for school.

We are intentionally trying to carve out time before they leave for school in the mornings now because this time works better for us to make sure it happens.

• TIP: Choose a time and routine that works best for your family. Don’t be afraid to adjust things if something isn’t working.

Why not just family devotions? Isn’t that good enough?

We want our kids to learn to have their own devotional life where they are personally walking and talking with Jesus. That is the most important thing to keep them spiritually alive as they grow.

What about teenagers? I don’t have them yet but my aunt’s devotional strategy for her teenagers was to set a daily devotional time. She set a time in which the whole family would have their personal devotions and it worked well for them.

Breaking It Down

Now that I told you my story let’s break it down to how you can teach your kids how to have daily personal devotions.

The First Foundation In Teaching Kids To Have Personal Devotions: 

Have a good routine of family devotions every night before bed. 

• Practical Tips: If you have small children, keep devotions within the attention span of those children. Then they will enjoy them. Use a children’s devotional book or a children’s bible with pictures to help keep their attention. Find a middle ground if you have older and younger children. Maybe allow the smaller children a story before reading the bible or other using devotional resources with your older children.

Second Foundation In Teaching Kids To Have Personal Devotions

Teach your child as soon as you can to have their own devotional time. Eventually, it will be so ingrained in their routine that they won’t know any different. 

• Practical Tips: Teach them to pray the same thing every day from an early age. Therefore when they are old enough to understand the structure of prayer they can pray on their own with their own words and lists. Read the Bible to them or use the kid’s Youversion Bible app that tells stories so they can do it independently. Buy them devotional tools they can use once they are old enough to read and understand. 

Third Foundation In Teaching Kids To Have Personal Devotions

Set the example before them. Let them see you reading your Bible and hear you pray out loud. This is a great opportunity for them to feel God’s presence and understand that this is where spiritual growth happens. 

• Practical Tips: You may not always want them in on your personal time with God and that’s ok. But, don’t always shield them from your devotions. Your example will lead them.

Fourth Foundation In Teaching Kids To Have Personal Devotions

Try to encourage your children to hide God’s word in their hearts.

Practical Tips: Have a verse of the day or a weekly verse they practice with you and try to memorize. When they are facing hard times they can recall these verses. 

Consistently do all of these things, and I believe it will help your children throughout their entire lives.

Things will not go smoothly all the time. It’s the concept you are training them in the way they should go and God will do the rest! Pray for your kids that God would help them learn that personal walk with Him that is so vital to their spiritual journey. 

Tools To Help You

• Infant Bible Story Book (infant-toddler)
• Youversion Bible App for kids
• Children’s Bible Story Book (2-6)
• ​Children’s Bible Story Book (4-+)
• Action Story Bible  (6+)
• Devotional Book For Boys (6+)
• NiRV Study Bible (For kids who can read)
• KJV Bible (For kids who can read)
• The Kids Guide To The Full Armour of God (8+)
• ​Bible Study Journals From Not Consumed. ( kids devotional bundle is the one we have it’s awesome)

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For more devotional content from Mamas Front Porch Swing see the links below: