I once saw a cartoon that depicted a middle-aged man and an older woman sitting in a kitchen looking bored. Each had a cupcake in front of them, and the caption simply read, “Billy’s 25th homeschool reunion.”
During this season of Coronavirus pandemic, many of us are spending much more time at home with our families. Good naturedly, we joke about getting on one another’s nerves, or needing to find our own personal space. Familiarity, they say, breeds contempt.
At the same time, health precautions are requiring a new, physical distance from our church families, and that can be uncomfortable too. We may not fully realize how much our spiritual health and growth depends on being together, until we can’t. Absence, they say, makes the heart grow fonder.
If both these dynamics are true, that family members can grate on one another and yet spiritual families need one another, I believe there is a solution that is tailormade for Christian families during this unusual season. This is a great time to refocus on family devotion.
Perhaps your family already practices a regular family devotion time. But most families, even Christian families, don’t. Most are relying primarily if not exclusively on their church for their spiritual health and growth. And this neglect weakens both families and churches.
A few years ago, I wrote a book for Revell publishing titled, “The Home Team – Spiritual Practices for a Winning Family.” Each of the book’s 12 chapters outlined a spiritual “practice” that Christian families can do together to disciple their children and keep their family spiritually grounded. And chapter one was the practice of having a consistent family devotional time.
If you’d like to read that chapter, you can find it here. But the suggestions it offers are not complicated. Find the right book. Find the right time. Make it fun. Keep it simple. Be interactive.
Throughout the years we were raising three sons, our family devotion times had the same basic elements. We read the Bible together. We talked about what the Bible passage meant, and how it applied to our lives. We prayed together.
In the process, we established a family culture of open conversation about spiritual life and truth. Too many families only talk about spiritual things at church. Deuteronomy 6 reminds us that God’s word is to be part of our daily, family conversation.
I would be the first to admit that our family isn’t perfect, and our children weren’t and aren’t perfect. But I will say, without reservation, that my children are the most deeply discipled Christians my life will produce, if only because of the consistent practice of family devotions, and the spiritual conversations that flowed from them, and still do. We’ve been members of some good churches over the years that had some great influences on our kids. But none of them could disciple my children as deeply as my wife and I could over the days and weeks and years that we invested in their spiritual growth.
What if we as families used this “shelter at home” time to create new, spiritual shelters in our homes—the shelters of a renewed family devotional time? I believe it would keep us from grating on one another as families in close quarters. I believe it would significantly strengthen our churches when we come back together. I believe it would fulfill the partnership God intends between the family and the church in making strong, mature disciples of Jesus. And I believe those kinds of disciples will stand strong, even during times of crisis, and boldly take the gospel to the world.
Nate Adams is executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association.