Week 32 - Family Devotional Time with Melissa Kruger | Word First

welcome to 52 weeks in the word I'm your host trillia nubo and I'm grateful to have my good friend Melissa Kruger on the podcast Melissa is an author and serves as the director of women's content for the Gospel Coalition Bible reading is often done in isolation but I wonder if there's ways we can engage the word together that's maybe not a Bible study so I'm thinking of ways that isn't necessarily opening the word and studying text by text but other ways that we can get engaged together and I'm really excited for you to help us with this Melissa because I believe that's your family um your you've prayed together you and your husband Mike have written a book about that and so what are ways families can Engage The Bible together that's such a good question Trulia um and I think it's something we all want to do but we often um I think just like you said feel the busyness of Life problem particularly as our kids age I think when they're small and you know we have them in our homes all day long we can figure out different ways to read a children's Bible yeah because we're reading lots of stories to our kids at that age but I don't know about you as my kids of age I read less and less stories to them because they're reading on their own and um and so I think one thing I will say starting that Foundation young of getting God's word in our kids heart through fun ways like songs and singing or Bible stories and just letting God's word be a regular part of their life will translate um into the pre-teen and teen years I think fairly easily because it's already a discussion Point those stories become part of your family history so to speak just like TV shows become a part of your family history like my family like our kids we watch certain shows and we all laugh and we talk about them the Bible can become that with our families as well um and that can be going to church together because you hear the word preach together I mean that's a simple way that we get the Bible in our Collective family not just isolated it's like the difference of watching a movie together in a movie theater versus just everybody being on their own devices and watching different things um and so it's really nice to have times as a family together where you're hearing the same passage taught and then you can talk about it at lunch or say what did you think about the sermon and you know what if if our kids say it was really boring and they didn't get anything out of it that's okay because I mean as an adult sometimes I think it was really boring and I didn't get much out of it so I I think making sure we allow for that with our kids I think is huge in helping those discussions happen or say yeah I thought it was kind of boring too that's okay we don't have to like shut down the conversation because saying it was God's word taught how could you have not gotten anything out of it like no one likes to be kind of scolded I think in that way but I think we can still say then hey well what did you think about the passage we read you know even if they didn't love the sermon for some reason or something like that we could say did you think anything interesting that didn't get mentioned you know you could kind of take the conversation different ways but I also just think with my kids when they've been going through hard times one of the ways I try to get the word to them is by texting them and saying hey I'm praying this verse for you I'm praying you know whatever verse it might be let's say they're worried about a test maybe I'll send them you know a passage about cast all your concerns on the Lord because he cares for you um and so I'll Castle or I think it's cast all your anxieties on the Lord because it cares for you and I'll send them that verse and saying I'm praying that you could cast all your cares on the Lord today as you take that test and trust him and so that's a simple and loving way we can get God's word into our kids lives um and just show that we're caring for them through the word because we're supposed to bring comfort in our in our times of Sorrow I don't don't know what about you have you how do you do it in your family I'd love to hear can I turn the question back on you am I allowed to do that you know I um it's interesting because I was thinking about this we we tried family devotions we've tried all sorts of stuff and one time it went okay the other time one other time we got really distracted so family devotions when my kids were younger was very difficult we did much better with just reading like reading a Bible story reading a book um then as a gathered family devotional and then what I've done with my teenage well she's no she's almost a teenager um with my daughter is we did a Bible study just one-on-one together that that worked really well and so we are going to continue that practice just one-on-one Bible study so rather than me trying to gather all of us together every Sunday we we do ask okay what did you think of the sermon so that's kind of um what you Illustrated there that is what we do we do that and and it's it's always helpful to try to um pull out how to engage their minds and their hearts okay because a lot of sermons seems at least in my context more application definitely teaching but with that there's lots of applications so we can help okay where are we where are we going to apply this text and um and then with my son I have read we will sometimes read the Bible in the same room so in other words we're reading at the same time but not reading together and so I have we're we're not a family where we've done a lot of Bible reading we've done some but they usually fail so we do more one-on-one stops for conversations and yeah yeah and and you know there's something you said that made me think ah gosh I hope that brings freedom to people one of the things that you were talking about that I thought oh this will give Freedom was not to force I can't remember what it was that's the specific thing that you said but I I believe it was something about not to force feelings or if they say something about maybe the sermon not to force animotive reaction to it like oh you you should have loved that sermon and I think that's the same for Bible reading I do think that we are always like there's not a single wasted time when we're reading the Bible period but you're not gonna come away every single time on this like whoa Jesus Jesus are you're amazing I didn't know you did all that you may be confused or you may have questions or you may have just read something and it's historical and you gathered some information and and so I guess what I really appreciate and I wondered how have you encouraged your kids as they have been reading and engaging the Bible because they may not come away with all of these emotions absolutely and I love what what you're speaking of there is just such a picture of daily bread right like do we look at every single meal we eat and say wow that was the best meal of my life no food is sustaining us but we may have certain meals when we look across the table at each other and we're like this is phenomenal you know and we just soak it in and I think there are days of Bible reading like that that we we look at the text in a new way and we're like this book is amazing but a lot of the days we might just be eating to get nourishment to get daily nourishment and that's okay and so I've tried to really just explain that to my kids hey be in it it's gonna change you but that change doesn't happen all at once you know it's a long time coming that the Lord slowly works on our hearts as we're in the word and he's going to change us day after day after day but um that faithfulness and Bible reading over the Long Haul is what's really going to build our faith not you know trying to stuff it all in at once and get everything all at once but a long a long walk with the Lord that is my prayer is that we would all have a long walk with the Lord and so I'm going to pray for us Lord thank you for your word god thank you that you have given us such a gift and Lord I pray for endurance for everyone reading um you know that we can get tired we can start thinking of grocery lists we are distracted we have so much God I pray that you would help us to engage your word with all of our hearts with our minds with a love for you Lord and that you would help us to persevere through hard text long books God I think of like Jeremiah and it just never-ending some of these but books of the Bibles that are harder to read God but but you you put them there for a reason so Lord I pray that you would give us wisdom to know that you are when you are good Lord you have something to teach us about yourself and your word and it is a gift so God I pray that we would not neglect this gift God but that we would not approach it um as a way to earn favor before you God thank you that we have favor already those who have put their faith and trust in your future God thank you so Lord we worship you we Delight um in you God and we pray that you would help to sustain us through your word day after day and it's in your name we pray amen thank you Melissa [Music]