I haven’t always been a family devotion guy. It’s not because I didn’t want or aspire to be; I did. But we went a long time as a family before pulling the trigger and trying to integrate this practice into the regular rhythm of our family life.

We’ve been doing morning devotions together for over 15 years now – long enough that our kids expect that we will. It’s a long road, as are most things with young children I’m finding out. Though revival doesn’t break out every morning over eggs and toast, our continued hope and prayer is that times like these builds into the love and discipline our children will have in the future when it comes to God’s Word.

And through those 15 years, we’ve tried different things, failed at a bunch, and maybe learned some things about starting and continuing in this pattern. I hope some of these things will be encouraging to you to kick this off, or affirming to you if you’ve found yourself in the middle of it.

In my opinion, then, here are 6 things you must have to start a family devotion:

1. Consistency.

There’s a pattern to everything, a routine for most every part of life. And any time you disrupt that routine, even for the noblest of reasons, there is going to be backlash. So before you get started, you’ve got to commit to consistency. Decide on the time of day. And keep it at that time.

For us, it’s 6:45 am at breakfast. That still might change in the coming years, but if you don’t pick a consistent time then it’s doubly difficult to keep the practice going.

What’s more, in our experience, the days that feel like discipline to do this far outweigh the days where you feel like the kids are actually engaged and learning something. But then again, isn’t that often the case in our own lives with our own spiritual growth and development? And yet we keep going because we believe in the power of God and the power of His Word.

2. Variety.

For us, we try to change things up once a week. Monday through Thursday, we do a Bible study and prayer (probably around 15 minutes), but Friday is different.

On Friday, everyone shares one specific thing they are thankful for that week, and one prayer request.

For a while, those prayer requests were pretty predictable – that I would have a good day, that I would do well on a test, that I would be kind to friends… that kind of thing. In recent days, we’re tried to bring more variety into those prayer requests as well, asking the kids to share a prayer not for themselves but for someone else, or to share something they’re thankful for that’s not about an activity they get to do that weekend.