How to Use the book entitled Family Devotions

(If you are looking for advice on how to conduct family devotions, this article may better answer your questions.)

This book is written so that your children participate in the devotion. It is written for a leader and four participants. The devotion leader assigns various family members (children/ spouse) a scripture passage (designated by the bold print in each devotion) to look up in their Bible. (It is best to have the participants look up the scriptures before the devotion begins so they can read them as soon as the leader says the reference. If each participant has their own Bible, things go much more smoothly. However, if there is just one shared Bible, the readers should have their scripture bookmarked for easy access, so when the Bible is passed to them they can readily find it.)

This book’s use can be adjusted for larger or smaller families. For example, if your family is smaller you might assign a single child a scripture and then you, the leader, in order to save time, could just read the other scriptures from this book.

Scripture references are in bold type on each page. The devotion leader, preferably the dad, reads aloud from this book and as he approaches each scripture he asks the person assigned that scripture to read it aloud. The leader has all the scriptures written in italics so he can affirm that the correct scripture is being read. Some scriptures references have an “a” or “b” after them. An “a” stands for the first part of a verse and “b” usually means the last part of a verse. (See the November 3rd devotion). In this devotion Prov 21:26b is the third scripture. The reader of that verse reads only the second part of the verse beginning with “but the righteous.” The person assigned to read Prov 28:27a reads only the first part of the verse stopping at“will lack nothing.” In a few instances scripture references may have an “a,” “b” and “c.” In these cases “b” is the middle portion of the scripture and “c” indicates the last part. (Look at the May 1st devotion for an example of this.) In this devotion a different person is assigned to read each of the three sentences in I Cor 4:7.

All scriptures in this book are taken from the New International Version of the Bible—the NIV Bible (not the TNIV or the NIrV). If you use an NIV Bible printed before 1984, you will notice slight variations in a few scriptures. Some words or phrases in this book may be unfamiliar to young children. These words or phrases are marked with an asterisk in the text. They appear at the bottom of that page along with their definitions. (See January 6th devotion for an example of this.) It might be helpful to discuss these words before starting the devotion. Pronunciation of words is given in square brackets with the accented syllable in italics. Many of the Biblical pronunciations are taken from Unger’s Bible Dictionary. Several stories in this book are taken from our family, the Marigny [mare uh nee] family. We are Terry (Daddy), Lauretta (Mommy), Kerri, Gladys, Reyne [ruh nay] and Rachael. When the twins were born Kerri was four and Gladys was two. Terry is African-American, and was raised in New Orleans. Lauretta was raised on a farm in North Dakota. Terry’s military career took the family to Washington State, Oklahoma, California, New York, Germany, and Italy. You will notice a designation under the title on some of some of the pages. For example, turn again to January 6. There you see “Marigny” written under the title. That story is about our family. Other stories in this book may have one of the following designations:“Bible” for Bible stories, “Warren Marigny” for stories about Terry’s family, “Kilzer” for stories of Lauretta’s family and “Rochman” [rock mun] for stories about Kerri’s family. The family stories may have some details changed or left out for purposes of this book. Other designations might be for holidays or seasons, such as “Easter” and“Lent.” Some of the undesignated stories in this book are based on true stories, which may be evident in the amount of detail used.

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