Tag: family devotions

Q&A: Personal Space for Kids, Father’s Day, & KJV Devotionals

Today we have a great variety of questions for you to read, perhaps some of these questions will help you come up with some solutions to questions that you might have but have never asked. The first question and answer tackles what you can do when someone violates your child’s personal space. We have personally had this happen to us in our ministry as well and I love the answer the ministry wife provided. Father’s Day is around the corner and these ladies have some great ideas for what type of gifts they are going to give out this year. Do you ever wonder if there is King James devotionals for you and your family to read together? Several women gave some great answers of resources I had never heard of before. And what do you give to a shut-in that is not food related? Read all the answers below!

Q & A 1

Q: “We consistently have a church member who violates my children’s personal space. They do not seem to be a threat in any way but they just do not seem to know they don’t want them in their face, etc. I know it makes our children uncomfortable and I see them avoiding this person when they speak to them and now in general. Is there something I should/could say to the person? or should I just leave it up to the kids to allow them to have as much or as little to do with them as possible?”

A: We have a man in our church that likes to hug. That normally wouldn’t be an issue but he hugs and holds on, keeping you hostage to his grip. He makes me and my kids very uncomfortable. Others in the church don’t have an issue with it. We just had a talk with our children and instructed them to keep an eye for him so that when he starts to approach they can position themselves in such a way as to not allow him the opportunity to grab them. If that’s not possible, they’re to leave and avoid the situation altogether. If he manages to get to them without them noticing they are to pull away and put their hand out to shake his hand. Surprisingly, it’s worked really well. I think he got the picture pretty quickly and now refrains from even trying. My opinion is, when it comes to my children I’ll do/say whatever is necessary to make them feel safe and protected. If they’re uncomfortable it’s my responsibility as a parent to deal with it, not them. I will say too, our congregation likes to hug…a lot! I don’t like it at all. I don’t mind hugging, I just don’t think it needs to take place in the church. Especially when you have people of the opposite sex doing it, no matter the age. I know there have been times that visitors have come and have felt very uncomfortable by it. I wish we had a no-hug policy and stuck to strictly hand shaking.

Q: “Can you give me some of your creative Father’s Day ideas for gifts as well as special things you do in the church service for the men on Father’s Day?”

    • “Coffee cups always went over well for us or gift certificates for coffee.”
    • “We have done ties, tools, pocket knives, and flashlights.”
    • “We’re giving a hammer with the phrase “Love building memories with you” on it in vinyl.”
    • “A nice collection of steaks to be grilled. A win for everyone!”
    • “I’m thinking about making them a large snickers cupcakes and putting it in a box. This is our first Father’s Day for our church.”
    • “We’ve done several good ones: a bottle of Dad’s root beer, a Payday candy bar (everyone deserves an extra payday), cheap but nice socks rolled up into balls that we threw out from the pulpit to the men standing, like baseballs, they loved it!”

Q: “I want to give a gift to some elderly women in our church, some are shut-in’s and others have had their children precede them in death. Is there a practical and heartfelt gift that I could give them that is not food related?”

  • A small flower arrangement, something to brighten their day.
  • “I guess it’s technically food, but I’ve given flavored tea bags as gifts with a nice card and they seem to go over really well. Classy, no fuss.”

Q: “I’m looking for a good King James Version (KJV) family devotional or children’s devotional, do you have any suggestions of good material that you have personally used?”

  • “Arch Books has good Bible stories, Leading Little Ones to God, 95 Animals of the Bible, Noel (story about a lion from Bill Rice), Super (story about a dog from Bill Rice), Cowboy Boots in Darkest Africa, Thrilling Western Stories vol. 1 and 2 from Bill Rice. We also have a The Picture Bible and that has Bible stories in illustrated/ cartoon form and has follow-up Bible questions. We also have done devotions that don’t have KJV verses and just read them in KJV.” (Find the Bill Rice books for kids here.)
  • “Call to Glory or Mercy and Truth are great!”
  • “If your child is old enough to read, the Glow in the Dark Jr. Devotional is excellent. My son uses it & LOVES it!”
  • “We use Call to Glory, Call to Glory Kids, & Glow in the Dark Jr. Devotionals.”
  • “Not a devotional, but we have a Child Training Bible that has specific topics you can go over, I ordered a kit bought a Bible and set it up. It took some time to put together but I enjoyed it and now it is very useful to show the kids out of the Bible why something is not okay.”

*Note this article does not contain affiliate links. The links have been provided to help you find these resources quickly and easily.

What We’re Doing for Christmas This Year

Christmas, our family chooses to celebrate it! This year it has come to my attention that many Christian families choose not to celebrate it at all for many reasons such as it not really being the season of the year that Christ was probably born or it being a time of year that many people lust selfishly for gifts. I believe Romans 14 gives us an allowance as Christians to celebrate specific days differently than other brothers and sisters in Christ without it being wrong if we are doing it in faith-Read it! (This may be something I write about in a future post.)

We will still choose to celebrate Christ’s birth to this earth and show our children the wonderful gift of God and teach them the Biblical emphasis of gifts are to be given rather than received. It is the time of year when people are often open to the gospel and we can share the gift God gave us of His only begotten Son with more ease than other seasons of the year.

As many of you know we are living with my in-laws so our celebration is a little different from our usual “just us” routine. We will be with my husband’s family for the first time at Christmas in the eleven years we have been married. We are getting introduced to their traditions and routines while still trying to incorporate ours.

Gloria: A Christmas Hymn Study. 92-pages of history, scripture and fun!For Christmas devotions we are using the Gloria: A Christmas Hymn Study by Not Consumed. I received it as a free download and thought it would be a great addition to our school days. We are still trying to catch up on our homeschooling after our move so we are still working through our school work and having these devotions in the morning have been a blessing. We have used Not Consumed’s When I Survey Hymn Study in our Resurrection Week activities and really liked how it focuses on the words of the hymns and teaches the meanings of how scripture intertwines in the depth of the hymn writer’s lyrics.

For fun I purchased our first Little People Nativity for our daughters on eBay. Word to the wise, make sure you have all the pieces in the set that you buy because I did not even notice Jesus was not included in the one I bought. Thankfully though there was a baby Jesus listed and we finally completed our set! This keeps our girls thinking of the Christmas story during their playtime and can be something we keep until our newest addition grows up and plays with it.

I also purchased a board game called Back to Bethlehem, created by a homeschool Christian dad who wanted to make learning about the birth of the Saviour memorable with his own family. We played it for the first time when I went to watch a friend’s children one evening and it was a lot of fun! We laughed at oinking out a Christmas song, the person that was able to sit on another player’s lap, and was able to learn new things about each other while answering the campfire conversation cards.

Royal Baby Shower 2

We are going to have a Royal Baby Shower with our children on Christmas morning. We decided to choose a local church planter and their new baby church that was started in November and buy gifts for their nursery. Since their church is located in an elementary school we bought a big tub to put all of our toys in so it would be easy to move and to store. This is the part where we’re really focusing on giving to the Lord, something for use for His work. Together the kids and I wrapped the gifts and the plan is to take it to the church planter’s home and make a big deal about how special it is to give to the Lord.

Brownie mix + strawberry cake mix + vanilla icing (Black for all of our sin, covered by the blood -red, and cleansed by the Saviour - white):

We decided to work on singing a special song about Christ for our extended family gathering as a gift for them. My husband’s father will play the piano for us and we will sing with our children. The rest of the day will be spent with our family enjoying the gift of each other.

I hope you have a Merry Christmas and are able to think upon the remembrance of the beautiful gift of salvation God gave to us when He sent His only begotten Son!

*The idea for the cupcakes from a pin that I found on Pinterest but the link to the original webpage is now unavailable. Click on the photo to go to the pin on Pinterest.

**This post does not contain affiliate links.

Sprinkling Spirituality Into Our Summer

Sprinkling Spirituality into our Summer

We live in the desert so playing in the grass in our yard is NOT an experience that our kids have, they do not get to run through the sprinklers like most other children do in the good ‘ole summer time. So, instead, we sprinkled God and spiritual things into our summer in some new ways for our family both last year and this year.

Last year we…

Fell  in love with Lamplighter books, and have invested in buying not only books but the audio dramas. They held a Summer Reading Challenge that ended at the end of August. The reading challenge awarded points for each book read, audio listened to, and had awesome extra challenges that were easy for each of our boys (ages 7 and 6) to take part in easily. But, that’s not the best part, adults could participate too!

We spent family time listening to the audio dramas. We drew pictures of our favorite parts of the stories and even earned extra points for listening to them with a senior. We earned enough credits to buy many of their ebooks, that are also character oriented and Bible based with special meanings that are applicable to Christian living. Some of our favorites are The Hedge of Thorns, Sir Malcolm and the Missing Prince, and Teddy’s Button, although it really is difficult for us to even choose because they all keep you on the edge of your seat at times as you listen.

We also memorized scripture with the Abeka Bible Memory Cards. These cards are the ABC’s, just with a Bible word associated with them and a verse. A is for all, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Romans 3:23” B is for Believe, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” We would just sit the kids down on the carpet in front of us and repeat them regularly. The awesome thing that is our 3-year-old daughter had many verses memorized and will still quote them from time to time on her own.

We did take part in our Vacation Bible School. I taught the 4 & 5-year-old class and my husband was the organizer of the event. It was a fun spy theme complete with crazy skits my husband loved to be in. The kids always have a fun time in class and participating in the Penny Race. This year we’re planning a Kid’s Crusade in the fall, so no summer-time VBS for us this year.

This year…

In a search for devotions to do with my kids, someone suggested Keys for Kids audio devotionals from KeysforKids.org. The stories are read by the friendly voice of Uncle Charlie, they offer great illustrations and examples of how Biblical living can be done in a child’s life. They ask questions at the end of the story and have a “key” for the day that the child is supposed to think about. For example, the key for today is: Be blind to outward appearance. The only thing we have to do is look up the Bible verse in our KJV, because they read out of the NKJV, and I always want to make sure they have not left anything out. The neat thing about Keys for Kids is that they have an app that can be found on the App store as well as on the Google Play store so we can listen to it almost anywhere. This has been a highlight to our summer days, making it easy to learn and listen together.

For the past 2 years we have bought the Imagination Station series of books for our boys. They are awesome!! We have all 13 books so far, and we are waiting for the next books to be published. If you are familiar with the Imagination Station radio program, these are books with different adventures for kids to read on a 2.3 reading level. Each book has something to do with cousins Patrick and Beth traveling to a Bible site or finding themselves learning about a Christian hero. Another neat thing about the Imagination Station series is that the kids can figure out a “Secret Word” from reading the book and then go to The Imagination Station website and type it in and listen to a special audio story. The boys have picked these books back up again this summer and are enjoying them for the 100th time!

In May The Ministry Papa was able to attend a Music College with Ron and Shelly Hamilton in Colorado and he came home with a set of Patch the Pirate CD’s. It was Volume 7 of the Story and Song Treasure Box with the following CD’s, The Colonel’s Colossal Character Quest, The Villain of Venice, The Kashmir Kid, and Shipwrecked on Pleasure Island. If you’re not familiar with Patch the Pirate then I like to describe them as musicals for kids. You have the story that happens with great dialog, creative voices and storyline, then all of a sudden you can feel a song coming on. Each song fits into the story with either a godly or funny theme. In The Villain of Venice, one of the songs is about how a man ate so much garlic he reeked so bad that no one wanted to be around him and his mother just called him on the telephone.

When we need the kids to have an early bedtime because they’ve been wild and wooly part of the day, then we will put them in bed at 7:30 to listen to some Patch.  What I love about them though is that they are doctrinally safe, written by someone with a heart for God and children, and they always have a message that is right on. The songs will stick in your head and when you have a problem sometimes you start singing them so the kids will remember how you are supposed to do to be kind to others and love the Lord.

The Ministry Papa and I have listened to The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom on audio book and I have also been listening to The Shadow of the Almighty by Elisabeth Elliot. Both books have challenged me to have a better faith in God and allow God to work through unexpected or unwanted circumstances and trust Him. It is amazing how testimonies from other believers can help you realize that your situations in life are not that bad and how you can have hope and trust no matter the circumstances.

I hope that our investment in taking the time to listen, read, and take part will make a difference in the hearts and lives of our children. Sometimes it’s a trip to the zoo, or the holding of a lizard the kids caught to teach them about God’s world and His knowledge. It is always about sprinkling spirituality in not only our summer but our life. We thoroughly enjoy how we can sharpen the axes of each person individually as we do things together. The summer break has not been a break from God, it has been an open door to view life differently outside our normal day-to-day routine. This is why I love summer!

*This article does NOT contain affiliate links. Only things we like and enjoy that we would like to share with other believers.