My wife and kids came to dread our family devotional time, until I hit on a new strategy that really transformed the experience for all of us. I quit!

 

Many men, me included, have found leading devotions to be a hugely daunting task, on par with bull fighting or, more terrifying yet, hanging wallpaper with our spouses. Why can’t Max Lucado make house calls?

 

If you start early in the lives of your kids, devotions aren’t actually all that hard. All you need is a Bible storybook with great pictures and you are basically set. You read the story, say prayers and tuck them in. And they love it. They absolutely adore this time with you, and they hang on your every word.

 

The only downside is that your kids will probably seize upon just one story that they find particularly fascinating, and they will want you to read it over and over and over, day in and day out, until you can barely stand the thought of reading it one more time and you secretly begin rooting for the Philistines.

 

But enjoy the luxury of a picture Bible while you can, because before you know it they will have outgrown it, and then you have to move to an entirely new level of depth and difficulty.

 

One day, armed with only my Bible and no artwork, I decided to do a devotion for my two boys, Mark and Brad, based on the story of David and Goliath. I wanted to reinforce to them that if we trust in God, it is possible to overcome obstacles that are far bigger than ourselves.

 

I had scarcely begun to outline the drama of the fateful battle when Brad posed a question.

 

"Since Goliath was a giant, if he sneezed would his booger be the size of a golf ball?"

 

My other son, who is two years older and far more theologically astute, argued that it would be more the size of a pizza. They had a furious debate over what size of pizza it would be: small, medium or large. Talking about pizza reminded them that they were hungry, so then they wanted to go out to eat.

 

We never finished the story of David and Goliath. Their Sunday school teacher said he would do it for me for 20 bucks.

 

But I slogged away at devotionals until I got to the point where it seemed like we were all dreading it. And then I hit on a new strategy that really transformed the experience for all of us. I quit.

 

Seriously. I just quit. This may sound heretical. It may sound like I caved in. But I don't think so. My view is that what we call "devotions" makes sense when your kids are younger and when you can hold their interest. A devotional time makes less sense if your kids interpret it as you treating them like they are still little.

 

If a family devotional time is still working for you, by all means continue. I don't mean to denigrate the value of this teaching time. But once it stopped working for our family, instead of "doing a devotional" I started taking my kids out to a burger place to just talk about God's Word, life, school, the future and other things.

 

They loved it. And I was no longer stressing about plowing through a lesson as my kids drifted into a coma. It was a win-win. And it seems to fit with the pattern outlined in Deuteronomy. "Teach [God's words] to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up" (Deut. 11:19, NIV).

 

Take the night off, Max. I've got things covered here.

 

By Dave Meurer, New Man's award-wining humorist and the author of Mistake It Like a Man (Multnomah). Visit him online at davemeurer.net.