Surprise Your Kids with Unforgettable Faith Lessons

Jim, John, one of the things that were so powerful about leading family devotions is that God kept changing me.

And I think over the course of a year, year and a half, I really believed I was in a different spot than I would have been if I hadn't been doing family devotions. Now, I was trying to benefit the kids, right? Here's this huge benefit to me because I didn't lose my kids' respect by confessing, by admitting that we do it wrong. We don't lose their respect.

We're making those adjustments. And I was able to speak into their life all through their teenage years. That's Tim Shoemaker, and he's our guest today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. And we're going to look today at how parents can find creative ways to share your faith with your children.

I'm John Fuller. You know, John, I remember the devotions with the boys and really, Jean and I, you know, we had a different picture of what it could look like, and she wanted it pretty formal. But I'm thinking, you know, these are two boys who are wiggling all the time, and they're not going to sit and listen to music for five minutes and then a lesson and then pray together. They did sometimes. And I don't mean to belittle that because there's a place for that kind of structure.

But what I noticed really fast is that the boys wanted action. They wanted to see the Bible in action. And sometimes that could be really difficult to do family devotions where you're thinking of all of this, right? But today we're going to talk with an author who has created some great devotions in his book, The Very Best Hands-On Kind of Dangerous Family Devotions. I got that out.

You did. That was a great title, too, by the way. But just wonderful insights on how to make devotions engaging. You know, Proverbs 22 6 reminds parents to train up a child in the way he should go.

Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. And I love that. And I think that's true. Now that I have 20-something boys, men, I should say, sorry, guys, those lessons, a lot of them stuck because of the whole combination of action, insight, engagement. And I'm looking forward to helping more parents today do it that way. Yeah, yeah. And there's no magic formula.

You have to figure out what works for you. But I love what Tim has done here. Tim Shoemaker is a speaker, author, writing coach, and he and his wife, Cheryl, have been married over 40 years.

They have three adult sons, three daughters-in-law, and 12 grandchildren. Expert. Yes. And Tim's written a number of books. You mentioned the one that forms the foundation for our conversation today, Jim. The Very Best Hands-On Kind of Dangerous Family Devotions, Volume 1. And you can learn more about our guest and this terrific book when you stop by our website.

The link is in the show notes. When you say the title, you got to start rolling downhill fast, right? The Very Best Hands-On Kind of Dangerous Family Devotions. That's a good way to put it. I like that. Tim, welcome to Focus on the Family. Jim, so happy to be here. Thank you, Jim. Well, I understand you grew up in a Christian household, which is good.

It gives me perspective. I did not. John, did you? I did. I grew up in a religious home.

Let's call it that. But my boys did. My boys grew up in a Christian household, obviously, with Jean and I.

So I'm always mindful of that distinction, you know, how boring are we making this for them? But your dad had that same plight, right? He struggled to make devotions kind of energizing and interesting, like all of us do at times. Yeah.

And you know what? He was great. He's my hero. He was the one that did so much to influence the man I would become and the Christian I would become. But I'll tell you what, yeah, it was tough to make those devotions not be boring. And so we were bored oftentimes.

But I loved him for the fact that he was steady with it. Boy, he did a devotional each night after dinner. But I'll tell you what, it was something that we had to finish those devotions before we went to youth group, for example, on a Wednesday night.

Wow, that was double duty. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what, there was no way anybody asked a question when we were done with that devotion. Anybody have a question? No. We got to go.

Yes, exactly. So we wanted to go. But that was something that I wrestled with then when I became a dad and I had boys. And I remember how I was bored and tried to hide it. And the thought that my boys would be bored was killing me. Yeah, that's kind of God's sense of humor, right? You're thinking, I used to be that boy, now you're the dad with those boys. That's so funny.

Yeah. Well, I struggled with it. And I tried different variety, had probably half a bookshelf of devotional books that I started and stopped. And then I'd try a new one and work with that with the boys.

And I thought it would work, but it just didn't seem to work well with them. Then I'd stop for a while. So I was this stop and start dad with family devotions. In that regard, I mean, it does take, and I was thinking about this, temperament plays a role in this.

I think if you're a dad that likes that and recognizes the energy needed to keep a particularly young boy, but girls too, engaged in the devotional time, depending upon their age, five, seven, eight. I mean, those are times, okay, this is getting very disconnected, right? So was there a moment or was it a progressive awareness that you had that, okay, we got to make this more proactive, more physically engaging, et cetera?

I think I hit a point of desperation because I was not finding anything that was really working. And as the kids are getting older, it gets progressively harder. One time I did this little coin trick thing that I knew, but I tied in a little spiritual application to it and the kids were engaged. They thought that was pretty good.

That nugget of truth that you give at the end kind of got melded in with the coin trick you did. So they were engaged in that. And the next week I tried another one and they were engaged again. I began to think, oh my goodness, it's this doing something with them rather than just talking to them that was making a difference. And in time, one of the boys said to me at one point, hey dad, when are we going to have family devotions? And it was that question I'd never asked my dad. And I realized, okay, we're onto something, this active object lesson oriented or do you do an activity?

Sometimes we'd take a little outing. And then eventually I started writing them down. I didn't want my boys to struggle someday like I had. Oh, that's good. So you kind of did that for your own children in the future when you have children. Yes, exactly. That's so cool. Now, one of the things you did is something to do with electrocuting a pickle.

Okay, so what's the spiritual lesson? You know what? Here's what happens. You take just a regular light duty extension cord that you might have for a lamp. You cut off the socket at the end, right? So you've got the wires exposed. Then you just wrap a nail on each end and put a little electrical tape. So now... You're showing us this for the radio lesson. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Check out the YouTube to see this radio thing that Tim has here.

Real time here. And so now you take a nice big dill pickle and you can put, without this being plugged in, you put one nail in one side, one nail in the other side. And when you plug it in, first you'll hear some sizzling and then all of a sudden it lights up. The pickle. The pickle lights up. It looks like there's a battle going on inside there, like fireworks. So of course, the guys love that.

And if you dim the lights, you know, the kids love it all the more. It's like... And again, the spiritual application here is... The spiritual application, yes. I'm thinking through what story in the Bible connects to this pickle. So what we did is say, hey, kids, this pickle is like us as a Christian. And we've got two major influences. Just like we've got a positive and a negative lead here, we've got a positive.

Called the Holy Spirit, if we're a Christian, right? We've got a negative. And that's our old nature. And inside, there's gonna be wars all the time of things that we know we shouldn't be doing, but we're doing them. There'll be a battle.

Or things that we want to do, we know we shouldn't. There's a battle. And how do we beat this battle?

Well, you could take out one lead or the other and the battle's over. And it's the same thing with the Christian life. We're supposed to use the power of the Holy Spirit and a little self-control to push back that old nature. And that battle will come back. We keep fighting it until we win that one. And then there'll be something else. Now, too many times what we do is we push back the Holy Spirit. The battle is over. We don't feel convicted about it, but we've been quenching the Spirit.

That's not what we want to do. So yeah, we share some Scripture and can do a little activity like that to remind them of this battle that goes on inside. You know, it's interesting. The Lord tends to teach us in that way. Of course, with the Scripture, we have record of Him teaching the disciples in that way. Give me a mustard seed.

Give me a coin. I mean, He used object lessons with items all the time. That's right. Jim, I think every time He did a healing, it was really a visual. It was an object lesson. It was a miracle.

Yes. But, you know, here's somebody that's lame. And now they're not. What did we just learn here? He was able to teach people so powerfully that way. And I think one of the greatest illustrations of that is the one lesson that Jesus had to make sure that His followers got. This was the one.

If there was ever a time to huddle them up and say, let's talk, this was going to be the time. And He chose an object lesson, and that was the cross. And He demonstrated, you know, this is love. This is forgiveness. And He demonstrated that forgiveness and that salvation for us through a visual, through an object lesson. And of course, people never forgot it.

And probably half your listeners have got a cross around their neck or they've got one in the cabinet someplace that they wear. Yeah. You know, when you think about it, and I try to stay up on some of the neuroscience, not all of it, but they now, you know, researchers will say, when that kind of lesson is taught, our minds retain it far better. I mean, there's a mechanism in our minds when we're seeing something and having that explained to us, but we're seeing the object, et cetera, the way our brains are wired by God, it just fires a memory. I can remember things from my childhood that are freshest, the color of it, the moment, what was happening because of the intensity of the memory.

And that's what you're doing in many ways. You're creating a more intense, not negative, but a more intense experience for that child to remember the lesson. Yep.

You do some sort of activity, some sort of object lesson, some sort of visual, and on the tail end of that, you're sharing scripture and a nugget of truth, and they just etch together in their mind and they can remember these things for years. Your six-year-old niece, was it? Oh, yeah. She was six or eight, something like that. We went to a used car lot because I wanted to talk to the older kids that we had with us about dating and the kind of person that they want to fall in love with or go out with at some point.

And it was reminding them about that. And so she was just a tag along. And we did this little thing where we went to the used cars and have them pick a car that they wanted. What's their dream car or truck? Price is no object.

We're not buying anything. And so each one picked what they want and they told us why. And the guys were often like, well, I think this car looks so fast. Or what would the guys say if they saw me pull up with this? It was all about the looks. And girls in the group, they were more like, well, I like the color.

This looks so cute. Or whatever it was about the car. It was like, these are used cars. If you want a car to go to the distance, what really matters is what's under the hood, the engine.

And you need a mechanic for that. It's the same thing when you're looking at the opposite sex. We can get so wrapped up with the outer things, but we really need to be looking at the heart. And who knows the heart?

Only God. So we need to stay close to God and have him- That's good. Yeah, the mechanic of the heart. The creator of the heart. Exactly.

And ask him to help us fall in love with that heart. Well, years later, years later, we're talking, I don't know, 15, 20 years, some conversation came up. And here my niece, that was this little one tagging along, remembered that lesson perfectly in the lesson behind it. And it just was, it just underscored how well we remember, just like what you were saying, Jim.

Yeah, it makes that point. Well, our guest today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly is Tim Shoemaker. And we're touching on some of the points and the principles in his excellent book, The Very Best Hands on Kinda Dangerous Family Devotions.

And this is 52 activities your kids will never forget. And we want to get a copy of this book into your hands, and you can find it when you click the link in the show notes. I think we need one of those disclaimers.

Focus on the Family does not endorse this. Yeah, we love it. We do endorse it. We think it's great. I just am still thinking about burnt pickles and what that smells like.

Oh, they smell terrible. But the kids love it. This is the point, yeah. Exactly.

So I am prone to be more serious and teacher. I know this surprises you, Jim, but... Yes, firstborn, lastborn. Our devotions, I tried to do what you were expressing where you sit down and, okay, you're four, so you should be able to listen to this 20-minute exposition of Scripture.

So help me understand just a little bit more, because it sounds like you're kinda light on the Bible teaching here. So what's the point here? Oh, he's bringing a challenge.

Here we go. You know what? Sometimes the little nuggets of truth are the deepest things. Think about how Jesus taught so often. He just hit with this zinger all of a sudden. He hit with this nugget of truth that you could chew on for a long time. There was real depth there, but it was something that was so succinct, that was so easy to remember. And so with this, there are times you'll go deep. The discussion will go deep.

You're gonna hit deep truth, but you're going to get into it in a very easy way. And so these type of devotions, I'm suggesting these are once a week. John, we probably have parents out there that are doing something every night, and I'll say, do that, wonderful, keep it going. But once a week, swap it out, because I know kids are pretty good at pretending they're listening, and they're not always listening. They can check out, but they can't check out when you do this. So once a week, you do something like this, and you would be surprised as these nuggets of truth get in their hearts and their mind, they can make a difference.

Where in the world would I find 52 great ideas? No, it's true. I love it.

That's what makes this so easy. You spoke in the book about, I love this, I don't know what your devotional budget is, but you took the kids to his stock car race. Gene, did you hear that?

What a budget for devotions. But how great, you took them to a stock car race. I guess, what was the object lesson and how did it go over? Well, I wanted to talk to him about manhood, because again, these work all the way through when your kids are going through high school, I wanted to talk about kind of a manhood issue.

What kind of a man do they want to be? And so we went to the stock car race, there was no teaching, we just went there and did what you do. You watch them go around the oval, each race you're picking who you want to win and you're hoping for a little action on the turns and things like that. And it was over. On the drive home, I just asked the boys, I said, hey guys, tell me what you saw. What did you observe tonight? And I was going to use that as a springboard to get into what I wanted to talk about, but they just opened the door.

They gave me this lob pitch. One of the boys said, we saw a bunch of men driving around in a circle trying to get ahead of each other. And another one said, and they ended up right where they started.

Pretty much the same spot. Yes, right. And I'm kind of gripping the wheel, just sort of shaking, you know, is it night? And I'm thinking, oh my goodness, this was perfect. He didn't have to say a word.

You know, it was so good. And to say, guys, this is the way it is with most men their entire life. They're going in circles. They're not really going anywhere with the world's way.

And they end up pretty much where they started with nothing. And if you want to go the world's way, you better like the oval track because that's what you're going to have. But if you go God's way, He'll take you on a journey.

It's not going to be in a bunch of circles. And you are going to, you're going to bump some people, but not to get ahead, just to impact them for the Lord. And I'm telling you what, your dad chose the journey and I've loved it. And I hope you choose the same. Yeah, that's so good.

Okay. One of the things, Tim, is it's so crucial for parents to pass down their faith. I mean, we all think about it as Christians, as faithful Christians.

How are we going to do this in a way that sticks and makes a difference? Deuteronomy gives us the classic verse about the importance of teaching your children God's word. But you found Psalm 78 to be really helpful. What did you catch in Psalm 78?

You know, there was four things. In the Deuteronomy examples, it gives a clear command where to teach our kids, where to teach that next generation. And grandparents are on the hook for that too, Deuteronomy 4.9 points out. But it doesn't give us the why, and maybe the why should be obvious, but as a guy, I always react better when I understand the why behind it, but one time as I'm reading Psalm 78, I'm seeing the why's behind it.

And it gives four quick payoffs there. If I jump in maybe the middle of verse four here, it says, we'll tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, His power and the wonders He has done. He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which He commanded our forefathers to teach their children. There's the reference to Deuteronomy. So the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children, and they would put their trust in God. They would not forget his deeds, but would keep his commands. They would not be like their forefathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, whose hearts were not loyal to God, whose spirits were not faithful.

So these four things. So the next generation would know in the course of one generation. And we've all seen it. We've seen extended family where in one generation they didn't teach their kids, and the truth was lost.

And we don't want that. And so they would put their trust in God. Yes, for salvation, but also trusting that His way is right. We live in a world that is saying what we as Christians think is wrong, the world says, no, that's right, embrace it.

It's so accurate. And that's Psalm 78, what a great reference for us as parents to do that and be faithful about it. God has to own the outcome. But what He wants us to do is make sure we're exposing our kids to the Word of God, living the Word, even with our mistakes. I mean, I think that's one of the great lessons your kids can see is when you need to apologize for not behaving biblically. And that's okay. That gets into the whole brokenness of who we are.

We're all sinners saved by grace. It's so important for your kids to see that. When we mess up, we fess up. And that's something that is so important. One of the things I found with leading family devotions that was a surprise to me was that the Holy Spirit kept tapping you on the forehead and reminding you you need to shape those things up yourself. And so then sometimes when I say, oh, guys, did you hear how I talked to mom?

That's exactly what we were talking about. I need to say I'm sorry to you. I need to say I'm sorry to mom. And I need to talk with the Lord about that, don't I? And you know what, Jim, John, one of the things that were so powerful about leading family devotions is that God kept changing me.

And I think over the course of a year, year and a half, I really believed I was in a different spot than I would have been if I hadn't been doing family devotions. Now, I was trying to benefit the kids, right? Here's this huge benefit to me because I didn't lose my kids' respect by confessing, by admitting that we do it wrong. We don't lose their respect.

We're making those adjustments. And I was able to speak into their life all through their teenage years. It's really hard to rebel against somebody you respect, right? Yeah, totally. Tim, let me ask this question because it pops up here. You know, the responsibility of devotions, family devotions. I mean, mom and dad were looking at each other like, okay, who's going to take the lead on this? Dad. You know, it's like dad's responsibility. It's one of the things you have to do when you get home from work.

But I don't know. Speak through that whole negotiation with the parents. How do we want to manage this? We're new parents. You know, the kids are five. We've got to start maybe thinking about this or doing it already.

Just walk through what that might look like. And like I mentioned a while ago, does temperament play into that? If mom's got the kind of outside the box thinking, is it good for her to take the lead and dad support? But what do you think in terms of the structure, the discussion within the parents?

How do you want to manage this? How much thought should we give that? Well, I think we want to, the main priority is we want to make sure that we're teaching our kids. Right. And so if that means mom does it or dad does it or mom and dad together, one way or the other, we have to do it.

And often with mom and dad, they can divide up the responsibilities based on where their comfort zone is. So it might be that mom has got the book and she says, hey, you know what, honey, this week, I think we ought to do this one here. It's going to involve this, this and this. Would you be able to pick these things up?

Yeah, I'll pick these up. And could you run this activity? Yeah, I got that. And so maybe dad runs the activity, maybe mom ties in the nugget of truth. What do the kids see? Mom and dad working together for spiritual truth.

It still works. There is a certain power to dad engagement. I mean, mom is there and mom's consistent. We all know a mother's love, right? Dad tends to be the wild card, you know, and when dads are engaged, I think the evidence, the social science would say that when dad's engaged in the family, really good outcomes occur.

And when he's not, bad outcomes can often occur. So that's important. And for moms to work with dads to get that done, even if mom needs to organize that a little bit for dad, because he's not thinking that through, that wouldn't be any of us, right?

No. I always appreciated that when Jean would say to me, hey, I think this would be a great devotion tonight. On that note, we often rely, even as Christians, we rely on our church to deliver these youth groups and kind of the main teaching for our children. That's not the best way to think of this, right? We should be that provision of God's truth in their life and God's word. And then the church with all their programs is the auxiliary component.

Yes. They augment what we're already doing. You think about it, in the middle of the night, especially as we have teenagers, when they're wrestling with something, when they need to talk to somebody in the middle of the night, the youth group isn't there.

It's mom and dad. And we've been having these open conversations. It's much easier for us to be there. But yeah, we want to be the main one influencing and teaching our kids. And like I mentioned earlier, my dad was my hero. And that made a big difference. I wanted to be a dad like him. I wanted to be a man like him. And we see these things as he even taught the word, even when sometimes that was boring. I saw his dedication to it, that he lived it out. So it wasn't for naught.

Right. For those that have done it kind of that structured way. Well, Tim, this has been so good and many good reminders on how we should approach family devotions and 52 ways to do that. I mean, this is a great resource. And then I'm sure you can think of your own, but the very best hands on kind of dangerous family devotions, rolling downhill once again.

But I do love this book. And I think as a dad, as a dad who wants to make devotions fun, sometimes to my wife's chagrin, I think you should do it. And I'm teasing with that.

Gene was always in with the fun stuff. And I think it's good when you can do that together. But think about making it memorable, not boring.

If you're aiming for boring, I think you're aiming for the wrong thing. And think of too, Jim, think of grandparents. Often, you know, we've got the kids with us and we're like, what are we going to do? Wow, to be able to teach a nugget of truth. Deuteronomy 4 and 9 puts that on us as grandparents. We've got to teach that generation. And one last punch, Tim, when it comes to structured versus a little less structured and what kids remember.

You did this for years with your boys. Where are they today and what's the outcome? By God's grace, we've got our oldest one. He's a recording engineer and he's active in his church and leading his family with the Lord. So that's great. Our middle son, he's a pastor.

So that worked out really good. And we've got a, our youngest son is a paramedic. And so... Poor wayward guy. Yeah, right. Paramedic who's not serving the Lord. He's like serving him every day, saving lives. Right.

Yeah. He saves lives. One saves souls and such, but yeah, it's this thing where all three are leading their families in the faith.

And that is just a gift from God. Well, this has been great. I think you feel the enthusiasm that we have for this and the importance of it. So if you're a grandparent and you have your grandkids, this would be a great book to subtly purchase for your adult children. And that purchase, you can just make a gift of any amount to focus on the family and we'll send it to you as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry. If you can do that monthly, that really helps focus with our budget.

A one-time gift is good as well. Donate today as you can when you call 800, the letter A in the word family, 800-232-6459. Or look for the links to donate and get a copy of this book, the very best hands-on, kind of dangerous family devotions. The links are in the show notes. Tim, I'm sitting there looking at all the things you've got laid out.

The radio folks can't see it, but the YouTubers can see it. And what I'd like to do, and we haven't talked about this, but let's go a little extra for the website and people can come and take a look at it. But we'll go through the mouse trap and the goggles and some of the other wonderful, funny looking things you brought today.

And parents can take a look at the application of those. So we'll spend five minutes there at the website. Can we do it? Yeah. All right. Let's do it. Come visit us at the website to see a little bit more how you can put these things into play.

Yeah. Plan to follow up and see more from Tim and then also plan to join us next time. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for watching and listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller, and we'll see you next time as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Your marriage can be redeemed, even if the fights seem constant, even if there's been an affair, even if you haven't felt close in years. No matter how deep the wounds are, you can take a step toward healing them with a hope restored marriage intensive. Our biblically based counseling will help you find the root of your problems and face challenges together. We'll talk with you, pray with you, and help you find out which program will work best. Call us at 1-866-875-2915.