The Place of the Word in the Home — Paul Lloyd

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The Word Becoming Flesh in the Home

God wants to become flesh and dwell among us, and the Word wants to become flesh and dwell in our children, as He does in us. I just want to share that, as Emanuel shared with his session, you know, these things that I'll share about how I do things are not the way to do it.

There is no the way, because we're all different. We all have different gifts and different situations, family situations, and so forth. But I just hope that by me sharing some of the ways that God has led us, that it may inspire you to seek Him for you.

And so this is not the pattern that I'm going to give you of how I think you should do it. How many of you would like your children to have a quiet time when they're 12 years old? Amen. Isn't that a good goal?

Cultivating Daily Quiet Times

How many of us have quiet times now? You know, it comes back to what we've been talking about all along here, what we want them to be. We need to be either doing that or headed that way. And my children all have quiet times from the ages of, well, in some way or another, from the ages of probably five on up.

They just grew up thinking that's what you do when you get up. Somehow it would feel funny, I think, to them to rise up and not have a quiet time, unless we're traveling or something like that. But in the normal course of life, it's my wife has been such a good help in this over the years.

When she was 12, she made a commitment to the Lord that she would begin every day with quiet time. I think you all know what I mean by quiet time, right? The time where we read the word, we pray, we seek the Lord.

When she was 12 years old, she made a commitment to the Lord that she said, I am going to do this by God's grace every day of my life. And she's kept that by God's grace in different ways. When she was a mother of three or four young children, she had to adjust things a little bit differently.

You know, you can't just do it like you did it when you were single or when you were 12. But when there's that commitment that's there, that this is what God wants me to do, God will make a way for you to work it all out.

I've heard of some mothers who would leave Bibles in certain places, like by the baby changing table, by the bathroom, by the laundry room, wherever they would spend some time because they didn't feel like they had time to do something more separate from their activity.

So they would do it that way. They'd be changing the baby and they'd look over at the Bible, what they were doing. And they'd look at the Bible and they'd look at the Bible and they were reading. But the thing is, they had a heart that wanted to do that.

And so they made a way. God made a way for them. And so you mothers, you know, if you have young children, you don't want to be condemned if you don't do it the way whatever, whoever tells you, you should.

But when you have a heart that says, Lord, I want to seek you and I want to read your word, God will make a way for you and he can make those moments of snatches of time count in that way, too. So we started, we started our children at an early age.

Family Bible Reading and Household Routines

Today, Laura takes the five to eight year olds and reads to them from six thirty to seven. She will read to them. Basically, we're all the whole family's reading through the Bible this year. We have a Bible reading plan.

And so we're all trying to do that. And that's been a real blessing. So far, we're still on schedule. It's well, maybe a little behind, but it's wonderful to be able to do things like that as a family.

And we set that as a goal. And so we're still on schedule and at the halfway mark, we had some kind of ice cream treat when we all made it. And just to celebrate, you know, and to rejoice in the Lord.

And so you can do things like that as a family and make it fun, make it interesting and a blessing. And that goes a long way towards making it something that children want to do. So she will do that from six thirty to seven.

Our older ones, they're supposed to get up with their alarm at six and from six to seven. That's their time to get dressed and to have a quiet time. The older ones do very well at it. Some of the younger ones need a little help.

Sometimes the alarm rings a long time. Papa has to go up and wake somebody up. And sometimes Papa doesn't get up there and they sleep through. But that's our goal. And we're not perfect, but we're headed there.

And I can say that the children enjoy it. You know, it's not like, oh, my quiet time today. But they like it. They enjoy it for the most part. And it's not a drudgery to them. And that's what we want.

We want the heart that serves God because it's a blessing to serve God. Do it from a willing heart. Then at seven o 'clock, the older ones come down and they do chores and make the breakfast from seven to seven thirty.

And now, years ago, not too long ago, I had to teach them how to make breakfast because my wife, she ministers to those other ones during that time. She ministers to the little ones that aren't up yet.

She takes care of them at that time from seven to seven thirty. So I stepped in and I taught them how to make breakfast, how to make the eggs and how to do whatever we eat. So I made some disciples there and they do that now without my help.

And I am free to do other things. A lot of times I'll do some work, preliminary work before I go out on the job or whatever. This summer I've been, in the summertime, it's harder for me to get up. So sometimes I've been taking my prayer walks at seven o 'clock to seven thirty.

But so that's just a little bit of our schedule. Seven thirty to eight, we eat. And we have found it to be the blessing when there is that consistency. Like you were saying, Emmanuel, we just do the same thing every five days a week, Monday through Friday.

Sundays, we don't have family devotions in the morning. We go to church, you know, we have our personal devotions. Saturdays, it's a little different, too, because we come here for prayer at five to seven.

And my children love to come with me. Sometimes I'm amazed, you know, why do they like this? But they just want to come. So praise God for that. So Saturdays sometimes is different, too, you know, we may have our devotions at home at nine or we may not have them if I have to go minister somewhere or whatever.

Family Devotions as Preparing the Way of the Lord

Then in the evenings, we like to have a family time where we read a biography. We would read Pilgrim's Progress, maybe. Or we read John Bunyan recently, a biography. Missionary biographies, I don't know how many of those we've read.

Just a nice time to read together. And we don't just read, but we talk about it. And so in a way, it's really family devotions in the evening. And I believe in having family devotions. I've heard people say that they're too busy to have family devotions.

And I would say, if someone says they're too busy for family devotions, they're too busy. You don't have to do it my way. But how can we think that we're preparing the way of the Lord if we're not spending a time, a rallying of the family together at least once a day and seeking God together, praying together.

I mean, what kind of a heathen just get up and go to work? I appreciate a brother I know, a friend of mine, that he went to his boss and he asked him if he could come in a half hour later than the other men at work.

Instead of 7 .30, if he could come in at 8. And he worked out kind of a deal somehow that it was good work for the company and work for him. His boss was a Christian. But the thing was, his heart was, I want to do this.

I'm asking God to make a way for me. And God made a way for him. And he stepped out and asked for an unusual request, let's say. But God honored that. So I believe in making this a priority. And that's what I've done in my life.

I'm self-employed. So over the years, I've been able to have more freedom that way. That's one of the reasons I think I chose to be self-employed. And that's one of the reasons I've sought the job that I have.

I find that the evenings are too interrupted, personally, to have family devotions. Because there's so many activities, you know, there's so many things that come up. It's just, it doesn't happen as consistently.

I believe that the morning is, even in the Bible, you know, it's early will I seek thee, Lord. And so, you know, you need to find out what works for you. And God will make a way if you have a desire. We started right away, we were so excited to have family devotions.

Beginning Family Worship With Infants

We started when Hannah was like an infant. She couldn't even walk. We just put a little blanket right in front of us on the floor and we'd lay her down. And Laura and I would have our little devotions together.

And so Hannah never knew anything but having family devotions, even though she didn't know what was going on. And we could hardly wait till she could sit in a chair, you know, and we could maybe sing a song.

So when they're young, you do have to start out simple and start out with the basics. There was times and there still is occasionally times where you may spend the whole time just getting somebody to sit still.

And that's family devotions. That's it. You know, that's not real glamorous, but yet it's important. Eventually it pays off. They learn how to sit. And when they're really young, sometimes there's a lot of sessions like that.

And you can feel like giving up, right? But it's worth it. Usually I take like the two year old and sit them on my lap. And hold them so that they're not... We were just reminded of this recently because I wasn't doing that.

And I was constantly having to take this little rod, you know, do this half the time with the devotions. And my children said, you know, Papa, you used to put a little one on your lap. Do you remember that?

Oh, yeah. So I started doing that and I don't have to use that rod anymore. And she's happy there. She's content. She's not squirming. This is okay. This is my spot. It's a little less convenient for me, but that's okay.

I really appreciate my wife's help in this. And I think without my wife, I mean, forget it. She makes it happen. We have the same vision. And she's committed to making it happen. And if I didn't have her to do that, it would just be disaster.

So I really praise her. And she's not here right now, but I praise her when she's here too. So I'm thankful for that. Thankful for a godly woman. And I think that's a key there to have that when you have that common vision, this is something we want.

You know, it's not just one person's idea or the others, but it's something that we before God, we have committed ourselves to. When they were younger, we would read Bible story books. We had a set of volumes about like this and they're nicely illustrated.

Good stories that really kept to the scriptures pretty well. So we use that more. I know some of you may not like that. You may just want to read the Bible, but that worked very well for us. And again, you have to sort of tailor it to what you have, what you have to work with.

Now, we mostly use the Bible almost always. And we try to make it fun and interesting. You know, I've heard a lot of people say when I grew up, we always had family altar. But, you know, it was, I hated it.

I've heard people say that because it was a total duty. Their father would just open the thing, dryly read a scripture or whatever. They'd all have to say a prayer. And the people actually, I've heard people who were turned against family devotions.

They didn't even have it in their own home. I knew of one brother because it was so, to him, it was such a boring and so dead. And so we should we should flee that like the plague. It should be fun. It should be interesting.

It should be a blessing. And we like to sing a lot. So we sing two or three songs. One of the things that we really like to do and have done in the past, and I guess I'd like to put a plug in today for my favorite devotion book.

Proverbs as a Manual for Training Children

And that's the book of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs is the manual. For youth and children. I used to wonder why God didn't write more about how to train children. Well, he did. I just didn't realize it was right there in the book of Proverbs.

Everything, every situation you could imagine in life, it comes up. Talk about diligence. Hey, there's all kinds of scriptures in there for that. If you just go through the book of Proverbs, you're going to hit all the big things that children need to know.

And it's so good to just go through it systematically. You're not pointing out necessarily one thing to this person, but you just go through what Proverbs says. And it is complete. And so we've been through it.

I think we've been through it probably eight, nine times. Easy. The whole book of Proverbs. And sometimes we'll read it. Actually, we've been through it more than that. We've been through it eight or nine times, one or two, three verses at a time.

There's other times where we would read it every month, a whole chapter a day. There's 30 chapters. And we just read a whole chapter and we'd say, OK, what spoke to you today? What spoke to you today?

And we always try to get them involved so that they're going to listen. Then they're going to say, OK, I need to be listening. Well, what's this going to be? It's not just Papa teaching me. So that's been a real blessing.

And I've never found it to be inappropriate to talk about those things with my children. All of them there. It just kind of flows. Now, you know, you don't get into all the details of it. No, but in a general sense, like the book deals with it, they're being prepared for that.

I tell my young boys when they're eight, you know, and ten, you know, watch out for the strange woman. Don't let your heart go after women. It's going to bring many strong men have gone down, been brought down and on and on it goes.

So it's a very natural way to teach purity and to teach diligence. Like we said, it talks about the heart. My son, give me thine heart. We've used it to talk about the heart over and over. And to show our children, we want your heart.

Give me your heart, son, daughter, give me your heart. And I like to use the board a lot. We over the years, one time when they were younger, every day I would draw a picture of the proverb. That was pretty tedious for me because I'm not a great artist.

And to try to figure out how to illustrate every verse there. I don't know if I did every one, but they never forgot that. They're always begging me to do some more of that. I call them board lessons.

They're begging me to do that. And I don't do it as much as I used to. My daughter is a really good artist and she'll draw stuff on the board. And I just like to keep it up there and look at it. But this week we did one.

Teaching Obedience Through Visual Illustrations

Again, we were talking about obedience. And so we just drew a circle. And this circle was the circle of blessing. Okay. Everything in that circle is blessed. And we share how, you know, God says, if you honor your father and mother, you will be blessed.

And then we outside the circle, we put all the things that are cursed, all the things that are outside of the circle. So we drew them up there. Death, traps, destruction, sin, curses. And I'm not sure how many times we've taken some of the little ones in during the week, but we bring them over and we shared with them.

You know, when you obey Papa and Mama, you're inside this circle. When you disobey, you're out here in this cursed area. And when you disobey, we want to rescue you. We want to save you from that place of destruction and cursing.

That's why we correct you. So it's an illustration. It brings it home. Children like to see pictures. So, you know, we'll just draw a little picture. Okay. They went outside. And clearing your conscience brings them back into the circle of God's blessing.

So we take them this week even, you know, okay, son, where are you right now? Are you inside there? No. You know, you disobeyed, didn't you? Yes. Do you want to get back in the circle? Okay, let's go do that.

So this is real practical. It doesn't mean you don't have to be a great artist either. Some of the ones I used to be a better artist when I was doing it every day. But I asked my wife, what ones do you remember?

Last night I asked her. They actually took pictures of them and they have a book that have some of the pictures in it. But she said that the one she remembered was the verse that says, the virtuous woman is a crown to her husband.

But she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones. So we drew this a lot of times. Proverbs is a dual thing. This side and that side. So most of the time there's like a line down the middle. And then on this side, we show the one thing, this side, the other.

So we had this picture of the virtuous woman, this modestly dressed lady, you know, taking care of her husband and putting a crown on his head, you know, on this side. And then over here, we had this kind of immodest lady with this red dress on and so forth.

And the husband was lying on his bed, you know, with his arms out like this. He was like rottenness in his bones. He was dying. My wife said she remembers that one the best. But her name means crown, by the way.

She's Laura. That means crown. We did one. OK, it says that the wise woman builds her house and the foolish one plucks it down. All right. So then we had we had a house here with a lady on top with a covering on hammering down some shingles.

She was building her house. Then we had this foolish lady over here with a sledgehammer like this and slamming in bricks flying everywhere. And, you know, they remembered that as a picture, you know. And then you talk about what does that mean?

You know, is that is that what God's saying that the woman is smashing her house with a sledgehammer? No, no, no. But it's like that. She's tearing down her own home by her lips and by her foolish decisions of going after the flesh and so forth.

So it's powerful. Proverbs is I just believe it's the best personally for our family devotions. We go through it a lot. We've done different things. And then we had this, it says a strange woman, her house, her steps lead down to hell.

So we had a house with the doorway out here. And then in the background, there were steps going down and the flames of hell were coming out of here. And there it is, you know, sons, don't go near those kind of women.

The ones that flatter you, the ones that tell you how strong and how handsome you are and all this garbage. Her steps are going to go right down to hell. We've forgotten that. The slothful way, the slothful man is like a hedge of thorns.

Well, you know, we had a path over here that was just all covered over with thorns and messed up. And then the way of the righteous is made plain. It was nice and neat. Everything was orderly and cut and so forth.

So I think it's a blessing if you can get a whiteboard, especially with younger children. But the older ones love it as much. And do some simple illustrating. Like I said, we went through the whole book of Proverbs.

And we just I tried. Sometimes I had to rack my brain. How am I going to draw a picture of this one? But oh, and at that time they would draw it as well. I think that's part of why they liked it so well.

They'd get out their little books and they'd all try to copy what I drew. And that was really, really good for us. And they'll still tell me some of those things come back to them. They'll still tell me exactly how that picture looked.

And, you know, we read the same verses today. So Proverbs is a great way to do it. Let's see here. The title of this was Spending Time in the Word. So, I mean, I could talk about prayer, time together.

Scripture, Audio Bible, and Memorization

And we like to pray for our missionaries certain days. And that sort of thing. But we just try to get the Bible into them every way we can. At nighttime, turn the Bible tape on. And we've done it more or less, you know, different times.

Sometimes we just forget about it for a while. I went up last night. I think they heard me talk in the message last night. So I went up last night and I had three different Bible tapes going in the halls.

You know, I could hear them all going at once. And I was like, oh, my God, they're all going at once. That blessed me. But, you know, they're getting the Word of God implanted in their hearts. One thing we did do for the younger ones is let them listen to the Bible on tape while they read it for their quiet time.

Because even though someone can read when they're eight, they can't concentrate very well. And they lose their place and then they go back and all that. Whereas if you have a Bible tape playing and you say, OK, you know, this is where you're going to read today.

Here's the tape. You put it in. That really helps them to just keep going. They don't go back. They just, they can't. And so we found that really helpful. We memorize scripture. And family verses and songs are a really good way to motivate for that.

Like some of you may not have seen that. But like at church here, we try to every Sunday have somebody share a family verses and songs. The family gets up and they sing a song or two and the children quote some verses or everybody quote verses.

So over the years, that has really helped us to memorize certain scriptures. Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. Especially one of the some of the first ones we worked on were the scriptures about the Bible.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God. And it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be perfect. And so, you know, memorizing those, what is the Bible forever, O Lord, that were to settle in heaven.

We memorized all those. We did that in the family verses and song one time. And I think I think we should be thinking about that as parents. What verses do I want my children to have? Really good. What are key verses and work on those for memorizing?

So we did that with the Bible. Joshua 1 8. This book of the law shall not depart out of that mouth, but thou shalt meditate there in day and night. Thou mayst observe to do according to all that is written therein.

Verses like that. Verses like Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly and so forth. I think children should have those verses memorized so that they know the word of God is the book and it's settled.

And it's forever. And not one jot or tittle shall pass away until all be fulfilled. So to me, that was the first foundation was, OK, we're going to memorize these and then, you know, you're going to get it that this is the book for your life.

Q&A: Sustaining a Shared Vision for Family Devotions

All right. That's really pretty much all I wanted to share. But maybe you have some questions for me. Maybe you have some comments about how you have done family devotions that could be helpful to us.

I'm sure you all have some some good experiences and things. Yes.

You mentioned your wife having the same vision in family divisions. I was hoping you would clarify that a little bit. I'm not sure if that's just like having the children there in time or... Exactly.

She sees her role as making it happen. We have agreed together, OK, we're going to have family devotions at such a time. So she sees it. OK, my job is to do everything I can to make this happen. You know, get everybody ready, get the things cleaned up, whatever needs to happen.

So, yeah. Does that answer that? Yeah. I mean, I think as husbands, we're the visionaries. We come to agreement with our wives. We should. This is the way God wants us to walk. And then our wives are the ones that have a big part in actually making it happen.

And that's a blessing. So what are some of the number one reasons that you have seen in your own life, times where family devotions didn't happen or didn't happen as good as they should have? What were the hindrances in your personal life and also in others you've observed?

And why it didn't happen. It always has happened. Not every day. You know what I mean. But we've never had a time where we went, you know, I don't know if we've ever had a time we went three days without it, I'd say.

Might have been a Saturday and a Sunday, sometime. It's just something we agreed to do. Now, we did have a lot of times where it wasn't so good. I have to be honest. It's not always good. It's not always great and it's not always good.

Sometimes you just did it. And we don't like that. We don't want that. But that's just the reality. And I think that's okay. As long as it doesn't consistently be like that. Because there again, that consistency of this is what we're going to do.

There's times when I left family devotions and I just felt like this was like a waste of time. Maybe one of those days where all we did was deal with children who were out of whack. I wanted to teach the Bible.

I didn't get the chance to teach the Bible. So, I don't know if that really totally answers your question. Would have some of those times been that your relationships wouldn't have been right? As you look at it or?

There may have been a few of those, yeah. But we do try to, like Jeff shared. You know, if there's something that's not right, that's our family devotions. You know, there's no sense in faking it. You're not going to have a good family devotions.

If you said something harsh to your son. And you haven't made it right. I mean, I've sat there a few times. I looked over at my son and I just saw his face. His countenance was way downcast. And I'm ready to have devotions.

And all of a sudden I realized, well, I hurt him. I hurt him there at the table when I said this, whatever. Well, now it's time to reconcile. And that's a great family devotions. You know, because you're real.

And the children love it when I do that. They love it when I make something right with one of their siblings. You can just see it written on their faces. It makes them feel so good. And could we have a better devotion than that?

What is devotion? So yeah, if there's a breach in relationship, don't even bother trying to go on. I have a thought on that, Paul. I really want to magnify that principle you're saying. Especially in light of, it can almost seem overwhelming to have such a consistent family devotion.

But at times, my wife and I have said, well, we need to get away with this child and pray with him. Seth, will you lead worship for a half an hour? Just let everybody sing songs. That time is still set aside.

It might be that we need to go with another child and make something right. And if you've got the time blocked out, it's still family devotion. It's just done a little differently. So we do. I didn't share that.

We have our devotions from 8 .15 to about 9 .00. That's our daily. Okay. Anybody have any other questions? Or maybe you have a, maybe there's something you've done that you've really seen has been blessed and been a blessing.

Right over there. The thing that my wife was doing with our two oldest sons, that's turning out to be a real blessing. We've been doing it for about three months now. Is having our two oldest boys, assigning them to a certain part of the maybe 8 to 12 verses.

And then having them pick out one of those verses and explain them. And then sometimes the whole devotional comes out of that. You know, I'll add to it and we'll have a discussion. It's been a real blessing.

And some of the ones is Proverbs number one. And then Psalms 119 is a good one too. Because you can assign them eight verses at a time. You know, they're all nice and organized. So that's been a blessing.

Anybody else up here?

Brother Rick. Yeah, thank you. Kind of a little bit of what Paul was saying, but maybe a little bit more specific. Is, you know, as your family gets bigger, you'll find things seem to happen in trends or spurts or patterns.

You'll notice something's kind of off. It might not be relationships. It might just be three or four of the children. Or you've just over the course of the last couple weeks, you just heard a lot of extra sort of teasing.

You know, just seemed on the edge of being too much, too far. So, you know, you just, okay, you know what? Tonight we're going to talk about what does God say about this? And some of those impromptu just laying it out on the table and opening up the word of God about real things that are really happening.

You know, because patterns do kind of emerge in a family sometimes. And they're not always good patterns because we're human. And so you just spend some time talking about and bring it up. You know, it's okay.

Does anybody have anything they want to confess or talk about or maybe that you're seeing is in your life? You know, you just kind of be open to those things that present themselves, even though they're negative.

But by the Spirit of God, it can be a positive.

Applying Proverbs to Real Family Problems

Yeah, we've found that over the years that we will just do a devotion, even if we're in the middle of Proverbs. Okay, today we're going to. That's a very good point, because if it doesn't apply to our life, what is the use of it?

You know, if there's issues in our life that God wants to speak into, you know, Proverbs is a great book, but let's go to the thing that is needful. And we have gone through the New Testament also a few times and different books.

It's not like we only do the Proverbs, but I just think if you've never done that, you are missing. Your children are going to miss so much. This is such a practical book. Michelle?

You know, you said, Brother Paul, that you love to teach the Word and my husband does too. I have been very blessed at times when... At times, some of the best devotions are in that training where you feel like you don't get anywhere, but Daddy has set the course for the day that we are going to obey and we are going to...

You know, he's given the vision and he's carried it out. And if that included a discipline or a training or, you know, we feel like, well, we didn't really get to our normal thing, that just sets the day in motion that I can just refer.

Remember what Daddy said in devotion. Remember what, you know, kind of attitudes we're having. And I feel empowered. So some of... At times, if we're having a hard time, those devotions mean a lot. Is there anybody else?

I didn't get to hear all that was shared, but I know I wanted to say that one of the things that has been such a blessing in our home is when Paul would... When I would come, be overwhelmed with a attitude in the home, that that's what Paul would then bring out.

And many times we'd leave it up on the board. If you do a board lesson, then I'd take the child during the day and say, you know, what kind of speech are you giving or what kind of road are you choosing?