Welcome back to our weekly #LMMLinkup where we love to share posts about our love of reading, writing, and learning.

Although a Christian focus, I think any parents can relate to this article about the importance of sharing their faith with their children.  I hope this will encourage us to read to and explore our spiritual heritages with our children nightly.

By Rachel Newcomb

Families need to spend more time together every day. Our lives in 2016 are busy with so many activities and plans, we sometimes forget to take time and be together.  Simple things like watching a movie together as a family is fun, but we also need to spend quality time together learning our faith. One simple way we can add daily quality time together is by having family devotions every day.

The benefits of daily family devotions are many.  Depending on your schedules, family devotions may be the one time every day everyone in the family gets together and shares.  In a world that is disconnected (even though we pretend we are connected) by the internet, social media, electronic devices and over busy schedules, quality family time is essential.

5 Reasons to Make Family Devotion Time a Priority in Your Home

1. Family Devotions Will Grow Your Children’s Faith

As parents, one of our top priorities is to grow the Christian faith of our children.  Family devotion time is the perfect time to help your children start and grow their faith.

Younger children will ask and share simple questions that start the foundations of faith.  As your children get older they will start asking more complex questions and you will be able to share your insights with them.

Use family devotion time to grow the faith of each child at every age.

2. Family Devotions Teach Your Children Your Faith and Not Values of the World

Everywhere we look we see the values of the world.  It’s on TV, the internet, billboard signs when you are driving to school or walking through a mall.  It’s hard to avoid inappropriate and selfish messages.

Through family devotion time, we can redirect these messages and point out the errors and false teachings.  Our culture values instant gratification for everything.  It’s the constant reinforcement of our Christian values that will counteract the world’s influence and stay with our children.

3. Family Devotions is the Perfect Time to Memorize Scriptures

From the time I was a small child, we memorized Scriptures.  Memorizing Scriptures is important for children.  When your children are faced with challenging decision in life between right and wrong, the Scriptures they have memorized will light a path in the right direction for them even when you are not there to instruct them.

Scriptures we memorize as children will stay with us when we become adults and they become part of our decision making process and conscience of what is right and wrong.

4. Family Devotions Allow Children Time to Explore Scriptures in a Safe Place

Understanding the Scriptures can be challenging.  Frequently, we need a person with more experience and wisdom to help us understand difficult passages.  For adults, our Pastors and Bible teachers help us understand these difficult passages.  For our children, parents teach the harder to understand passages.

We want our children to grow up and continue with our faith (not the faith of the TV preacher or others who may influence them), family devotion time is when as a family we can teach and understand the more difficult passages and continue passing our faith to our children.

5. Family Devotions Builds Family Bonds

All families need to spend time together.  Daily family devotions is a great way families can come together and share ideas, learn new concepts and deepen their Christian faith.

Once your children are grown, they will remember the times spent together in family devotions and the important lessons they learned from their parents and how the deepened their faith.

Your family will benefit from daily family devotions by growing their faith, limiting the influence of worldly values, memorizing Scriptures, building a deeper understanding of the Bible and strengthening family bonds.  If you don’t currently have family devotions, start today.  Find a time every day when the family can get together and study the Bible and discuss important ideas about your faith.

Rachel Newcomb is a Christian wife and mother of 3 amazing children.  She blogs at Smart Mom Smart Ideas where she writes about parenting, motherhood, homemaking, and time management.  She would love to share with you access the Smart Mom Resource library and the Smart Moms facebook group.

Now on to our weekly linkup! First let’s

Now let’s celebrate reading and learning by reviewing:

Last Week’s Top Clicked Post!

Leslie DeJarnette: Forever Joyful

This book is a mother’s message to her married daughters about lessons she’d learned through her own marriage as well as those gleaned from years of ministry to couples.  This review is a must read although the giveaway ended last week.  I hope you will check it out.

My Favorite Post of the Week:

I love to read Tehila’s posts at Women Abiding. She has so many encouraging essays. This one really blessed me at a difficult time. I really recommend it if you are facing your own stresses.

Want to be the next to be featured! Just link up a post and if you are read the most, we will feature you. Also please make sure you link back to us so  others will know about our link up and join in. We try to make it worth your while to linkup with us by promoting your posts across our social media networks. We also pin our most clicked and featured posts to our Pinterest Board each week!

Now, it is time to link up to the Literacy Musing Mondays hop! You will have until Saturdays at 12 p.m. now to link up! So come back often.

Linkup Rules:

1. Include a link back or the blog hop button linked to this hop on your posts.
2. Link up the urls to your posts not to your blog.
3. Please remember this is a family-friendly linkup.  Although we believe in the right for adults to read whatever they want to read, we prefer to read wholesome posts that feature literature that edify and uplift families. We reserve the right to delete any posts that are not family friendly. We love all kinds of literature and genres including family-friendly inspirational romances, fantasy, or science fiction. We do not welcome posts featuring books or written with excessive violence, sexual content, or cursing. These posts will be deleted.
4. We also want to be loving community by supporting one another. Please make a point to do this this week! Visit the two posts before yours and at least one other blogger’s post of your choice! I want to see lots of clicks on everyone’s posts. I know as a blogger, you know how it feels not receive comments, right. 🙂 Plus, you could be honored as our Top Commentor if you submit your report to Mary! Remember it is also nice to follow them on their social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
5. Follow your hosts and co-hosts on their social media.
6. Tweet about the link up too.

[tweetthis]Come join the fun! Link up your family-friendly, book- or literacy-related posts at #LMMLinkup ![/tweetthis]

Let’s Celebrate Reading and Learning together this week at Literacy Musing Mondays!