How to connect with God as a family.
Strengthening our individual relationships with God is such an important thing but connecting with God as a unit, as a family is also important. As we get older, life becomes filled with more and more stuff. Aspects of adulting life such as bill payments, car maintenance, housework, looking after children, keeping a social life with friends and family, all take up a lot of our time and thought. Let alone trying to add in time for yourself, your individual hobbies, exercising, keeping a healthy mind. It can be a challenge to prioritize God when life is filled with so many things trying to demand our attention.
But connecting with God individually or as a family doesn’t have to be as difficult as we may sometimes think.
It can be easy in life to overthink, or over complicate things and God can be one of them. I often sit and think I need to improve my relationship with God. This thought then turns to brainstorming ideas of how and when I can set aside time regularly to talk to Him. Then that thought leads to me questioning if that’s something I can keep up (I am not the best at routines), which spirals into deciding I can’t do it and I become sad that I can’t. To be completely honest it hasn’t been until the last few years that I sat and thought, all this time I’ve spent working out when to talk to God, I could’ve been talking to Him, right then. That I didn’t need to over complicate the situation by setting out dedicated time (this is the way some like to do it and if that works for you, then that is brilliant,) I can just talk to Him whenever I want.
This has brought me to where I am now, whenever I think about Him or something that I’ve prayed about recently, I stop and send up a quick prayer, a thank you or a check in.
The same can be applied to our family connection with God. I tend to find it easier even, to connect with God as a family than individually because there’s more of us to remember and there’s a little person for me to set an example to. In every aspect of life, children learn by listening and watching those around them. So why can’t one of those things be how to communicate with God. It is one thing to tell someone what they should be doing and hope they do it, and another thing entirely to lead by example.
My husband and I have a two-year-old son. He likes to copy everything we do, the good and the bad. One of those things is praying to Jesus at bedtime. It was started a while ago as part of the bedtime routine and has now become something that has to be done every night. If on rare occasions myself or my husband forgets in our hurry to put him down for the night, he without failure reminds us. And not only do we pray but he asks to do his own prayer every night as well, which wasn’t something we told him to do. One day he started doing his mini prayer first then told us ‘You pray to Jesus.’ What we pray varies night to night, from a simple thank you for the day prayer, to asking for help or healing, or to pray for family things, but one consistent phrase is thanking God for the day we’ve had whether it be a good day, a hard day, busy or quiet, we thank Him for every day we get as a family.
The second thing we do as a family is listen to worship songs. We frequently have either kids’ songs or regular church songs on blaring throughout the house (we apologise to our neighbours). We all enjoy listening to music, so listening to worship songs together makes sense for us. Sometimes they are on in the background while we do house jobs etc. Sometimes we play them so we can jump around the house and have a dance party. And sometimes we like to play them as we are getting ready on a Sunday morning, getting us pumped up for church. However you choose to do it, music can be a great tool in helping motivation, calming down, to lighten your mood, and just pure enjoyment, so why not make that music, worship music.
Having bible time as a family is another great way of connecting with God together. I will admit, we are not a great example of this one, individually we struggle with reading the bible. But again this is something that being parents and being conscious of what examples we set for our son has helped us improve. We have lots of various children’s bibles and story books that we read in rotation with his other books at bedtime.
This can be something that can be incorporated in your daily or weekly lives. To put aside some time even once a week to read a story from the bible and discuss as a unit what the story meant and the meaning behind it.
Lastly, the simplest thing you can do is strive to constantly bring up God is everyday conversation. As your little ones ask you questions about the world, give answers that involve God’s love and involvement. For example, when answering a question about nature, incorporate that God created everything we see in nature around us. Make the topic of God a normal everyday occurrence, and not just something that gets spoken about or thought of on a Sunday.
Through doing these things as a family, I have improved my own relationship with God. It has helped me to be more aware of the frequency of which I talk to Him, and it has encouraged me to ask God for the little things as well as the big.
As humans we can never be perfect, it is impossible. That means there is always room for improvement in everything we do, especially in our relationship with God.
But always remember that your walk with God is unique. Do not compare yourself to others, everyone’s walk is different and progresses at their own paces. It is not a competition; God loves us all and just wants to have the best relationship with us He possibly can.
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