Complicating Time With God

A friend and myself were talking about finding the "just right" Children's Devotional/Bible and I found myself referring back to a situation awhile back:

While attending a Women's Ministry get-together at my church, we were talking about devotional time. I guess the majority of the women in the room (about 40 of us) had been "saved" for at least a few years. One of the girls who were rather new in my study was sitting at my table. About 10 minutes into the discussion she looked at me with huge eyes full of overwhelming confusion. 

After I asked what was wrong, she said, "What is a devotion, it sounds so confusing and hard..." I sat there a moment a bit dumb founded. How had we managed to make something as simple and easy as devotion time with God sound so complicated and difficult?

I tried to put her at ease, explaining how all it truly was is spending time with Him and reading/applying His Word. She was still confused, she kept going back to all the things we had been talking about: morning/afternoon/night, word study/topical study/book study, 5 minutes/15 minutes/1 hour, isolated/surrounded, 1 Bible/4 Bibles, Strong's Concordance/Nelson's 3-in-1, Greek/Hebrew, etc.

I laughed at how badly we were messing with this poor girls head as I tried to explain again. God doesn't care; he just wants our time and devotion with Him. As we begin to grow in Him, we start digging deeper and looking more; but there is still not a certain formula that God demands we use when spending time with Him- he only wants our whole heart.

I actually had a devotional with me that day that I frequently used, I opened it up and shared with her the page set apart for that day. It had some scripture to read and then gave a couple of paragraphs that elaborated on it and encouraged, then ended with a short prayer at the bottom. There was such relief on my friends face when she saw it. 

"So, that's it? This is considered a "devotion?" she asked. "Yep, that's it!" I smiled. 
She looked around and said, "But, that's easy, what were all of you talking about? This isn't that hard!"
"Ya, I know- I guess we need to take the "Christian Lingo" down a couple of notches, there is not much in God's Word that's really all that hard to understand- sometimes we are just dumb enough to make it seem that way" I answered as I insisted she keep the devotional and begin using it.

I am trying to keep all of this in mind when studying God's Word with my kids. My friend, Joanne of "Confessions of A Dirty Christian Woman" Blog told of a story where my oldest daughter helped her see she was lacking boldness in her post, "There's A Little Chicken Inside" (click over and take a look). I love (and sometimes hate) learning from my kids.

I am sometimes jealous of the simplicity through which kids can view things, we adults (ME) can do a pretty good job of making things way to complicated sometimes. Our girls have been studying the Holy Spirit at church and are FULL of questions, so I feel as if we have been doing a devotional 24/7 at any given moment- it keeps us on our toes and helps me to learn to "Keep It Simple Sweetie".

I did happen to find this devotional for kids and found this devotional "Hide (the Word) & Seek (the Lord) Devotional" for kids from Tommy Nelson (preview it here). There is also a free audio download to help kids memorize scripture verses. Looks great, and this is the "chosen one"- the new devotional we are getting- that is unless I win it from The Pregnancy Companion Blog- who I found was giving it away in a contest on my search (feel free to enter, although it is increasing my risk of buying it instead of winning it, lol).

Let's learn to keep it simple Moms- not just for our kids- but for the regular every day people around us- it really isn't that complicated.