Book Review: Training Hearts Teaching Minds

Our family does a family devotional each evening before bed.  We have all the children finished up with needs for the evening so that we can all pay attention.  We are usually all piled up on the couch together and my husband assigns who will be the reader each evening.   Others will be finding Scripture and reading along, but Dad will have told the child the night before if he/she will be the reader for the next night.  They get sooooo excited when it's their turn.  Even the 4 yr old "reads".  We just read it quietly and she follows, repeating aloud. 

This year, along with our academic books, we ordered Training Hearts, Teaching Minds, by Starr Meade, as our family devotional. It is based on the  Shorter Catechism.  I have never been a catechism-y kind of person.  But, this one got rave reviews so I thought I'd try it out.  Each week delves deeper into one question from the Catechism.  The question and answer are stated and each day's devotional message and appropriate Scriptures are divided up into short daily readings.  There are 107 weeks worth of devotions.

As we begin our devotional time, we review the previous questions and answers.  The children love this!  We call on a different child to give the answer to each question.  We are not down to exact wording and they  are doing very well at it.  Then, we go on to complete the day's reading and the Scripture passage(s) given and discuss how they relate and how we can relate it in our lives.  We pray together as a family, as well, before bed.  And Dad tells who will be the Bible reader on the next night. This is not some in depth theological debate time.  It is simply a time that we draw our family close together and share truths of God's Word.  Nothing fancy.

We love this tool!  It makes it almost too easy to get family devotionals started for your family.  I would enthusiastically recommend it.   And for 2 years' worth of devotionals for right around $10, it's quite the bargain as well.  I think the ages of comprehension for our family are closer to the 8 and up range, but we have our younger ones learn to sit in on teaching and hear the Word.  It's good for them--Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ ( Romans 10:17)!