You would imagine the Lam family to have spent a lot of time on Bible reading during family devotions. After all, father Lam Yuen Foong, a former pastor and long-time missionary, would have had a firm commitment to the importance of knowing the Bible well.
And recently, he and his daughter Esther Eio, an early childhood education specialist and lecturer, wrote a book together, Devotions with Dads, published by Discovery House Publishing, which aims to help fathers spend time in God’s Word with their children.
Yet, when Esther and her two younger brothers were growing up, what dominated their family devotions was not Bible reading—but prayer. The Lams would use a family devotional just once a week at times, but Pastor Lam insisted that they pray together every single day.
“No matter what happened, we would always meet to pray every day,” he recalls. “This could be challenging, because sometimes, we would be quarrelling. But right after that, we still had to pray!”
“At first,” says Esther, “the prayer times felt forced.” But over time, she and her brothers came to appreciate their family’s routine of daily prayer—and even look forward to it.
Esther’s own experience of family prayer time left so deep an imprint on her that she keeps to the same routine today with her husband and two children.
“It became a family time to share our prayer requests, talk about what we were going through, and even argue about some conflict that had happened,” she says. “It became a check-in time for us—an available channel or platform for us to connect with our parents. The habit fostered a culture of openness in our family.”
These devotions weren’t only about exchanging prayer requests and praying for one another. Rather, they were also a time for the Lams to discuss spiritual issues and talk about sermons and Bible lessons.
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Esther’s own experience of family prayer time left so deep an imprint on her that she keeps to the same routine today with her husband and two children.
“I put a lot of what I learnt from my dad into my own parenting,” she says.
In a recent interview, both father and daughter shared some lessons they learnt on making family devotions meaningful:
1. Encourage questions and invite your kids to “consider Christ”.
What characterised the Lams’ family devotions, recalls Esther, was that they weren’t mainly about reading the Bible. Rather, her father spent much time asking them questions like, “Why do you think this happened or why they said this? What do you think of this story?”
“Dad allowed us to discuss and even disagree with what we were taught, including sermons,” she says. “It was a dialogue, not just reading the Bible.”
That approach enabled her and her brothers to “think” rather than just “learn facts”, and come to their own conclusion about God. “Devotions should invite kids to consider Christ for themselves,” she says.
This freedom to ask honest questions helped Esther to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus that was not simply inherited, and avoid relying on secondhand faith.
2. Keep learning yourself.
As a teacher, Esther takes pains to keep this in mind when teaching others: you have to keep learning yourself. When it comes to family devotions, she doesn’t hesitate to get guidance from published devotionals.
“There’s no shame in that,” she says. “After all, teachers use teaching aids too.”
This approach is rooted in her belief that one has to keep learning God’s Word to teach others about it. “How can we teach our kids if we ourselves don’t learn? How can we teach them beyond primary school if we ourselves don’t progress beyond primary school?”
“We are not just teaching our kids, as we ourselves are being taught. When we grow ourselves, we can then teach our kids.”
With this in mind, the dad-daughter duo wrote Devotions with Dad for the whole family. While mainly targeted at kids, the book’s coverage of selected events in the Bible is also meant to familiarise all readers, parents included, with God’s overarching purpose for mankind. Also included are interactive questions designed to prompt spirited discussions between fathers and children.
Says Pastor Lam: “We are not just teaching our kids, as we ourselves are being taught. When we grow ourselves, we can then teach our kids.”
3. Walk the talk, for your kids are watching what you do.
One of Pastor Lam’s greatest challenges in managing his family’s daily prayer time was dealing with instances when prayers went unanswered.
He believes that these are times at which the personal faith of a parent can make a difference. Children always watch their parents to see how they respond to any given situation.
“We can’t teach children through devotions alone. It’s through your daily life—we need to be consistent and congruous.”
Once, the family had prayed for good weather during their planned trip to the zoo the following day. The next morning, however, it poured. Pastor Lam decided that they would head for the zoo anyway—in faith.
“The moment we arrived, the rain stopped,” he recalls in wonderment. “God stopped rain for as long as we went around the zoo. The moment we went back to the car and closed the door, the rain started pouring again.”
That, he says, was a simple but powerful lesson in faith that could only be taught by example. “We can’t teach children through devotions alone,” he says. “It’s through your daily life—we need to be consistent and congruous.”
“We are a mirror to our kids. They will see if we don’t do as we preach, like praying and reading the Bible ourselves.”
