About
Welcome to FortheFours!
This substack seeks to offer a template of weekly devotionals for your household. We know teaching our kids about God is important, but we sometimes get stuck on what the best way to do this in our household. My husband, Mark, is a minister at a local church so you will frequently find our family at the church. We go to church, our kids know many of the Bible stories, but recently we have felt convicted that we don’t spend enough time studying the Bible together- neither as a family, nor as a couple. This website, then, began to emerge from that conviction. I say this to clarify that we are not writing devotionals as parents who have mastered the weekly family devotional! Rather we want to be better about studying scripture in our household and hope these resources can be helpful to others. -Anne
Why a family devotional?
We believe studying scripture as a family has incredible value to the household. You have probably heard the study that couples who pray together have a divorce rate of less than 1%. Think about how this kind of data could translate to a family unit. We want to model to our kids what it means to love God, love His Word, and be united in our pursuit of him. We also want talking about God with our kids to be natural. We have spent many nights reading Daniel and the Lion’s den from one of our children’s Bibles, quickly closing the Bible and racing to get the kids to bed. Those Bible stories are important and we intend to keep reading them, but we also desire to move from stories to a response. We desire to move from knowledge to application.
How will it work?
Our goal is to make scripture accessible for all ages. No matter how young or old you are, God’s Word is for you. All the devotionals will be based in the study of scripture. Obviously a 2 year old cannot process scripture the same way a teenager can. Each weekly devotional will have response questions in 3 categories: littles, bigs, and grown ups. You will have access to all and pick the one that makes the most sense for your family. The devotional will be able to print to one page and will come with a companion coloring sheet. Paid subscribers will have access to all the above, while all subscribers will receive the weekly email with the scripture and some general thoughts as our family approached the scripture. Devotionals will be sent out on Friday.
As for the name…
FortheFours has been a motto of mine for a while. So much so that it is my “burner” instagram handle as my little brother and SIL call it. Feel free to go looking for it, nothing there ha. But truly, we welcomed our 4th child this year and so the name is largely rooted in our motivation to serve our four children. Even before that our household “witching hour” if you will, has always been the 4:00-5:00 hour. As I am a teacher, the kids and I get home a little before 4 and there is just something about that hour before my husband gets home that is refining, to put a positive spin on it. That has been the hardest hour of my day since I had my first child 6 years ago. And while that hour of my day has not become particularly easier, that daily struggle has prompted me towards prayer and to consider what it looks like to be an intentional parent. That is 5 extra hours per work week that I am grateful to be with my children. Considering how to be intentional and present in that pocket of my day prompted me to begin to search for other pockets in my time with the children where I can reframe my mindset and aim to model walking in Christ-likeness for our children. I encourage you to search for those pockets in your day/week where you can point your family to the Lord.