Balancing Life With God

In order to balance my life, I have found focusing on God and committing all areas of my life to him as key.  One way that I help keep my life focused on God and his Word is by doing daily devotionals as an individual, as a couple with my wife and as a family.  I find that by doing devotionals in each of these segments of my life I help keep God interwoven throughout my life and relationships.

My daily quiet time has grown tremenundously more important to me over the course of the past year.  I do not always do it at the same time like I know others do, but it is one of the things I put on my schedule each day and make a priority.  Currently I am using two different resources in addition to the Bible for this time.  One of the resources I am using is the Daily Inspiration for Teachers from the New International Version.  I have thoroughly enjoyed reading scriptures based on issues that many teachers struggle with.  I am also reading The One Year Uncommon Life Daily Challenge by Tony Dungy.  Tony Dungy has done a great job using Biblically based stories to challenge me as man, father and person each day.  I would highly recommend this book.

My wife and I have committed the past several years to either read a marriage book of do a devotional as a couple.  Sometimes we have done this as part of a larger group and other times on our own.  We just finished going through a book and study together as a couple titled, Divorce-Proof Your Marriage by Dr. Gary and Barbara Rosberg.  Gary and Barb presented some great stories and ways to help strengthen any marriage in their book.  We really liked having both the husband and wife perspectives in the same book.  We will be beginning another book by the same authors in our devotion time tonight titled The 5 Love Needs of Men & Women and are looking forward to continuing to grow in our relationship with each other and with God.

As a family we have spent time reading through Children's Bibles, talking about God and making our faith a priority, but we had not started a formal daily devotional process until this year.  We have started going through Bruce H. Wilkinson's FamilyWalk devotionals for families.  It has been great to use a resource to read a story, some scripture and then to talk intentionally about important issues as family.  We are looking forward to continuing this as our son grows up.

Do you have daily quiet time with God?  Do you use devotionals as an individual, a couple or a family?  If so, what are some of your favorite resources.  I would love to hear from you!