Two years ago I embarked on an ambitious program to teach my family from every verse in the New Testament (and perhaps one day the whole Bible). I read a few verses and then prepare a one page devotional message on it. I then read one of my commentaries on the same passage just to check I have not completely missed the point and steal any good points I missed. I would like to manage to write one a day, but in reality 3 or 4 a week is about my limit.

I then read them to the family at mealtimes and afterwards we have a short prayer time. Usually my two children (aged 2 and 4) misbehave the whole way through and so its not always the delightful happy devotional time you might think it would be. I have learned to read it quickly while they are quiet eating their pudding, which is the only moment of peace we get.

The talks themselves are not exactly classics, and hopefully I will improve as time goes on, but they have been a tremendous help to me in my own study of the Bible. Working through a book bit by bit over a prolonged period of time and wrestling with how to apply it is a great way to understand the Bible in a fresh way. I would highly recommend doing this to any of you with families.

The reason I’m posting this is to explain that it is the main reason why my blogging output has dropped recently. I have decided that teaching my family is a higher priority than teaching the varied visitors to my site, who have many more insightful blogs to choose from anyway. I was amazed at the boost to traffic that starting a blog gave me (going from an average of 12 pages a day to over 500 last month). This made me feel under pressure to have some great words of wisdom waiting for all these new readers every time they checked back, but it also took time away from preparing the studies I was doing for my family.

I am astonished at the consistency and quality that some Christian bloggers are managing to output, but I have come to realise that at best I will only be able to post a few short items a month. You can of course still expect plenty of book reviews from me, and hopefully I will be able to polish up some of the family devotions I have written into a form that I could post here.