You would not know it from the outside. My face is calm. My voice is steady. But my heart rate is climbing and my brain is scrambling to find the words. Maybe you have been there.

Here is what makes it worse: I am a pastor with six and a half years of advanced theological training. However, praying out loud with my family? Some days it feels easier to defend the Memorialism of Ulrich Zwingli against the Transubstantiation of the Roman Catholic Church in front of a live audience (yes, those are real things).

If you feel that same fear (the quiet, persistent sense that you are not qualified to lead your family spiritually) you are not alone. Your qualification to lead your family as a dad does not come from your level of knowledge. If it did, I would not panic. (By the way, Paul’s education did not qualify him either. See Galatians 1:11–24.)

It is not about getting it perfect. It is about showing up, being consistent, and being available. Think of it as S.O.W.: three steps to change the spiritual climate of your home.

Start with Yourself

Open a Routine

Weave It In

Step 1 | Start With Yourself

When I was in late high school, my church’s senior class took a trip to the lake. My family had a small boat, so my dad came along and spent the day teaching my friends to waterski and wakeboard. That was the first time most of them had met him. I was not prepared for their reaction. They kept commenting on how much we were alike. I was confused. We don’t look that much alike. He was a redhead, for crying out loud! But it was not our looks. It was our mannerisms. Our speech pattern when we told a story. The way we talked to people. The way we used our hands. I had spent 18 years watching my dad, and I had picked up far more than I ever realized.

Marty Machowski, writing for Desiring God, puts it directly:

“The best way to teach your children to pray is to demonstrate a praying life yourself.” Read the article.

Charles Spurgeon once put it this way:

“Train up a child in the way he should go, but be sure you go that way yourself.”

For more on modeling faith at home, check out Practical Ways to Raise Kids Who Love Jesus.

Step 2 | Open a Routine

Many of us carry a vague ambition to be more intentional about our family’s faith. Deuteronomy 6:7 tells us to impress these things on our children, to talk about them when we sit at home, when we walk along the road, when we lie down and when we get up. For most of us, that ambition stays exactly that: a feeling.

But “I will get better at this at some point” is not a plan. It’s a wish.

Michael Horton, in his book Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World, makes the case that consistent, boring, mundane faith is foundational. We are not trying to manufacture an adrenaline high. We are building a habit that will ground our families for years to come.

As New Testament scholar Kenneth Berding observes, people who do not set aside regular times for prayer usually do not develop the spiritually oriented mindset to pray throughout the day. Read his post. You have probably heard that we should “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). That means all times of the day, but the way to get there is to start somewhere specific.

I decided I was not being consistent enough in teaching my daughter the Bible. So I made one simple choice: we would read the Jesus Storybook Bible from beginning to end, one chapter each night. No jumping around (we had done that before). Just start at the beginning.

A few chapters in, we read about the Fall. When she realized Adam and Eve had sinned once and now God was going to send them out of the Garden, she looked at me and said, “That’s not a lot of chances.” We had been in a season of working through obedience at home, a lot of “one more chance” conversations.

Suddenly I had the whole gospel sitting right in front of me. Concepts like God’s holiness, the weight and consequences of sin, God’s beautiful solution in grace and Jesus’s sacrifice were now available to us that night. All because I had been doing something boring and ordinary: one chapter a night.

You do not have to design a curriculum (though if you want one, check out some of the stuff Jon Tyson is doing). Ecclesiastes 11:6 says to sow your seed in the morning and do not withhold your hand in the evening, because you do not know which will prosper. A farmer cannot guarantee the harvest. He keeps sowing and trusts that God does his work.

Start with something simple. Keep showing up. Stay consistent and trust God with the rest. And if you’re looking for more practical ways to build that routine, this post on leading your kids spiritually through the school year is a good next step.

“The true rich fruit of spontaneity grows in the garden that is well tended by the discipline of schedule.” John Piper, Be Devoted to Prayer

Step 3 | Weave It In

Deuteronomy 6:7 is not only about creating intentional teaching moments. It is about weaving faith into the everyday fabric of life as you go. The two work together.

Look at Jesus’ pattern in Mark 1. He stays up late healing crowds, then rises before dawn to pray alone. And throughout the Gospels, he is constantly interrupted while on the way to somewhere else: a desperate father, a woman reaching through the crowd, a blind man calling out from the roadside.

The intentional moments create the environment. The interruptions are the fruit.

Kids never wait for the right time. Mine usually ask the deepest questions when I am already exhausted and they should have been asleep an hour ago. To be interruptible, to recognize these moments for what they are, requires space in your schedule, your attention, and your spirit.

Years ago, I was assigned a prayer project for seminary. I had to pray uninterrupted for about an hour and then journal the experience. I found a quiet bench behind a neighborhood on a cloudy (almost rainy) Tuesday morning when I was certain no one would be around. Ten minutes in, a kid maybe 13 or 14 rode up on his bike. No parents in sight. He started asking what I was doing. I answered politely (I was having a focused time of prayer) and went back to my assignment. My eyes closed. He kept talking. His parents were a doctor and a lawyer, both at work, so he was free to roam the neighborhood. I kept trying to pray. He mentioned a secret stash of cigarettes he kept hidden behind his house. That is when it landed: I was not there for my assignment. I was there for that kid. I abandoned the project and spent the next half hour just listening. I am not naturally interruptible.

That day, I had made space. God filled it.

Someone close to our family experienced a sudden and devastating loss. It introduced my daughter to questions about death and what comes after in a way I would not have chosen for her at that age. However, those conversations about God, grief, loss, and where we go when we die might not have happened any other way.

Here is what I have observed with my kids and prayer: Most of the time they are distracted, reluctant, or trying to make each other laugh.

Actually, let’s be honest, most of the time, my daughter makes fart noises. However, there are other times. Out of nowhere, she will pray something so beautiful that my wife is in tears. Seriously. Fart noises one night. Beautiful tears the next. I can’t manufacture that. It grew in the garden we had been tending.

Marty Machowski writes that “one of the greatest ways we as dads image forth the character of God is by welcoming the invitation to be interrupted.” God is always available to his children. He never tells them to come back later. When you stop what you are doing because your daughter has a question at 9 PM when bedtime was a 7:30, that is what he looks like to her.

You cannot manufacture these moments. However, the dad who is growing in his own faith and showing up consistently for his family is the one who recognizes them when they come.

Sow the seed. You do not know which will take root.

You Don’t Have to Figure This Out Alone

Last year, I invited several of my neighbors to a men’s event at church. When I turned the corner, I nearly crashed into one of them. I genuinely did not expect him to show up. Now faith conversations are an open topic between us. They were not before.

Most of us are figuring this out as we go. That is not a sign that something is wrong with you. You do not have to figure it out alone.

Men’s Ministry at Mission Hills exists for exactly this reason: to put men alongside other men who are asking the same questions and fighting the same battles. If that sounds like something you need, we’d love to have you. And if you want to go deeper on why that community matters, read The Power of Spiritual Friendships.

✏️  AUTHOR CREDITS

This blog was written by the Mission Hills Church Men’s Ministry.