About | My Family Devotion

My Family Devotion is a free devotional for families to read aloud together. It works through the Bible in order, one passage at a time. Each devotion includes the Bible text, a short reading to share aloud, four questions with suggested answers, a practical application, and a closing prayer. There are currently 2335 devotions, covering 66 books.

You do not need an account, and everything is free to read. The privacy page explains what the site collects, how advertising works, and what you can control.

Who writes this

My name is Matthew Pavey. Christ-follower, husband, father, reader, developer, in about that order on a good day.

I started this because sitting down to read the Bible as a family is harder than it should be. We wanted to do it, but choosing a passage and preparing questions often felt like one more thing to fit into an already full evening. Building software is what I have done for a living for close to thirty years, with a computer science degree from Rose-Hulman. So rather than keep looking for the thing I wanted, I built it, and then I kept going.

Some years ago I began a Master of Arts in Christian Apologetics at Liberty University. I am still enrolled, but I put the coursework on hold after getting married and having more children so I could focus on my family. I still care deeply about the questions that drew me to it: arguments for the existence of God, the historical case for the crucifixion and the resurrection, and how to talk about all of it with reason and with grace.

There is more about me at pavey.me.

How these are written

I use AI to help with drafting and research. I compare every printed passage with the Berean Standard Bible, check outside claims, and review and edit the writing before publication. I am responsible for what appears here.

I have found and corrected mistakes, and I may have missed others. If you find one, please tell me.

Where this stands

These devotions are broadly evangelical. They reflect my belief in salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone, Scripture as the final authority, and God as the one who takes the initiative in saving us.

You will not find arguments here about baptism, church governance or end-times schemes. Those are real questions, but this is not the place for them. The goal is to help families read the passage and talk about it together, without getting pulled into debates that can wait for another time.

Who I read

These are some of the writers who have shaped my thinking about faith, church history, and Christian life. They do not all agree with one another, and naming them here does not mean they would endorse these devotions.

I keep going back to Augustine, Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, J.I. Packer, R.C. Sproul, D.A. Carson, Tim Keller, Paul David Tripp, Dallas Willard, and Billy Graham. They taught me to take doctrine seriously without forgetting the person sitting in front of it.

For the apologetics and evidence work, I return to John Lennox, William Lane Craig, J.P. Moreland, Alvin Plantinga, Mike Licona, Richard Bauckham, Alister McGrath, and Greg Koukl. Koukl in particular taught me to lay out the evidence and let a person reach a conclusion rather than announce one for them.

C.S. Lewis sits a little apart from the rest. He wrote about serious things in ordinary words without ever talking down to anybody, and he is the closest thing this site has to a model for how it ought to sound.

These writers do not agree with each other about sovereignty and free will, the age of the earth, or whether the miraculous gifts continue. Neither does the church. On those questions, the devotions focus on the passage and leave room for families to discuss their own convictions.

How We Know

Some devotions carry a short note on the evidence behind the passage: another ancient text that mentions the same person, a law or custom the scene assumes, an object recovered from the right place and period, or the oldest surviving copies of the passage itself.

These notes appear where there is useful evidence to discuss. Claims from outside the Bible include a source so you can check them yourself.

The Bible translation

The Bible text on this site is the Berean Standard Bible. Its publishers dedicated the text to the public domain on April 30, 2023. Their terms permit free use, including printing complete books. That lets me include the full passage in every devotion without a licensing fee.

Why this translation?

My own Bible is still the English Standard Version. I like how it reads aloud, and I am familiar with it. For this site, though, I needed permission to reproduce complete books alongside commentary. Crossway's standard permissions have limits on that use, so I chose the Berean Standard Bible.

I also appreciated learning about the people and work behind it. The translation committee describes its editors, the Bible Hub and Discovery Bible teams, and a process that invited comments from readers, pastors, teachers, and scholars.

The free interlinear Bible is useful when a devotion discusses a particular Hebrew or Greek word. It puts the original text beside an English rendering, with links to word definitions and grammar. It is a helpful starting point for checking a claim, though understanding a word still takes context and care.

Copyright

You are welcome to read and print the devotions for your family, small group, class, or congregation, and to email a devotion to a friend. Please do not republish them, sell them, or use them in another product. The terms of use explain the permissions in full. For other uses, ask me.

Getting in touch

For corrections, questions, or suggestions, my email address is on the contact page. Your message comes directly to me.

Corrections get read first. If something here misquotes scripture, points at the wrong verse, or claims more than the passage will carry, I want to know.

Supporting it

This site is free and will stay free. Advertising is currently switched off. If ads are enabled later to help cover running costs, the privacy page will explain how they work and what choices you have.

If these have been useful to your family and you want to help with the bills, there is a Buy Me a Coffee page. Everything here remains free.