Long Story Short: Ten-Minute Devotions to Draw Your Family to God

We just finished this as a family, going through this slowly over the past three plus years. It’s meant to be done in a year and a half. Our slow pace has nothing to do with the content and everything to do with the real struggle of maintaining consistent devotions with four kids under 10. What Machowski has provided for families here is phenomenal. My kids have been shown so many gospel connections to Jesus through the Old Testament. Sometimes it’s a little repetitive and some of the Scripture readings are a bit long for a ten minute devotional (emphasis on “some”…typically he gives several verses or a short narrative passage rather than full chapters). But all in all, this is an excellent resource for families, especially for those with kids under 10.

Our family really enjoyed this devotional. I appreciate how each day we work through a passage of Scripture. It does a good job highlighting Jesus in the Old Testament each week. We had many good discussions as we went through this as a family.

First of all, I am a retired children's minister having served God and children for 31 years. I have also written children's Bible curriculum for 15 years. I think I know what I am talking about. Our church, Bridgepoint Bible Church, recently started your 3 year curriculum. When I found out that you also publish The Gospel Story Bible and a family Long Story Shorty devotional book that accompany the curriculum, I was blown away. This is BIG. Now it is easy for the children's teachers at church and the parents to join together and work each week to guide the spiritual development of children. The children will truly be blessed because of what you have done in preparing a Bible study curriculum, a children's Bible, and a weekly family devotional book. Thank you.

Fantastic family devotion for tweens.

We loved the hands-on object lessons, the right-sized devotional passages, and the Jesus-centered questions. This devotional ensures that you really cover the Old Testament. (It’s a 78 week devotional that took us about 2 years to finish in reality!)bBut I loved that it didn’t just stick to the classic stories but got us reading in the prophets almost every week, seeing Jesus in every passage, and really spending time in lesser known passages. It’s pretty comprehensive overview of the OT that my kids (ages 4-10 when we started) could all understand.

Our family worship time was completely transformed by this book. Perfect for families with kids of all ages. It is a great tool for taking your family through the Old Testament. Includes discussion questions and a prayer guide for each lesson. I cannot recommend this book enough.

Whew. We finally finished this. I think we started four years ago-ish? It's hard to remember. It's supposed to take 1.5 years at 5 days per week, which would be perfect for most families. We have ministry interruptions, so don't quite get 5 days per week, but you could combine two days into one if the Bible readings weren't too long. Some are quite long with a whole chapter, some, only a handful of verses. We also took breaks from this to do other devotional books and ideas. So it certainly doesn't have to take as long as we did. This is an excellent family devotional. I love the basic organization of it, especially to help families get started with young-ish kids (not too young) with actually reading the Bible, talking about it, and praying through it. Our children are now old enough to read the Bible passage aloud with us. Positives: a fair representation of the OT, decent survey of the main stories. I liked how he tried to point forward to Jesus. (Some of these seemed contrived or repetitive at times in order to fit the book organization. Some could have been done better. But still, great idea, and overall, well-done.) I love that this is not a Bible retelling; you are actually reading the Bible and then a little devo on it with review questions. Charlotte Mason says children should read/hear the actual Bible, not retellings, so this checks that box. (I do like some good retellings for the younger set. I love Catherine Vos's retelling.) No theological concerns, seemed very sound biblically. Negatives: We got tired of the hands-on demonstration at the beginning of the week, especially since day 1's opener was also a picture or story. It sometimes turned out to be two illustrations or object lessons in a row, and that was too much or weird or sometimes disconnected. I think he could have cut one or the other. We also felt that the prayer suggestion could have been much richer spiritually. Often it was a bit lame, like thanking God that He worked sovereignly in this or that OT situation. We preferred prayer suggestions that asked for help in a certain sin area or were praising God for some theological truth that the story taught. But parents can just do this themselves. As a model, it's still valid and helpful. Some of the questions also might be not what we would have chosen, but that's not a big deal. Overall, very well done, and I'm so happy I got it free on Kindle years ago. What a blessing. I wanted to go right on to the NT book, but it is a little intimidating, since this one took soooo long. So we are going to do Catherine Vos's Bible first, just to do a full Bible review. Then maybe we'll go to Machowski's NT book or to one of the books published by Apologia (Who Is God? etc.). :) Praise to the author for a job well done.

Starts strong but looses some steam towards the middle. Makes it through rebuilding Jerusalem temple and wall. Good overall but kinda long. Some sections get tedious. Most conclusions are solid.

This family devotional has taken us a looooong time to get through, because it is a very thorough, deep dive into the Old Testament. It provides 78 weeks worth of material, broken into 5 days of study each week, with each day taking 5-10 minutes. I loved how it is gospel-centered, always pointing ahead to Jesus. I didn’t feel like it was always particularly engaging to my kids, but now that we’ve finished it, they have asked to start the follow up New Testament book, so I guess they liked it well enough!?

Highly, highly recommend. We started this devotional at breakfast times when my kids were about 4 and 7. It's taken us a little less than three years to get through it. We have had hundreds of conversations because of it. My kids have been introduced to the overarching story of the Bible because of this book. They've been introduced to all the main characters and stories of the Bible as well as all the major biblical doctrines, not in a dumbed down cartoony way stripped of context and power, but in a real life conversational way that trusts the Holy Spirit speaks to little ones through the actual words of Scripture. Each week also includes passages from prophecy and/or the New Testament that relates the Old Testament stories to Jesus.The activities, supplemental stories, and questions work to bring light to each day's passage. Scripture is the star of the show. The book supports parents in sharing the actual word of God. It's been a huge blessing to us.