5 Road-Trip Devotionals You Can Do Between Games

The miles between games are some of the most underrated ministry time you’ll ever get. Your kids are a captive audience, the scenery’s rolling by, and nobody’s reaching for the door handle. You don’t need a seminary degree or a flannel board — just five minutes and a little willingness. Here are five road-trip devotionals you can do between games, built for real families in real minivans on real tournament weekends.

How to Use These

A few ground rules so this stays a gift and not a chore. Keep it short — five minutes is plenty, and a good one might run two. Keep it low-pressure — if a kid gives you one-word answers today, that’s fine; you’re planting, not harvesting. And keep it natural — you can do every one of these without anybody opening a Bible app if you don’t want to. Pick one for the drive out and maybe one for the drive home, skip the rest, and repeat your family’s favorites until they become the soundtrack of your season.

1. The Windshield Gratitude Lap

Going around the car, each person names three things they’re thankful for — but with one rule: at least one has to be about today. The early alarm, the teammate who made them laugh, the bad call they survived, the gas-station donut. Gratitude is a muscle, and travel season is the gym. Naming the good out loud reframes a long, tiring day as a gift, which is a quiet act of worship even when nobody calls it that.

2. One Verse, One Question

Pick a single short verse, read it twice, and ask one open question. That’s the whole thing. You might land on Colossians 3:23 — the one about working at whatever you do as if you’re doing it for the Lord — and ask, “What would it look like to play for an audience of One today?” Or 1 Corinthians 16:14, on doing everything in love, and ask, “Who on your team is easy to forget to love?” One verse goes deeper than ten when you actually sit with it. Let the silence do some work; don’t rush to fill it.

3. The Highlight and the Hard Thing

Each person shares one highlight from the day and one hard thing — then the family prays about both. The highlight teaches your kids to thank God for good gifts; the hard thing teaches them to take real struggles to Him instead of stuffing them down. This one is gold after a rough game, because it gives a frustrated kid a healthy place to put the disappointment. You’re modeling that faith isn’t only for the good days.

4. Pray for the Other Team

This one rewires something deep. Before or after a game, pray out loud for the other team — by name if you know them — for their safety, their families, and their joy in the game. It’s almost impossible to stay bitter toward an opponent you’ve genuinely prayed for. In a sports culture that can curdle into us-versus-them in a hurry, teaching your kids to bless the people across the field is countercultural in the best way. It quietly cuts the idol of winning back down to size.

5. The Two-Minute Examen for Kids

Borrowed from an old Christian practice and shrunk to kid-size. Ask two questions: “Where did you feel closest to God today?” and “Where did you feel farthest away?” Younger kids can swap those for “most happy” and “most upset.” Then thank God for the close moments and ask His help with the hard ones. Two minutes, eyes open, no pressure. Done a few times, it trains your kids to notice God in an ordinary day — which might be the most valuable thing a travel weekend ever gives them.

Keep It Short, Keep It Real

If you forget all five, remember this: a small, consistent, genuine moment beats a long, forced, awkward one every single time. You’re not running a chapel service from the driver’s seat. You’re just turning windshield time into the kind of conversation your family might not have anywhere else. That’s exactly the pattern God handed parents in the first place:

“You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.”

— Deuteronomy 6:7 (WEB)

“When you walk by the way” is just an ancient way of saying “on the drive.” Turns out the minivan counts.

From Our Family

Some of the realest faith conversations we’ve ever had as a family happened doing exactly this — not in a pew, but somewhere around mile marker 80 with a cooler wedged between the seats. We’ve fumbled plenty of them too; we’ve started a devotional only to have it dissolve into an argument about the aux cord. That’s okay. The point was never a perfect moment. The point was showing up, again and again, in the time we already had.

Take One on the Road This Weekend

Want these in a format you can actually use at 7 a.m. without thinking? Our free Faithful Season Survival Kit includes a five-day road-trip devotional built for exactly this. And if the bigger challenge at your house is the calendar — Sunday games, and a coach who keeps scheduling them — start with how to keep your family in church during travel ball season and what to say when a coach schedules a Sunday tournament.

Pick one devotional, try it on the very next drive, and see what God does with five honest minutes.

— Shane & Carlie