Family Worship…

Family worship. Ever done it? No… not placing your family above all else, even God (we’ve all probably done that before). I’m talking about worshipping God together as a family.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve done just that… making family worship a regular part of our lives, making time every morning and night to spend together as a family singing, praying, and reading the Bible together. It’s been incredible to see my kids picking up God’s word… as I ask questions each night about that morning’s readings, it’s just awesome to hear them answer eagerly, often in detail that simply blows me away. And to see answered prayers is such a huge blessing.

After nearly two months of this, I look back and wonder… why did we wait until just recently to do this? It’s been such a great thing… why had we never made a focused commitment to this before now?

It’s not hard to come up with some reasons:

— Time. Family worship takes time, and we all know how difficult it is to find time to do anything these days, let alone fit another daily activity or two into our schedules.

— Preparation. Family worship takes preparation… after all, we’re talking about teaching God’s word to our kids. It’s easy to fall into the “I’m not qualified” thought process, or the “I don’t know where to start” mindset.

— Commitment. Given the above, family worship takes serious commitment. Experts say it takes about 40 days of doing something for it to become habitual, and it’s hard to stay on the bandwagon!

— Spiritual warfare. Oh yes, this is a very real thing. The last thing Satan really wants is for a family to be fully committed to God, and to spend time worshipping Him each day. Kids will fight. Things will go wrong. Time will find itself even more difficult to come by. It’s easy to question whether it’s really worth it all.

You know what, though?

Family worship, even though sometimes difficult for all of the above reasons… it’s worth it. And surprisingly, it’s not as difficult as you might think. Here’s what works for us:

— Curriculum. You really don’t need anything elaborate… we don’t have anything formal. We’ve just started reading the Bible together in chunks each day, going straight through a selected book of the Bible (we’ve started with Matthew). Just reading it to your kids and asking questions to help them recount what they’ve heard and apply it simply doesn’t take much preparation.

— Scheduling. We’ve coupled family worship with breakfast. The kiddos have gotta eat, right? Start the day off right with them with some family time around the breakfast table. We call it “Bible and Breakfast”, and it works great for us.

— Typical morning worship. Morning family worship typically is about fifteen minutes max… we take a reasonable chunk of Scripture (maybe 8-10 verses), read, and ask a few questions as the kids eat. When we’re through with the passage, we pray about what we’ve learned and about the day ahead.

— Typical evening worship. Our evening worship typically occurs about 15-30 minutes before bedtime. We sing a couple songs (I play guitar, but you could sing along to your favorite worship songs or sing acapella), then review the Scripture we read that morning. We wrap up with prayer time, going over prayer requests, praying for the day ahead, etc.

— Prayer. If you want your kids to pray, you have to model it. So prayer is part of everything we do with family worship. In fact, we keep a prayer journal to track prayer requests… we don’t lose track of long-standing requests that way, but also get to see how God is answering prayer!

Give it a shot, Christian moms and dads (especially you dads… LEAD your family!). If it works for us, it can work for you. You’ll never regret stepping out in faith to do this, and you’ll be amazed at how your kids grow in their faith. You’ll be amazed at how YOU grow in your faith.

Let me know how it goes, and if there’s any way in which I can help you to make family worship part of the lifeblood of your family.