Family Worship in 2009
— Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 —
On our recent Chrismas drive from Kentucky to Texas, our family visited an elderly relative in a nursing home in Dallas, my wife’s 100 year old great aunt. The highlight of the visit, I think, consisted of our 5 year old and our 2 year old quoting Scripture to dear Aunt Esther. The boys quoted Luke 2:7-14, Psalm 121, and Psalm 23. The little guy quoted John 3:16, and then as a family we sang “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” and “How Firm a Foundation.” We prayed for her, and we were back on the road.
There’s nothing special about us as parents, and our kids are not geniuses (well, we’ll see–their mother is really sharp). They were able to quote those passages and sing those songs for the simple reason that kids are sponges, and that’s what we regularly do in family worship. It’s amazing how sticky their memories are. I don’t think we could have done anything else that would have blessed Aunt Esther more than show up with our kids and have them speak the word of God.
Family worship doesn’t have to be complicated, and it doesn’t take someone with a seminary degree to pull it off. In the morning at the breakfast table we work on a memory verse together. In the evenings right before we put the boys in bed we read a passage or two from the Bible, say the Apostles’ Creed, sometimes sing a hymn, then we pray and put them in bed. That’s it. That’s family worship. The boys have Psalm 23 memorized because it was the passage we read every night for several weeks. The boys had it memorized after about a week. We kept reading it for a couple more weeks until my wife and I had it! We didn’t set out to memorize it. We just read it every night until they were saying it along with us, and before long we could all say it without looking at the Bible. The same thing happened with Psalm 121 and Luke 2:7-14. Now we’re reading Psalm 67. The boys have it, but I keep messing up the order of the phrases, so we’re still reading it.
I pray that our family worship will not only pay dividends in the nursing home with an aged relative or friend from church. I pray that the seeds sown in the lives of our sons will bear fruit. That they will be oaks of righteousness, planted by the stream of living water, bearing fruit in season, filled with the fruit of righteousness to the glory and praise of God.
If you have a family, I commend this to you. If you want to read more on it, Denny Burk has a post on Don Whitney’s helpful book. May the Lord bless the reading and the hearing of his word, and may he save our little ones and do mighty things in their lives.
“Tall oaks from little acorns grow!” Great Expectations
I am so blessed to read what you and your family achieve and visiting your great aunt and all. I sometimes have bible study with my family. My children are older, youngest turning 12 this year, the other two 20 and 18. I find the youngest soaks the word and is more ready to get on with it. My wife however on the other hand is more critical, restrictive and selective on how deep the studies should be. Thank you for opening this up for me. I sometimes think or feel like I am not on the right track. Now I don’t have to worry anymore. I think from now on we will just read, study, and absorb as much as our capabilities without feeling any pressure at all.
Inspiring and affirming! My husband and I have had morning and evening devotions with our 4 children - and with three now on their own and continuing to enjoy close fellowship with our Lord I am thankful for our Lord’s faithfullness in His promises - His word does not return void! May His word reach deep in our hearts!
Thank you for being obedient to the Holy Spirit on this subject. It’s so easy to get “lazy” as parents especially when our schedules are so busy, yet all of that will soon pass away and even become a fading memory, if remembered at all. However, the Word of God will stand forever. It is so awesome to see the Word of God be revealed as you and your wife have set aside to truly “TRAIN up a child in the way they should go”…not just teach, but TRAIN…in other words, you have lived by example to show your children the way they should go, “and when they are old they will not depart from the way they are to go”…that is a promise from the Word of God! God’s promises are YES and it is our job to say AMEN! Thank you for sharing this, and my husband and I will do what you have encouraged us to do. Thank you Lord for Your Spirit that leads us in the way we are to go. God bless you all and know that HIS glory is your rear guard!
Thank you so much for those inspiring words and keep up the good work. I miss spending time with our little girls and watching them grow in the word. My oldest daughter has two children of her own now and the youngest has a son on the way…I will be passing this article on to them. My grandchildren are little sponges as well. God loves the little children!
I am a missionary working in Senegal and have found with our 6 and 5 year old that the simple devotion like you have described is very effective in our family. The kids do “soak” it up readily and are far better than I at learning the Scriptures. I have found this also and effective way to share the story of Jesus with people that I am in contact with often. A short verse to talk about or a short story from the Bible. It’s amazing how many people want to hear these stories and learn what God has to say, especially when we repeat a story that we really know becasue we’ve read it a million times and repeat the story with excitement and passion. This is a great word for us all.