This past Sunday I encouraged all the parents at our church to lead their children in family worship. Just start by aiming to do it three days per week and increase as God gives you the ability. So I thought I would give a simple suggestion for what to do. There are lots of different ways you may find to do it. But this is what we typically do. I hope it may be of help to you in some way.
It’s really simple: 1) we read one chapter of the Bible together aloud, 2) we talk about what we just read, 3) we talk about how to pray for each other what we just read, 4) we pray aloud for the person sitting next to us. Tonight our family worship lasted about 20 minutes. Sometimes it’s longer, sometimes shorter. It’s good to be flexible.
So tonight we started reading through Job together. Chapter one has twenty two verses. We divided them up evenly and everyone took a turn reading. Everyone participated. Then after we read I asked what I always ask, “What grabbed your attention from this chapter?” And wow, have you read Job chapter one? There are some huge things in it that will grab you. So we talked about it for awhile. Our children asked some very insightful questions. Jeni and I answered and also posed some questions of our own. Then we prayed the points of the chapter for each other. What a blessing from God, again.
Some basics of the faith filter down into the heart as we do this. One, the Bible is true. Two, our children become very comfortable reading aloud together. Three, our children become good at noticing what is in the text. They are actually become good expositors of the text simply by reading and looking at it. Four, they are becoming theologically savvy by talking about what they just read. And five, they are learning that God gave us His word for more than just giving us answers to big questions. He means for us to be shaped by the word, to pray it for ourselves and each other, to be convicted by it so that we confess sin and unbelief and become changed.
Give it a try. Or craft your own way of doing it. There’s no perfect way. The perfect part of this is the Scripture itself. I hope you will devote yourself to spending this valuable time with your family in God’s word. And just see what it will do.
