Chapter 1: What is family worship and why is it important?
I remember my son just hearing him pray and saying, oh, God, would you give me more love for you?
That's a good prayer.
I remember my daughter praying right after him, oh, God, would you help me to obey you more? Oh, that's a good prayer. There are good nights like that. It's well worth persevering in and keeping after. Would you practice family worship for the benefit of your soul and for the benefit of your family members or those in your house and for the good and welfare of the church. It's a blessing.
It's a means of grace.
Despite how foreign the idea of family worship might be for a Christian living in the 21st century, and the obstacles we might face as we try and implement the practice, as Jason Holopoulos just said, it is a means of grace. It's not intended to be a means of guilt. So, how do we start this habit? I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and that will be the question we answer today on Renewing Your Mind. Rev.
Holopoulos is our guest teacher today, and he has taught this 11-message series on worship, reminding us that we were created for worship, and that as Christians, we have been recreated for worship. We'll send you this series, taught with a pastor's heart, plus a physical copy of the study guide, when you donate before midnight tomorrow at renewingyourmind.org.
As we approach Christmas and a new year, what a wonderful reality to focus on, that as believers, we have been recreated for worship. Well, here's Jason Holopoulos on the how of family worship.
Our last time together, we looked at family worship together a little bit. And we looked at the why question of family worship. What I want to do is just look at it a little more practically together. It's something that I think is foreign to a lot of us or most of us, at least the people I have pastored over the years, my own experience. This just isn't something that...
is regular in the evangelical church over the last couple of generations. And so I just want to give some practical helps, things that I have learned from others and that I've learned over the course of years of doing this in my own family and pastoring different people through thinking about family worship. I want to revisit this.
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Chapter 2: What practical tips can help families start worshiping together?
And so my kids, they like to cook with me, especially my son. We cook all the time together and we bake together all the time. We like to watch Julia Childs on TV in her cooking show, and we like to sit there and mock her voice while she is cooking. That is part of what we like to do as Holopoluses. We like to travel. We like to go out to eat every once in a while.
We love to play board games together as a family. But what I want to center our family more than anything else is that we're worshipers of Christ. I hope that when they leave the home, They can say, you know what, our parents, they weren't perfect parents. They actually weren't very good in a lot of ways.
But one thing that they did was bring us before the throne of Christ regularly and constantly in our home. We couldn't leave our home without encountering Christ regularly. It just centers the home, just has a way of doing that. Probably seven or eight years or so ago, we were having a conference at our church and there were people coming in from all over the state to come to the conference.
And I was standing outside greeting people and there was a young woman that came to the conference that I hadn't seen for 10 years. I had been her pastor at another church and she came running up to me and she said, pastor, pastor. I said, yeah, oh, so good to see you. And she said, oh, you changed my life. Well, what was that? And she said, it was a weekend that you and your wife went away.
Do you remember that? I hadn't remembered it until she recalled it. She said, you guys went away for a weekend. We were first-time parents with our daughter. And We went away for a weekend, and it was the first time we were leaving our daughter with someone. We don't have family that live near us. And here was this young couple in the church, church plant, that we were leaving our daughter with.
And we were just going away for the weekend. And we left the detailed list as neurotic first-time parents. You do this at this minute and this at that minute. And one of the things we listed was family worship. And she said, you just wrote there, after dinner,
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Chapter 3: How can family worship serve as a means of grace?
You'll do family worship. Grayson will know what to do. Just tell her family worship. She'll go sit on the couch, and you just open the passage. She'll flip open to the page we're on. You just read a short passage, allow her to pray the Lord's Prayer, and then you sing the B-I-B-L-E. And she said, we did that. She said, we didn't know it could be that easy. And it changed our marriage.
It changed our homes. I found the same thing. I was candidating to be a pastor. It was the first church I went to. I said last time together, I had made a wreck of family worship with my wife. We went to candidate at this church in North Carolina.
We were staying with a family in their basement, and the father came to the top of the stairs on the candidating weekend I was there about becoming their pastor, and he yells down, do you want to join us for family worship? Well, you can't say no on a candidating weekend to that.
And so we went upstairs and there they were, the whole family sitting in their family room, younger kids sitting on older kids' laps. The Bible's open on their laps. And they just read the word, they prayed, and then they sang the doxology. And I remember my wife and I walking down the stairs, back to go downstairs, and we looked at each other and we had the exact same comment this woman had.
We didn't know it could be that easy. It's that easy. And once you start doing it, it just changes your home. It centers your home upon Christ. It's very easy. Now it centers your home upon Christ. It encourages our children in Christ. As we said, we want to pass on the faith to them, and this encourages them in Christ.
I remember sitting with a woman years ago, a Christian woman, where she said, ah, she said, my one goal is to send my daughter out into the world as a fully functioning adult. No, that's not sufficient for us as Christians. We want to send our children out into the world as fully functioning Christian adults. We want them being worshipers of God. Now, I can't force that. I can't cajole that.
I can't cause that to happen. But just keep putting my children in the way of God's means of grace, where he works by his word and allow him to work. This is one of the best ways to encourage them in Christ. and encourage all of us in Christ. Third, it encourages Christian character. You practice family worship. Home is where we let our hair down, if you have hair.
It's where we most naturally act like who we are. And it's awfully hard to practice family worship when you've just been yelling at each other, when you've just been angry, when you've been selfish all day. It's just hard to do that.
When you know that you're going to gather together and you're going to open the Bible together and you're going to pray together, it encourages Christian character in everybody in the home because you're going to expose your hearts together as you sit there before the throne of God. It also encourages peace in the home.
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Chapter 4: What are the benefits of practicing family worship in the home?
Whatever it is, find the time that works for your family. But whatever it is, make it consistent, the same time, so that everybody knows this is when we do it. My kids were little. They knew that when we got done with dinner and after we got done with the dishes, I didn't even have to tell them. They just knew this is what we're going to do. We're going to do family worship.
And they would ask, if we weren't doing it that night, are we not doing family worship? And make it the same place. The same place where there aren't distractions. For us, it's always been in the living room, on the couch. So the kids, literally after we would do dishes, would just run and they would jump on the couch. And there we would do family worship. Make it same time, same place.
And make it consistent. As I told you last time, if you've missed a night and you realize it, that's fine. You miss two nights, you miss three nights. You miss a week or a couple of weeks and you realize it. You're not starting the wheel back up. You're not starting all over. It's a means of grace. This is how God just communicates his grace to us. So you just pick it right back up.
There's no guilt. Now, it may be that we need to adjust our schedules if we've missed four or five nights together or we've missed a week together or two weeks together. We need to make it a priority. But no guilt. It's a means of grace for us. So with that, be flexible. Some days just don't work. just don't work and it's not the end of the world. So you're flexible.
And then lastly, have the right attitude and persevere. Have the right attitude in it. Is this something that you want to express joy in so that the rest of your family members see joy in it? And you keep at it. You just keep at it. There's some nights that it is frankly just duty and it's arduous, especially with young children.
It feels like, oh, I feel like you've just been wrestling more than you have been worshiping with children on the couch or on the floor. But there are other nights that it's just glorious. It's wonderful. Some nights they will get distracted, you will get distracted, and I feel like, oh, we just went through the motions and that was about it.
It was a night, I remember my kids, we were reading some passage, and I don't know how, but my son started talking about My Little Pony in the middle of family worship, and My daughter, that of course set her off, and so we were on the My Little Pony path. Then there was no getting off the path.
No matter what I said, all my erudite commentary upon the Scripture meant nothing compared to Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle. We were going nowhere. And so it was, you know what, let's just close in prayer. Let's give this one an amen. But then there are other nights.
Other nights, I remember one weekend when my wife was away on a trip, and my kids are sitting there, and we're doing family worship up on their beds that night, getting them ready for bed. And I remember reading the scriptures, and I remember my son saying, Daddy, would you just read more? Now, maybe he was prolonging going to bed, but it's also he wanted to read more.
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