The Importance of Family Worship

All right. If everybody could pick their favorite seat. You guys have entirely too much fun. During greeting time.

I've heard this time affectionately referred to as halftime. Anyway, I wanna let you guys know what's going on for the rest of our worship time. Our beloved pastor Milton Vincent is doing some out of state counseling and. It just so happens to be in his hometown of Indiana, right?

So I don't know what's going on there no so anyway we've planned to have Doctor Baker speak this morning for the master's College. He spoke at the, men's retreat and we were really blessed at that time. And also had a, we, he, he had the opportunity to share this morning during one of our breakout sessions for the seminar. Let me just give you a couple announcements here real quick that we do wanna draw your attention to.

One is we wanna remind you about the Christmas program tonight. Raise your hand if you're bringing friends. boo hiss. OK, this is an, this is an evangelism outreach.

We need you to bring friends, family, people that need to hear the gospel, and, and so please bring people tonight. We also need you to bring cookies. We've had a terrible time trying to find people with the gift of cookie baking, and, and so our refreshments are really down. And so if we could get some people to see Andrea Rojas in the back here, Andrea.

and, and let her know you're gonna bring cookies. That would be really great. And this is gonna be an awesome time, so I encourage you to come. It starts at 6 o'clock.

Also, we wanna remind you again, as Ron mentioned earlier, gifts for Jesus. This is something is a tradition, part of our church on the. Service right before Christmas we bring gifts up here. What they are is monetary gifts like checks are cash, wrapped as gifts, and you bring them up and all of that offering goes to a particular missionary.

And this year our missionary is the Whitworths, and they are missionaries to Utah, with what used to be called UFM Crossworld, Crossworld, OK. And so, anyway, that's next week, so I wanna encourage you guys to prepare for that. Also, we want to acknowledge a distinguished guest this morning all the way from Uganda. We have I'm gonna butcher this.

I know Sam Bengali. Kabuka. That's right. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Sam, for being here. He is a pastor of of a Calvary Chapel, and he's also director of Bethel Junior School, correct? And friends with the Paynes and so we're just so thankful that you could be here with us and come all the way to Uganda just to hear Doctor Ernie Baker speak. It's just amazing.

So So, I, I, if you wanna come and, and get to know Sam afterwards, I guess find the pains and you'll probably find Sam if you wanna get to know him a little bit. Are you guys going anywhere? Well, I don't know if I should announce that, but. And I believe that's it.

again, Doctor Baker, Ernie, he prefers you to call him Ernie. He's rebuked me a few times for calling him Doctor Baker. So Ernie is just a neat guy and, from again the master's college, and he is here to, minister to us on the subject of family worship. Let's please welcome Ernie.

Thanks Mike. You guys have a great church family. every time I come here I just grow to love you more and more. this is, we're, we're feeling like we're becoming part of your church family.

This is my 3rd time to speak here and then doing the men's retreat, so we may adopt you if that would be all right with you. We, we like you a lot. And Carly, it's nice to see you. Your suffering is over for a semester.

Carly's one of my students, so she gets to take a break now. I'll tell you what, why don't we, pray, and this is an unusual message for me. In fact, I'm viewing it more as a, a, talk. This is a just me, sharing my heart and something that is very important to us as a family.

So if you could get yourself out of. Don't expect this formal preaching expository message mode into this is a pastor sharing his heart mode that's where I'm gonna be this morning. this is really an unusual type of message for me because I've spent this, by the way, this is my twenty-sixth, today is my twenty-sixth anniversary of being in full-time ministry. And it's very, special to be able to be in a pulpit this morning sharing God's word.

It was 26 years ago, this evening that I was ordained, to full-time ministry. So thank you for allowing me the, the, privilege of sharing with you today. So let's, pray and then we're gonna look at some various passages. I've spent 26 years being an expository pastor, so doing a topical message feels a little awkward to me.

but we're gonna do it anyway, and I'm hoping to build a theology of family worship with you this morning and show you the strategic significance of spending time on a regular basis as a family worshiping the Lord. So that's where we're headed this morning and let's pray first. Let's talk to our Lord again. Father, I'm in awe of who you are.

I'm in awe of what Christmas represents, and after all these years of thinking about your word and reading Isaiah and reading the fulfillments in the New Testament, I stand amazed. I, I fall at your feet in worship just amazed. I, I find the truths of Christmas mind boggling and soul satisfying and mind stretching and. I thank you Lord that we have substance to our relationship with you that this is not myths, this is based upon your word which is a wonderfully because of you it's a wonderfully historically reliable document and we're thank you that our faith we thank you that our faith has substance.

I thank you Lord for that one of those last songs that we were able to sing and just dreaming about what it's gonna be like to be in heaven. Lord, we are so anticipating that we know that. Lord, that life is painful and full of suffering, and you are a great high priest that can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, and we are looking forward to seeing you face to face. Thank you that you give us reprieves in the midst of, what can be a very hard year with things like Christmas, and we get to celebrate and I pray that each family here would have a wonderful celebration that they would celebrate.

Hard that they would not celebrate in a a just a meek way but they would celebrate in a robust way because of the relationship they have with you and we have the true substance of Christmas as Christians and may our families reflect. That we have a meaty relationship with you and that we are finding you as our deepest joy, our deepest satisfaction. in life Father, may the words in my mouth. And the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight and I especially want to pray for Pastor Milton and I thank you for him and his heart for you.

I know he loves you. I know that he's a man that is following hard after you as Psalm 63 says, and I pray, Lord, for your blessing on him in this counseling, situation that he's in, and please give him and others involved wisdom. thank you, Lord, for his heart as a pastor that he would invest in a person, to this extent, and I appreciate that so much, Lord. We love you, and I thank you for your word.

Please guide us as we study your word now, and I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well I'm sure all of you have Christmas traditions and I just heard a really interesting one recently last Sunday night with our church fellowship group we went around and we were talking about Christmas traditions and one of them shared the Christmas pickle tradition. Here's their tradition with the Christmas pickle.

Have you ever wondered. How do you choose who gets to open their present first? Well, I'm about to give you a solution to that. This family has what they call the Christmas pickle.

And they have an ornament that is like a pickle. And it's hidden on the Christmas tree and the child that finds the pickle first, that's the one that gets to open their presents first so that's how they solve that that dilemma, the Christmas pickle. So you heard it first here if this spreads across the country, you heard it, you heard it first here. In our family, we've had a tradition until we came to California a year and a half years ago.

We had a tradition of for the last 14 years in Virginia that we would go cut our Christmas tree. That's hard to do in Cali Southern California. Find a place where you can cut a Christmas tree and you don't have to take out a second mortgage to, to do it, but what we would do is we would go to this place down in the valley. In the mountains of Virginia and this guy had a Christmas tree farm and we would, we have a large family, 6 children, so we drove a large van we had a 15 passenger size van that we drove most of our, our years in Virginia and we would take this van down there and the guy would just, he knew our van, white van, he'd smile when we drive onto the Christmas tree farm because he knew what we were gonna do.

So we'd go pick out our tree usually we had high ceilings at our house in Virginia. We'd pick out a 10-12 foot Christmas tree and he loved it because people didn't want those big of that big of a Christmas tree. We'd cut a 12 ft Christmas tree and we'd have him net it bind it, and then we'd open up the back of the van rather than putting it on top of the van we would slide it up through the seats of the van so it would take up the whole center. Of the van and then the kids would climb in and just pack themselves around all around the Christmas tree and then it was our tradition to go out, out to eat and we did that for years and years, 14 years in Virginia that's how we get our our Christmas tree and it was typically the Saturday after Thanksgiving that was our tradition.

Lots of other traditions. I'm sure you have traditions here at Christmas. I wanna tell you about another tradition we have as a family that is a year round tradition. It's much more important than cutting a Christmas tree and then going out to eat.

A tradition that we have as a family is that most evenings or sometime during the day, depending on schedules, usually the evening, we have a time of family worship. Where that we get together as a family, sing, read scripture, maybe read a book together and pray together. And what I hope to do this morning is show you in the brief time we have the strategic nature of having a family worship time together. Now I'll warn you right up front, this is like trying to find a in the Bible or this is like trying to find Sunday school in the Bible.

you are not gonna hear me say, and my life is about Bible interpretation. You're not gonna hear me say this morning, chapter and verse. That here's chapter and verse that you have to have a family worship time to be a Christian family, but what you are gonna be hearing me say is that just as Ana is a wonderful extension of biblical principles and just as Sunday school is a wonderful extension of biblical principles that family worship is most definitely a wonderful extension.

Of biblical principles.

So the first point this morning is I want to establish a theology of family worship. I want to put together some passages that have shaped me. Even while my beloved wife was carrying our first child and we started to think about the significance of family worship, what were some passages that shaped me? I also brought as illustrations this morning my children.

I, I actually thought about bringing. the 10 year old along and she's not very shy. I was gonna have her get up here and give you a testimony. She's our youngest, Joanna, and have her give you a testimony, but what I did instead is I had all the children write out testimonies and my wife of the significance of family worship in our family.

So throughout the message you're gonna be hearing my wife and hearing my children speak about the significance of family worship, to our family. I want to start with Joyce, and you can turn to 2 Timothy chapter 3 to begin with as we look at a theology of family worship. I hope this will be really practical. I'm gonna end with some suggestions.

I'm gonna talk about the theology of family worship, the advantages to family worship, and then some suggestions for family worship. 2 Timothy chapter 3. Here's our 10 year old speaking while you turn to 2 Timothy chapter 3. And while I turn to 2 Timothy chapter 3.

This is Joy, our 10 year old. Family devotions helps me learn the Bible and God's word. We sing and read either from the Bible or devotional books. Right now, we are reading a book because it's Christmas, I would add, a book called Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, and it's by John Piper, which is a great book.

We sing songs with the piano, guitar, or trumpet. I play the trumpet. I don't get to play it too often, unless, Jonathan's not home because he plays the guitar and piano. Usually we get off on what we call bunny trails, but it makes devotions even more fun.

When we can't all be together for devotions, my dad gets sad. That's true. I'm glad we have devotions. And here's our oldest talking.

This is our married daughter back in Virginia. Family devotions each evening were a time when the whole family was together even though we were all busy with individual things. We were taught that it was an important time because worshiping together and spending time together as a family is important. I believe our family was made stronger and more unified because we spent that half hour together almost every evening that I can remember.

A theology of family worship. 2 Timothy chapter 3. The first point that I would make under a theology of family worship is that the word is to be central to a home. This passage shaped me years and years ago.

The word is not just central to a church, the word, the Bible is central to a home. Look at 2 Timothy chapter 3, and there's a really interesting word here. 2 Timothy 3, let me give you a little bit of the context. The context is my Bible says as an introduction to this chapter, difficult times will come.

I don't know what yours says, but that's what mine gives as an introduction. Verse one says, but realize this, that in the last days, difficult times will come. And then Paul describes those difficult times to Timothy. And here's Paul's point.

Timothy, in these difficult times, you cling to the word, and this is what you've been taught to do, and don't miss this. Timothy, this is what you've been taught to do from the time you were a child. 2 Timothy chapter 3. Verse 13.

But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. So we're in the context of difficult times. You, however, Timothy, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them. And he's referring back to his mother and his grandmother.

And probably Paul himself. That from childhood. You have known the sacred writings, which are able to give you wisdom that leads to salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training and righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate equipped for every good work.

I would say so that the child of God is equipped for every good work. we live in difficult times and as I think about equipping my children for their life in the future, I think about them growing up in a home where the Bible is central because this is the book that equips them for life. It's the book where all scripture is inspired and is profitable for teaching reproof. So that they're equipped for anything, for every good work.

Now I want to point out to you an interesting word in verse 15 that from childhood, this is not the normal word for child in Greek. This is a rare word which I find really interesting, especially here at Christmas, because here's the word. refus in Greek from a newborn child is literally what it says. It's the same word that's used, remember the story, and this is appropriate for Christmas, where Elizabeth is carrying John the Baptist.

And when she hears the voice of Mary coming to visit with Elizabeth, the babe leaps in her womb. That's the word that really shaped my thinking about my family and what type. Of atmosphere do I want my family to grow up in? I want them to grow up in a Bible saturated home.

I want them to grow up in a home that's saturated with truth. John 17:17 says, sanctify them through truth. Jesus praying, sanctify them through truth. Your word is truth.

How are our children going To be able to handle the suffering of life and the difficulties of life and the perplexities of life. Well, right in the context of that type of thinking, the perplexities of life. 2 Timothy chapter 3, Paul says, Timothy, cling to the word, the same word that's been ingrained to you from the time that you were a newborn. Baby.

So that shaped my thinking with family worship that I would need my family to realize that the word is central. Now turn to Ephesians chapter 6, if you would. Second point under theology of family worship. It's the father's responsibility.

It's a father's responsibility. Ephesians chapter 6 verse 4. So if you don't choose to do this, I would ask you men, what will be your strategy to carry out this command of the Lord. Ephesians 6:4 says, Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

This has been my strategy for carrying out that command. I'm to bring up my children in the discipline. And admonition of the Lord or discipline and instruction of the Lord. The Paidea.

And the newheia. We get pedagogy from that. And then my type of counseling, noetic counseling, is the second one, instruction, instructing people, instructing my children in the ways of the Lord. This helps me fulfill my responsibility as a man.

I've been asked the question before, well, what if my husband won't lead family worship? And I would say then, ladies, That if your husband doesn't object, you do it because you don't sacrifice your children's discipleship on the altar of your husband. You need to be discipling your children, and if the husband's not objecting, it gets a little trickier if the husband objects. if he's not objecting, then you do it because someone needs to be discipling the children and bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Let me interject at this 0.2 more testimonies. For my children This is Joel, age 17, this next one, and then our 21-year-old son after that. Joel, this 17 year old. Family devotions is a special time for me individually.

It's a time for me to just sit and enjoy worshiping the Creator of the universe and with my family in particular, and then he has an exclamation point. It's a time to enjoy fellowshipping with my family. Sitting and worshiping with my family is such an awesome experience, I can't describe it. Without family devotions growing up, I would probably not be a Christian today.

It is through devotions as a family that I came to Christ and repented of my sins. After salvation, devotions helped me to grow abundantly in my walk with God. I thank God for the family I have and the amazing parents I have. I didn't pay him to write that.

And how much they love him and how much they have helped me grow and giving me the privilege of being able to be part of family devotions. I think I can truly say my children would miss it if we did not have family devotions. I would start getting questions from them of, Dad, what's happening, if we didn't have family devotions. Here's our 21 year old Josh, who's a Bible student at, a Bible major at Masters.

He writes. Having family devotional time was really good for our family. It helped us to learn more about each other. That's certainly true, and get to know each other better.

Sometimes it was just a time to hang out. Other times were serious times of worship and Bible study. It was a time for our family to get together at the end of each day to pray and read God's word. It has definitely helped us worship together and helped us as a family to be in the word more.

So we've looked at 2 Timothy chapter 3 in a theology of family worship. The word is to be central, Ephesians 6:4, that it's the father's responsibility. Another verse that comes to mind is that famous one in Proverbs 22:6, Train up a child in the way that he should go. And I would say to you men and women, what is going to be your method for doing that?

What is going to be your method for discipling your children? Now maybe you have the wonderful advantage or have the advantage of a smaller family, us with 6 children, it would be, we'd be all we'd be doing is discipling children, I. Wouldn't be able to go out and earn a living for my family if I was spending all the time discipling my children, so I couldn't spend individual time every week in discipleship with my children. So my chosen method for discipling my children was the family worship time, which doesn't mean that I didn't spend time individually with my children.

Which we do that also, but the more consistent time is family worship time. Third, Under it being a father's responsibility. So it's the words, I wanted you to understand Ephesians 6:4, the words nurture and admonition that it's my responsibility as a man. And third, this is a way for me and leadership in my home to fulfill the great commission.

When I hear the great commission in Matthew 28, this, I do not hear this. I do not hear go into all the world and make disciples, meaning go tell the world about Jesus. That's not what I hear in the great commission. What I hear in the great commission is go make radical followers of Jesus Christ.

Go make disciples. The great commission is about discipleship, not just sharing the gospel. About Jesus, it is that, but it's even more so part of the great commission is what I'm doing with my family, and that is I want to see another generation of serious followers of Jesus Christ. I want to go make disciples.

I want to pass the baton on to the next generation of serious followers of Jesus Christ. But also our devotional time as a family has turned into an evangelistic opportunity on a number of occasions. The question arises when I share this material, when I've taught it before, well, what do you do if you have company in your home? Well, it's who you are.

You have family devotions. that's what we do. If company's in our, at our home, I just politely say to them, typically what we do right now is we read the Bible and sing together and pray together and if, you would like, we would love for you to be part of it if you would like to be part of it. we've had unsaved, obviously Muslims in our home.

We, adopted a Pakistani student when we were in in Blacksburg because it's a large university town, Virginia Tech, and one of our ministries there is to adopt international students and we adopted. An unbelieving Muslim because we wanted to reach out to the Islamic world and he's very committed. He was a master's degree student and very committed to Islam and we invited him to be just part of our family and he came and ate meals with us and on a number of occasions when it was time for family worship I would just say to him, Abbas.

we're about to sing and pray and read the Bible together.

Would you like to be part of it? And what? Every time he said yes, every time he saw Christians worshiping in a home, and it was a wonderful opportunity for us to reach out to a Muslim and show him that there's something superior in relationship with Jesus Christ, that this isn't this, there's joy, it's not this Allah's gonna strike me dead with a. Lightning bolt if I don't bow down and worship him, it's there's joy in relationship with Jesus Christ and see us joyfully singing praises to the Lord and then taking prayer requests and reading scripture and then going to the Lord in prayer and if you think about it, it was sad for us to leave Virginia because we had to leave a boss behind and you can pray for a boss.

I'm just just the other day it came to my mind it would be so joyful someday in heaven to have a boss. come up to us and, and greet us in heaven. That would be, be wonderful to know that the Lord was able to use us in even a small way. I'd like to have you turn to another passage that shaped my thinking with the theology of family worship, and that's Deuteronomy chapter 6.

Deuteronomy chapter 6. My third point, the first point of the theology of worship, the word is to be central in a home. Timothy experienced that from the time that he was a newborn baby. Secondly, it's a father's responsibility to bring children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

So if you're not going to do this, men or women, what will be your means to do this? Third, and maybe you'll come up with something else. But this is my method. Like Hana is a method and Sunday school is a method, this is my method for fulfilling these passages of scripture.

Third, I want my home, and this is where I could turn into preaching very easily. I want my home to be a God-saturated home. I want my home to be a God-saturated home. Deuteronomy chapter 6.

So, men, this will sound like the men's retreat for a few minutes here. At the men's retreat, what we talked about is that everybody's a worshiper. We were created to worship. I want the atmosphere of my home to be God.

when you walk into our home, not for Christmas, but when you walk into our home, there's a plaque. That's typically on the wall. My wife does a wonderful job decorating our home for Christmas. She just goes all out, so this plaque is down right now, but the rest of the year this plaque is up.

It's this wooden plaque. Anybody that walks into our home, if they look straight ahead, the first thing they're gonna see is home sweet home when Christ is first. That's the message we want to convey about our house. That the center of this home is a person named Jesus Christ.

We are not just a religious family. I'm sure some of our neighbors view us that way, but I want our family to be a God-saturated family. This is not just about religion. This is about a relationship with a person named Jesus Christ, and the atmosphere of my home is this person named Jesus Christ.

Deuteronomy chapter 6. This is the famous Shama passage, Hero Israel. Deuteronomy 6, this is quoted daily if I remember my Jewish history right. Who do good Jews believe the God God is?

Verse 4, hero Israel, that's Shama. Listen, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words which I'm commanding you today shall be on your heart, and you shall teach them diligently to your sons 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.

Do you get the Impression with that passage that Israel, your life is to be saturated with the one God. When you sit down, when you rise up, when you're walking, you're you're taking advantage of the opportunities to talk to your children about the true and living God that. He surrounds us. Acts 17 says in him we live and move and have our being.

Our life is saturated with relationship with the Creator of the universe, and what I want my children to realize is that that is the most satisfying way to live life. That the things of the world pale in comparison to relationship with the living God of the universe. I don't want my children to be allured by the things of the world. Now they will be because they have a sin nature.

Just like you have a sin nature, we're drawn. It's just our natural bent to worship the wrong things, but I want my children to be continually seeing there's something better when your heart is telling you this is the way to find satisfaction in love. Remember the bread of life, the one who's truly satisfying. Remember the one who is the fountain of living water, Jesus Christ.

He is the true well to be drinking from in life, and I'm hoping, I'm hoping that if my children have seen this in the home and seen it modeled in my life, they will not be as allured by the world, thinking that the things of the world will satisfy. I love this Augustine quote. It's probably his most famous quote, Oh Lord, you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. I know that's the history of my life, trying to find satisfaction, happiness, peace, contentment in life, and then finally realizing it comes in the one who calls himself the bread of life.

It comes in the one who is the fountain of living water. And I want my children to experience what I've experienced that comes out of true relationship with Jesus Christ. Maybe you need to correct your thinking a little bit. Maybe you think, and I'd like you to turn to the Psalms here as we continue to build a theology of worship.

In the home, maybe you think of worship is just what we did right now and you do it one day a week, but the biblical perspective of worship is this beloved, worship is every day and it culminates in one day of the week. Think if every follower of Jesus Christ had this perspective that life is about. Worship everything I'm doing throughout my life, the way I pay my bills, the way I do my family, the way I do my job as an act of worship, everything in life is an act of worship.

I spend time worshiping the creator of the universe throughout the week.

And then I get together. I have the wonderful privilege of getting together one day a week with my brothers and sisters in Christ who are also worshippers. Think what our worship times would be if every person was saying worship is every day, and then there's this, it's like. This crescendo building throughout the week.

I'm worshiping, you're worshiping, and then all the worshippers get together on Sunday and this massive praise breaks out to the creator of the universe because that's been my life throughout the week. Worship is not just Sunday. The the Bible paints a picture that worship is a daily activity. Psalm 34 says this verse 1.

I will bless the Lord at all times, not just Sunday. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. Worship is a way of life. It's the way you do your job.

It's the way you pay your bills. It's the way you pay your do your family. For example, let me just give you an example, an illustration of how you do that in a husband and wife relationship. How can you worship the Lord when you choose to love your spouse?

Maybe you're feeling resentful. And you, for some expectations not met. And you, as a follower of Jesus Christ, say, I am going to choose to love my husband, love my wife, in spite of the way I feel right now. Do what you've just done?

You've just worshiped. You have chosen to say, Lord, because you're more important in my life, I'm gonna sacrificially love this person that I'm not getting along with very well right now. That is a loving act of worship to the creator of the universe. Worship is a daily experience.

Here's another passage, Psalm 113. This is great. This is what I would like the atmosphere of my home to be. Psalm 113.

Everybody worships something. I would like the focus in my home to be this. Psalm 113. Praise the Lord, or hallelujah.

Praise those servants of the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forever, it's continual. From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised.

My life is saturated with worship. The who is this Lord? Verse 4, the Lord is high above all nations. His glory is above the heavens.

Who is like the Lord our God? And what is the answer to that? Go ahead and answer. Who is like the Lord our God?

No one. Who is enthroned on high, and who humbles himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth. He's so great that he has to humble himself to come look at the earth and see what's going on on the earth. I want my children to grow up with that high view of God.

Everything, a God-saturated view of life. Life is about worship, and I believe that it will be a more soul satisfying way for them to live life. Some of the men met my son Jonathan, our son Jonathan. He's 2 today.

And he leads worship at our church, Copper Hill Community Church. Jonathan learned how to play the guitar. Mainly so that he could play for family worship. And this is a significant illustration I believe of how the Lord can use family worship in your family's life.

The men that were at the retreat were led in worship by Jonathan. Well, he learned to play the guitar for family worship. He started playing around the age of 13, and now the Lord, and he's a music major now at the Master's College, so the Lord just developed that skill and he's just sharpened it and sharpened it and sharpened it. So that now he's using it and believes that that's how the Lord is leading him for full-time ministry.

Here's what Jonathan wrote in his testimony. Family devotions have helped me in several ways. First, at a young age, it helped me recognize the need and delight of spending time in God's word. It also acted as a daily refocusing of my mind and heart towards God and away from the distractions of this world.

Second. Family devotions as implied in the name have have helped our family not only stay close but grow closer over the years as we've gotten older and more busy. This closeness established by devotions helped the process of moving to California to be a process of glorifying God as a family through the hard times, and it was a difficult transition for our family. That God sovereignly allowed and planned.

Devotions tied our family together for the goal of God's glory. Third, in a more practical way, devotions helped me. Devotions have helped me develop the ability to lead worship. Playing music every day and leading worship every day has helped me grow musically and spiritually.

Just add a practical thing here and I'll make some more practical suggestions as we wrap things up. but men, I, I want my, I want my boys to know how to lead worship, so I'll delegate responsibilities to them so that they know how to do it. So last night or the night before, I forget which it was, Josh did the reading out of seeing and savoring Jesus Christ. Jonathan.

Planned the music for our family worship times trying to develop in them leadership skills because my goal is a God-saturated life and men who know how to lead in their family and I hope it takes root in their lives. So a God saturated home, that's the 3rd point of a theology of family worship. The word is central in a home that's clear in scripture. It's a father's responsibility, so I need some method to be able to do this.

Third, I want my home to be a God-saturated home, which I think is the best way to live life. Maybe my children will not be, hopefully, Lord willing, my children will not be as distracted by the allurements of the world. And let me add there, just a practical tip, we've tried to make Saturday night especially meaningful and have special prayer time on Saturday night to get ready for Sunday morning worship instead of being distracted. and this takes discipline where you say we're going to turn off the television and we're going to spend some time getting ready.

We pray for our pastor every Saturday night, which would be wonderful, wonderful for Milton if you as a church family on Saturday nights were praying for him. We tried to make sure our children got in bed at a decent time because Sunday morning worship is extremely important. And then we would spend extra time Saturday night just asking the Lord to help us be ready for Sunday morning. The 4th point, and then some practical tips as we wrap things up.

In the New Testament, the church is pictured as a family. We are brothers and sisters in Christ, right? that's what we call each other in the New Testament. We are brothers and sisters in Christ.

And what is, what does the family do in the New Testament? The family worships together. We as brothers and sisters in Christ worship together, and I would add that as my last point, as the icing on the cake in my thinking. That that's what Christians do.

Christians worship brothers and sisters in Christ worship. My family is to be a picture of the bigger thing that happens here throughout once a week what happens here my family is the picture of that in a smaller form. Let me read to you. Elizabeth's testimony.

And honey, I'm trying to find yours. What did I do with it? Oh no, I'm in trouble on the way home. You guys pray for me.

That's horrible. Is it over there? Maybe I have it stuck up here. Anyway, let me read Elizabeth's.

And then I have my wife's testimony here somewhere, which I wanted to conclude with. All right Elizabeth's, I think family devotions have helped us grow closer together as a family. Sometimes we have friends over and we sing songs and we read Bible verses and we just have a great time praising the Lord. If we don't understand some of the verses, we talk about them and dad will ask us questions about about them so we understand them better.

A theology of family worship. Here's some practical suggestions. Practical suggestions. I'd urge you to spend time praying together, reading scripture, maybe you don't have a musical family, you go, well, we can't sing together.

You can pray together and you can read scripture together. now that Jonathan has moved out and he's at at college, many times we just sing a cappella and we enjoy doing that. This has become a wonderful discipleship time to think about a Christian perspective on a number of different topics. So for family devotions, you go, you might be asking, well, what in the world do you cover?

Well, we've talked about abortion. What would be a Christian perspective on abortion? We, after Hurricane Katrina and after the tsunami in India, we talked about how does a Christian view suffering. I, I'm trying to disciple my children and have them be prepared for the world, and this is my means of doing that.

So we talked about suffering and is God really in control of all things. Or you could read a book together. We've read a number of books together right now we're reading the book that was mentioned, seeing and savoring Jesus Christ because of Christmas. We've read Pilgrim's Progress together, and there is a modern version, by the way.

You don't have to get bogged down with Bunyan's 17th century English. Pilgrim's Progress is a great book to give them a proper perspective on the Christian life that it's not all hunky-dory, that there is suffering and what does it mean to be a dedicated follower of Christ. We've done skits together. Of course, we've acted out the Christmas story.

But we've we've acted out knowing the ark and we got out all the stuffed animals and had them in the living room as we as we, act out the ark. I want my children to know how to pray passionately to the Lord. Prayer in the Bible is not just this, you don't see prayer in the Bible is just this monotone dead thing. Prayer in the Bible is passionate, and I try to model that to my children of what does, what do the Psalms sound like when you pray them.

Mike read a Valley of Vision prayer for us as we started our worship time. That's a great book. We've used that in our devotional times as a family, the Valley of Vision, which is a book of Puritan prayers that really gets you thinking about who the Lord is. Another thing we've done is collected prayer cards from missionaries.

And we keep them in a box and we pull out one each night and that's our missionary for the night and we focus on prayer for that missionary and then their picture goes to the back of the pile. So my children are becoming missions minded. We read scripture consistently because they need to get truth into their mind. This doesn't have to be long.

My daughter mentioned a half an hour, but more typically for our family, this is 10 or 15 minutes. This we're not talking about an extravagant amount of time. We typically sing 2 or 3 songs, read scripture, read this chapter out of this book, and spend the time in prayer, and you're looking at 15 minutes probably, but it's had an incredibly that's an incredibly strategic 15 minutes in our family history. You can set a time and I would urge you to set a time and maybe you think, well, we're just, we're too busy.

I would just remind you that you have the same 168 hours in the week as everybody else, and the way that you choose to spend your time is a reflection of priorities. Just the way that we spend our time is a reflection of what we value. And we've chosen to say this is one of our priorities. Other things have to revolve around it, not it revolving around other things because we saw the strategic nature of it.

So set a time but be flexible. It's changed through the years. Sometimes it's been in the morning when we've had devotions, sometimes most of the time it's been in the evening before bed. Many times it's been at our evening meal.

If we knew we were going to be out for the evening, it was at the evening meal. And then the last thing, even when company's at your house, what better way can you send a message about who you are as a family, the priorities that you have as a family, than if you have company at your house and you say it's our custom to read the Bible together and spend some time in prayer, you can be an incredible testimony for the Lord. I'm going to do one more search here for my wife's. Look in that file over there really quickly.

OK I stuck it somewhere. That's horrible. I'll buy you lunch, OK? Oh, I found it.

Phew. She's gonna buy me lunch now. That's right. Here's a quote before I read Rose's testimony in conclusion.

Here's a quote from a church in Dorchester, Dorchester, Massachusetts, 1677. And oh, if churches, if American Christians would adopt this type of mentality and churches would adopt this type of mentality in the year 2007. 1677 we covenant as a church in Dorchester, Massachusetts to reform our families, engaging ourselves to a conscientious care to set up and maintain the worship of God in our homes and to walk in our. Homes with upright hearts we resolve in a faithful discharge of all domestic duties in seeking to educate, instruct, and charge our little ones and our households to seek and keep the ways of the Lord.

That's what I want for my family. Here's Rose's thoughts in conclusion, and then we're gonna pray. I'm thankful our family has had a worship time together for years and years. We've made it a priority to spend time almost every evening worshiping the Lord by singing, taking turns reading scripture, discussing and praying together.

I think we will all remember family worship as a together time as we changed the time to accommodate busy schedules. If we had something going on in the evening, we had a worship time at the dinner table after we ate. A highlight through the years has been including. Any company who may have been visiting, missionaries, dinner guests, or friends of the kids all took part with us.

One time we sang, and this was a very special memory for us. One time we sang a couple of songs in 5 different languages. We had a missionary family with us, and they knew a number of different languages, so we sang praise songs and we had 5 different languages going at once, same song in 5 different languages as we had a missionary family with us. Our goal for family worship has been to glorify our great God, teach and guide our children, and to strengthen our family team.

Why don't we close in prayer? And I just urge you to think for a moment, what could you do to apply some of these principles? Just think about it for a moment before I pray for you as a church. What could you do to apply some of these principles?

What method are you going to use to train your children? What atmosphere do you want to have in your home? Men, are you willing to take that responsibility? Father, We, I commit this church to you.

I thank you for your word. I thank you that you've given us a very satisfying way to live life, a joyful, fulfilling way to live life. And Lord, I pray that our families would portray that to the world that desperately needs answers. That we were desperate, that we would show the world that our desperate world that Living a God-saturated life.

A Christ saturated life is very fulfilling. It's, it brings stability to the family. you bring sta stability to the family because you are the way of life and we worship you because of that. I ask your blessing on Cornerstone.

Use them mightily in this coming year for your glory, and I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. That's, this leads to Doctor B. Mhm.

Man this were pretty for you to find your nose.