Help your kids hope in god One Simple Recipe for Family Devotions BY: Jason Helopoulos
No practice in your home will prove more beneficial to your family than daily family worship. Just as two bankers living together doesn’t make a bank, so two or more Christians living together doesn’t make a Christian home. The exchanges that happen in a bank, or in a home, define a place. Christians worship; that is what we do. Worship defines our churches and our personal lives, and it should mark our homes. In fact, family worship has a long history in the church. Along with corporate and private worship, it has been considered one of the regular routines of the Christian life. And the benefits are eternal.
The Central Mark of the Christian Home
“FAMILY WORSHIP ISN’T HARD. IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE. TAKE TEN MINUTES A NIGHT.”
Of course, all kinds of activities occur in our homes. My family loves to play games, cook together, and watch funny videos. Though I love doing each of these activities with my wife and children, I hope none of these events occupies the center of our home and life together. As a Christian, I want and even need Christ to be the center. It is one of the marks, if not the central mark, of the Christian family that it makes Christ the center of its daily life. And daily family worship centers the Christian home upon Christ. One of the greatest benefits of family worship is the opportunity to pass on the faith to our children. This privilege is laid out in every direction before the Christian parent.
Helping Our Children to Hope I often think of Psalm 78 when I think of the need to pass on the truth of God to our children. Asaph says he will tell the “things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done” (Psalm 78:3–4). Why? “So that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments” (Psalm 78:7).
Isn’t this the deepest desire of every Christian parent? We long to see our children set their hope in God and live according to his word. Family worship provides our children (and ourselves) with a daily encounter with this God of grace and truth. By practicing family worship, we bring our children before Christ and we keep putting them in the way of his blessing. Much like the parents in Mark 10:13 who brought their children to Christ that he might bless them, so we place our children before him daily.
july/august 2020
17
