Family Worship

By having a regular time for Family Worship, you will provide your children with memories to last a lifetime and a strong sense of devotion to their Creator. We try hard to have family worship in our home before bedtime. It is usually the last thing before everyone goes to their rooms for the night. There are many ways to make your family’s worship a special time that everyone can look forward to participating in.

Give each child a responsibility such as:

• finding a bible verse to share
• singing special music
• having opening and/or closing prayer
• picking an activity or project to do
• making sure that all prayer requests are taken
• picking a Bible story to read and discuss
• reading a story aloud
• asking questions about the story afterward
• keeping a record of the stories, prayer requests, and songs sung in a Family Worship Journal (an older child)

Each family will have different ways for worshiping. In our family, our son looks forward to “directing” the worship. He generally plans a bible verse or chapter to read and will choose three songs out of our song book. He will choose the story which I then read. Yesterday, he read the first several chapters of Genesis and then recited them with striking accuracy for us and then asked us his own made up questions. He has been saying for years that he wants to be a pastor. We try to encourage him and make him feel special when he puts forth such an effort.

All children enjoy feeling that they have an important role in the family. By assigning tasks for worship time, they can feel they have attributed something worthwhile to the experience. When parents show their children they are committed to worshiping God on a daily basis, children will grow up knowing and looking forward to the time each day that should be set aside for praising our Lord and Saviour. Hopefully our children and yours will grow up and continue this devotion each day whether it be with their own families or privately. Make worship fun while at the same time teaching the children how to be reverent.

“O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.” – Psalm 95:6

About the Author: Melissa Ringstaff is the Director and Founder of A Virtuous Woman, a non-profit ministry for women based on the Scriptures of Proverbs 31. She lives in the beautiful Appalachian mountains of Harlan, Kentucky with her husband and five children. You can contact Melissa online at www.avirtuouswoman.org or by email at:melissaringstaff@avirtuouswoman.org