(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Ask Pastor John Podcast. Today we are joined by our friend Ted Tripp, known for his best-selling book, "Shepherding a Child's Heart" and "Instructing a Child's Heart." Dr. Tripp, we often get questions in the inbox about family worship. It's a practice many Christian families engage in together at home, but what is it?

I mean, what does family worship look like for you, and what are the aims and goals of it? - Well, I think family worship is such an important thing because it gives weight and mass to the spiritual realities you're talking to your kids about. I mean, if you're talking to your kids about vitality of knowing and loving God, and the joys of loving God, and the goodness of God, it makes sense that you would spend, you know, 10 or 15 minutes in a day reading the Bible, praying together, acknowledging God, and seeking God in your life as family.

So I think that it's a very, very important thing. Now, one of the things in terms of what it looks like, I think of it, the most simple terms of three things. I wanna read, sing, and pray with the kids. So I wanna sing together, I wanna read the Bible together, and talk about the passage that we looked at, and I wanna pray together.

And I think you engage the kids in that. I mean, singing is such a wonderful thing because singing puts truth into your head in memorable ways. It ties truth to rhythm and melody, and it's a great way to memorize. We had such a fun time this summer. We were watching five of our grandchildren for a week while their parents were in England.

And we rode along one day, we were driving in the car together, and we sang for probably an hour, just sang hymns from memory. And these kids had learned all these hymns that they had been singing at home with their parents. And it was great fun. They were singing away, and it was just wonderful.

I think singing is such an important part of family worship. Reading the Bible, reading the passage, looking at the passage, talking about it is key, and then, of course, praying. And saying to the kids, "We wanna pray. "We wanna pray about the passage. "We wanna pray about any family needs "we have at the moment." And the whole range of things.

Daddy knows we need a new car. Let's pray to God to help us to find a good car that we can afford, that will meet our needs, and so forth. And so you're making that car-purchasing decision in a matter of prayer. God, give us wisdom. Lead us to the right car.

We prayed when our kids were little. We prayed for sick cats and dogs. I mean, everything. Whatever the kids were concerned about, if it was their concern, we wanted to convey to them the truth, that God is concerned with the things that we're concerned about. God is good, and He loves us, and He is open to our prayers, and there's nothing too small, there's nothing too big to bring to God.

So I think that that's a very, very valuable time. I think scripture memorization's another great thing to add to that. We used to memorize, we memorized, we started memorizing Psalms together, and we went through whole chapters of the Bible. I mean, big chapters, like the High Priestly Prayer. That's such an important chapter, John 17.

You know, the love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13. You know, those kinds of things. The whole Christology there in Philippians chapter two, of this mind being you, that was also in Christ Jesus. But we found it was very easy to memorize with kids simply by reading the passage every day.

If you read it every day, within two weeks your kids have it memorized. You know, a month or so later, you and your wife will know it. It's very easy to memorize with kids. So I found that to be an incredibly valuable thing. You know, I had the joy, you know, my personal testimony is that I was raised in a home where we always had family worship.

My dad wasn't very creative with it. All we did was we read the Bible and we prayed. I can remember my brothers learning to read as we sat around the table reading the Bible every morning. And you know, times when they stumbled through the words and had to be helped with a lot of the words, and eventually they could read them all fluidly.

And we prayed together, that's all we did. And you know, dad made very little commentary. It wasn't really, I mean, I think there's much more he could have done. But the fact is we had that 10 minutes every single day at the beginning of the day, that's when he chose to do it, where we read the Bible and prayed together.

There was that acknowledgement of God and God's place in our lives that was part of every single day. And I think that was incredibly significant for me. And I think, you know, of my brother Paul and I and the opportunities in ministry that God has showered on us. And I think that in many ways, that heritage has contributed enormously to our lives and to our ministry.

- Amen, the Lord has used you and your brother Paul and the church in some incredible ways. Thank you, Dr. Tripp, for joining us again to talk about family worship. Who knows what opportunities for ministry will be open to our children in the future? That's one of the takeaways I take from this episode for me as a dad.

And I should mention, Dr. Tripp recently appeared in episodes number 439 to 443 of this podcast in a week we dedicated to parenting. And I suppose every episode of this podcast reminds me of another episode we've recorded in the past. And if you find this annoying, I'm sorry, but this episode on family worship reminds me of an episode with Pastor John on family prayers titled Mealtime Prayers, Impromptu or Memorized.

That was episode number 126 in the archive. Be sure to check that out. We're back tomorrow. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)