The Role of Family Worship

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Welcome to the Ask Pastor John Podcast.

00:00:07.280 | Today we are joined by our friend Ted Tripp,

00:00:09.260 | known for his best-selling book,

00:00:10.400 | "Shepherding a Child's Heart"

00:00:11.440 | and "Instructing a Child's Heart."

00:00:13.680 | Dr. Tripp, we often get questions in the inbox

00:00:16.040 | about family worship.

00:00:17.640 | It's a practice many Christian families

00:00:19.000 | engage in together at home, but what is it?

00:00:21.840 | I mean, what does family worship look like for you,

00:00:25.120 | and what are the aims and goals of it?

00:00:28.240 | - Well, I think family worship is such an important thing

00:00:31.160 | because it gives weight and mass

00:00:34.160 | to the spiritual realities you're talking to your kids about.

00:00:38.440 | I mean, if you're talking to your kids about

00:00:40.120 | vitality of knowing and loving God,

00:00:42.340 | and the joys of loving God, and the goodness of God,

00:00:46.180 | it makes sense that you would spend, you know,

00:00:48.880 | 10 or 15 minutes in a day reading the Bible,

00:00:51.920 | praying together, acknowledging God,

00:00:54.400 | and seeking God in your life as family.

00:00:56.880 | So I think that it's a very, very important thing.

00:00:59.960 | Now, one of the things in terms of what it looks like,

00:01:02.120 | I think of it, the most simple terms of three things.

00:01:05.600 | I wanna read, sing, and pray with the kids.

00:01:08.560 | So I wanna sing together, I wanna read the Bible together,

00:01:12.280 | and talk about the passage that we looked at,

00:01:14.920 | and I wanna pray together.

00:01:16.060 | And I think you engage the kids in that.

00:01:18.120 | I mean, singing is such a wonderful thing

00:01:21.080 | because singing puts truth into your head

00:01:23.540 | in memorable ways.

00:01:24.840 | It ties truth to rhythm and melody,

00:01:28.800 | and it's a great way to memorize.

00:01:31.680 | We had such a fun time this summer.

00:01:34.040 | We were watching five of our grandchildren

00:01:38.160 | for a week while their parents were in England.

00:01:40.580 | And we rode along one day,

00:01:42.480 | we were driving in the car together,

00:01:45.480 | and we sang for probably an hour,

00:01:48.800 | just sang hymns from memory.

00:01:50.640 | And these kids had learned all these hymns

00:01:53.160 | that they had been singing at home with their parents.

00:01:55.920 | And it was great fun.

00:01:57.480 | They were singing away, and it was just wonderful.

00:02:00.400 | I think singing is such an important part

00:02:02.200 | of family worship.

00:02:03.500 | Reading the Bible, reading the passage,

00:02:06.420 | looking at the passage, talking about it is key,

00:02:11.280 | and then, of course, praying.

00:02:12.480 | And saying to the kids, "We wanna pray.

00:02:14.680 | "We wanna pray about the passage.

00:02:15.860 | "We wanna pray about any family needs

00:02:17.440 | "we have at the moment."

00:02:18.720 | And the whole range of things.

00:02:20.280 | Daddy knows we need a new car.

00:02:21.880 | Let's pray to God to help us to find a good car

00:02:24.440 | that we can afford, that will meet our needs, and so forth.

00:02:27.320 | And so you're making that car-purchasing decision

00:02:30.600 | in a matter of prayer.

00:02:32.200 | God, give us wisdom.

00:02:33.280 | Lead us to the right car.

00:02:34.560 | We prayed when our kids were little.

00:02:37.600 | We prayed for sick cats and dogs.

00:02:40.560 | I mean, everything.

00:02:41.480 | Whatever the kids were concerned about,

00:02:43.540 | if it was their concern,

00:02:44.720 | we wanted to convey to them the truth,

00:02:46.760 | that God is concerned with the things

00:02:48.500 | that we're concerned about.

00:02:49.480 | God is good, and He loves us,

00:02:52.160 | and He is open to our prayers,

00:02:55.280 | and there's nothing too small,

00:02:56.600 | there's nothing too big to bring to God.

00:02:58.600 | So I think that that's a very, very valuable time.

00:03:01.160 | I think scripture memorization's

00:03:02.560 | another great thing to add to that.

00:03:04.240 | We used to memorize, we memorized,

00:03:06.320 | we started memorizing Psalms together,

00:03:08.840 | and we went through whole chapters of the Bible.

00:03:11.680 | I mean, big chapters, like the High Priestly Prayer.

00:03:14.820 | That's such an important chapter, John 17.

00:03:18.080 | You know, the love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13.

00:03:21.160 | You know, those kinds of things.

00:03:23.000 | The whole Christology there in Philippians chapter two,

00:03:26.040 | of this mind being you, that was also in Christ Jesus.

00:03:29.440 | But we found it was very easy to memorize with kids

00:03:32.160 | simply by reading the passage every day.

00:03:34.880 | If you read it every day,

00:03:36.800 | within two weeks your kids have it memorized.

00:03:39.520 | You know, a month or so later,

00:03:41.000 | you and your wife will know it.

00:03:42.200 | It's very easy to memorize with kids.

00:03:45.680 | So I found that to be an incredibly valuable thing.

00:03:49.960 | You know, I had the joy, you know,

00:03:51.480 | my personal testimony is that I was raised in a home

00:03:55.400 | where we always had family worship.

00:03:57.240 | My dad wasn't very creative with it.

00:03:59.040 | All we did was we read the Bible and we prayed.

00:04:01.400 | I can remember my brothers learning to read

00:04:04.240 | as we sat around the table reading the Bible every morning.

00:04:08.200 | And you know, times when they stumbled through the words

00:04:10.880 | and had to be helped with a lot of the words,

00:04:12.500 | and eventually they could read them all fluidly.

00:04:15.360 | And we prayed together, that's all we did.

00:04:17.280 | And you know, dad made very little commentary.

00:04:20.120 | It wasn't really, I mean,

00:04:21.320 | I think there's much more he could have done.

00:04:22.880 | But the fact is we had that 10 minutes every single day

00:04:26.640 | at the beginning of the day,

00:04:27.680 | that's when he chose to do it,

00:04:28.940 | where we read the Bible and prayed together.

00:04:31.160 | There was that acknowledgement of God

00:04:33.200 | and God's place in our lives

00:04:35.320 | that was part of every single day.

00:04:37.400 | And I think that was incredibly significant for me.

00:04:41.080 | And I think, you know, of my brother Paul and I

00:04:43.960 | and the opportunities in ministry

00:04:45.560 | that God has showered on us.

00:04:47.440 | And I think that in many ways,

00:04:49.800 | that heritage has contributed enormously

00:04:53.960 | to our lives and to our ministry.

00:04:56.540 | - Amen, the Lord has used you and your brother Paul

00:05:00.400 | and the church in some incredible ways.

00:05:02.080 | Thank you, Dr. Tripp, for joining us again

00:05:03.400 | to talk about family worship.

00:05:05.000 | Who knows what opportunities for ministry

00:05:06.680 | will be open to our children in the future?

00:05:08.560 | That's one of the takeaways I take from this episode

00:05:10.600 | for me as a dad.

00:05:12.120 | And I should mention, Dr. Tripp recently appeared

00:05:14.520 | in episodes number 439 to 443 of this podcast

00:05:17.580 | in a week we dedicated to parenting.

00:05:19.960 | And I suppose every episode of this podcast

00:05:22.600 | reminds me of another episode we've recorded in the past.

00:05:25.040 | And if you find this annoying, I'm sorry,

00:05:26.720 | but this episode on family worship reminds me

00:05:29.360 | of an episode with Pastor John on family prayers

00:05:31.880 | titled Mealtime Prayers, Impromptu or Memorized.

00:05:35.800 | That was episode number 126 in the archive.

00:05:38.420 | Be sure to check that out.

00:05:40.000 | We're back tomorrow.

00:05:40.940 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:05:41.780 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:05:44.280 | (upbeat music)

00:05:46.860 | (upbeat music)

00:05:49.440 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

The Role of Family Worship

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