{"id":2047,"date":"2013-10-08T15:00:19","date_gmt":"2013-10-08T02:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chongsworship.com\/?p=2047"},"modified":"2013-10-08T15:31:09","modified_gmt":"2013-10-08T02:31:09","slug":"here-the-reformation-must-begin-leading-my-family-in-worshipping-jesus-christ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chongsworship.com\/2013\/10\/08\/here-the-reformation-must-begin-leading-my-family-in-worshipping-jesus-christ\/","title":{"rendered":"“Here the reformation must begin”: leading my family in worshipping Jesus Christ"},"content":{"rendered":"

“So…. what did you guys think of the passage?”<\/em><\/p>\n

There was a bit of an awkward silence. Sitting across the my wife stared at me like I just read from the Qur’an. My daughter squirmed in her high chair.<\/p>\n

(Did I even understand what I just read? What was the point of that?)<\/em><\/p>\n

I started to sweat under the collar. The bible in my hands felt heavier than usual.<\/p>\n

That’s how it was one of the first times I tried to lead a time of “family worship<\/a>“, full of self-doubt and feeling like the blind leading the blind, all the while thinking: “How on earth do I lead the worship of Jesus at home with my family?”<\/em><\/p>\n

My story growing up<\/h4>\n

\"20131008-135456.jpg\"<\/p>\n

I grew up in a family that wasn’t oriented towards loving God in Jesus Christ. My dad showed little genuine interest in spiritual realities, while my mum was a committed and diligent Buddhist. As children we weren’t shaped with much except for a nominal moralism and an expectation of family piety. \u00a0Instead of family worship, I was free to worship my hobbies and interests (music, computer games), and the idols of fame, ambition, and financial wealth.<\/p>\n

I remember being really confused the first time I was in a room where someone gave thanks to the Lord for something. What for? What on earth did He do? (Praise God I later learned exactly what He did through the life, death and resurrection of His Son!)<\/p>\n

Then as a new Christian, one of the ways God made His Word less alien and more alive in me was through watching other families pray together at the dinner table, talk of spiritual things, and in general follow in the Deuteronomy 6 “teaching your children as you walk by the way, as you sit in your house, as you lie down, as you rise…” principle.<\/p>\n

Gradually over time, spending time and being with other Christian families has directly modelled for me what it looks like to genuinely love the Lord and seek to do His will, and what it looks like to repent and trust Jesus in daily life.<\/p>\n

From conversations with some of these older and wiser people, I know that God uses parents faithfully and diligently teaching, reading, praying, and singing with their children as a means of grace. As a result, by God’s grace many of these children grow up to love and follow Jesus.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery Christian family ought to be as it were a little church.\u201d
\n<\/em>\u2014 Jonathan Edwards<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But why? how?<\/h4>\n

\"family<\/p>\n

Family worship doesn’t save; only Jesus can do that. But I’m convinced by the Scriptures<\/a> that this practice \u00a0of coming together as a family to worship God in the home \u00a0is sorely needed in our homes today. \u00a0In the same way we come together for a time of corporate worship in the church, we should also come together in the home for a time of family worship that involves prayer, reading Scripture, and singing songs — praying that over time, God would use it to awaken the gospel in the next generation.<\/p>\n

There’s plenty of people out there who have written well on the “why” of family worship. Here’s just two of them:<\/p>\n