All people everywhere were created to worship God, and Christians have been those called from darkness and into the light. Not only are we commanded to worship, but we have been given the Holy Spirit who aids us in such worship towards God. So let us consider how we are to orient our lives so that we are better able to worship God.

One Day Out of Seven

In creation, God has given all people a pre-fall pattern of work and rest. This pattern differs from the five days of anxious labor and two days of recreation that most Americans observe. God exemplifies a pattern, for he himself has no need for rest, when it is said:

“And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.” (Gen 2:2–3)

This pattern of rest and worship is a creational good. From the beginning of the world until we arrive in glory, just like marriage, it is a common gift of God’s grace. Under the Old Covenant this day was set aside as the seventh day of the week (Saturday) and under the New Covenant this day is now the first of the week (Sunday).

The Westminster confession of faith says,

“As it is of the law of nature that, in general, a due proportion of time be set apart for the worship of God; so, in his Word, by a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment, binding all men in all ages, he hath particularly appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath, to be kept holy unto him: which, from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, was the last day of the week; and, from the resurrection of Christ, was changed into the first day of the week, which in Scripture is called the Lord’s day.” (WCF 26.7)

Preparing to Worship

We are not just told what we must do on that day, but wisdom would dictate that we set our affairs in order so that we can have a day of rest—not a day of holy procrastination under the guise of keeping the Sabbath.

So what does this look like? If I can glean the parts that pertain to worship in the confession, “This Sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord, when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand…are taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of his worship.”1

We must then get ready for our worship services. This goes beyond showing up on time although it certainly includes that.

First, we should read the passage ahead of time and consider what it means. This will allow us to pay attention to the emphasis of the preacher or to be on the lookout for difficulties in the text. If you have a family, read the passage with them. Simplify the message and seek to make young children aware of what to expect from the worship service.

Second, we should pray for the Lord to bless the worship service. Pray for your pastor to preach clearly. Pray for your songs and prayers to be a sweet aroma to God. Pray for guests who may not know Christ, or be distant from him, to be convicted and brought to a sense of need. Pray for those who are weak to be encouraged. Pray for yourself to hear the word and to do it.

Thirdly, set your affairs in order. Wake up with sufficient time to get ready. Ensure you can arrive on time. Pack snacks and quiet toys for children to play with. Have your bible ready to go.

What to Expect in Worship

So, having prepared your heart and your affairs so you can engage with God in worship, what should you expect from a service?

Liturgy

At Ruah we have a liturgy that we follow. It isn’t perfect, but it has many of the core elements that are prescribed to us in Scripture. The many elements should all hammer home one major idea—worship is not a spectator sport. We are all engaged in worshipping God, not outsourcing that worship to the professionals.

Call to Worship. We hear God call us to worship him and we respond to his call with a song of praise.

Confession of Sin. After we are called to worship the holy God we remember that we are not holy. We therefore confess our sins before God and ask for his pardon, for the sake of his Jesus Christ.

Assurance of Pardon. Every service should remind us of the gospel, and this time is a guaranteed way to remember that we have been forgiven of our sins. God pardons our iniquities and he remembers our sins no more. We fittingly sing a song which proclaims these truths and rejoices over them.

Prayer. The voice of one man serves here as the voice of the congregation to make their requests known before God. Prayers are offered for a variety of needs in the church and the congregation is lifted up to speak with their God.

Confession of Faith. The congregation will often recite some creed or confession which connects our faith to that of the many saints that have gone before us. In confessing what we believe we are summarizing and clarifying the truth of God’s word, not adding to it.

Preaching. When we gather in worship in the protestant tradition the preaching of the word is the centerpiece of our worship. Everything else we do culminates in this moment. We hear the voice of God speaking to us to encourage us, convict us of sins, and remind us of what we believe and how we ought to live in light of our beliefs.

Communion. If preaching is the centerpoint of our service then the natural culmination of the preaching of the word is communing with Jesus at the table. We renew our covenantal vows to God and partake in the body and blood so that we can be assured of the peace which God provides to us.

Musical Worship. While the whole service is an act of worship, the music that follows the preached word and the Lord’s table is designed to proclaim those truths aloud. We sing in order to praise God as a way to complete the joy of our worship.

Benediction. At the close of every service we hear God pronounce his blessing over us. These words are often drawn from scripture and give us a reminder of the good word which God speaks over us as we walk in covenant with him.

Children

Another core aspect of worship at Ruah is the very many noises. Children are present for all aspects of our worship. While I will defend this practice at some later point, for now just know they are there intentionally.

If you are a mother or a father make sure you prepare to have your kids in the service. Teach them discipline so they might grow in their capacity to sit still, to listen carefully, and to understand what is happening around them. There is no magic to this process. It involves willpower and resolve.

Women, if you are going to be wrangling children, or perhaps helping someone else to wrangle their children, you may be served to know two different things.

One, there is no need to remember everything from the sermon. Each sermon should have one major point. Remembering that point will serve you even if many of the details escape your grasp. The idealistic notion that you need a complete set of notes as ‘proof’ that you were listening is only suited for those who are in a very fleeting season of life—namely those without children or those who are now empty-nesters.

Two, because we live in the age of sermon recordings, you can always listen back for details you fear you might have missed. While sermon recordings are only the echoes of sermons, they can still be of great benefit to your soul if you listen back later in the week.

Fathers, make sure your wife does not bear the sole responsibility for your children in the service. Seek to help out where you can to enforce discipline, hold a child, and serve your family. If you need to stand in the back with a fussy child do not be frustrated.

Parents, if children are particularly loud or fussy, then use discretion to remove them from the service temporarily. If one parent has to leave with a child it should ordinarily be the mother, so the father can hear and teach his family at home. But recognize the difference between a normal amount of noise that children make and those cries which would be distracting to the congregation. Generally you should sit towards the end of a row or towards the back so you can make a quick escape if a child decides that this is the perfect moment to lose their mind.

Conclusion

As you prepare yourself to worship God and as you engage in the worship of God, know that God is shaping you. We all become what we worship (Ps. 115). To set aside time to worship God is to make a value statement. We are to serve God above all else. This is not for his good, but for our own good. It helps us to be conformed into the image of his son and to be inoculated to the snares of this world. In worship, we experience a foretaste of glory and the ongoing praise that surrounds the throne of God at all times. Let us remember the words, “You shall fear the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve” (Deut 6:13, LXX).

Discussion

1. How do you currently set apart the Lord’s day for worship?

2. What do you do to prepare for church on Sunday?

3. Do you follow-up the church service with discussion about what was preached?

4. How can you improve in preparing for Sunday?

5. Do you and your wife have a plan for how to train the children up in corporate worship?

It remains such a perennial problem that, rather than fretting, God prescribes an active disciplined resolve to swim against the current. He doesn’t just want his people to obey, but he wants them to teach their children to obey:

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deut 6:4–7).

Notice then the great duty God puts upon the community of believers. He commands them to love him and then diligently teach their children to do the same. In a similar fashion Asaph says:

“He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments” (Ps 78:5–7).

God not only commands the parents in these ways, but also the children, “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you” (Exo 20:12). In what better way could children honor their parents than by keeping covenant with the God whom they were raised to serve?

In all these ways God addresses the danger of covenant breaking and prescribes an active solution. Most of the church throughout her history understood this. John Chrysostom encourages it several times in his extant sermons, with my favourite example being on a sermon from Genesis, “Let us take all this to heart, then, dearly beloved, and on returning home let us serve a double meal, one of food and the other of sacred reading; while the husband reads what has been said, let the wife learn and the children listen, and let not even servants be deprived of the chance to listen. Turn your house into a church; you are, in fact, even responsible for the salvation both of the children and of the servants. Just as we are accountable for you, so too each of you is accountable for your servant, your wife, your child.”2

Family religion is the great missing link in American religious life, and aside from a handful of Dutch Reformed traditions, it has fallen on hard times in the reformed world until very recently.

At Ruah this is one discipline we harp on regularly. We are a young church with young families and very young children. There is not a single person in our church currently who grew up in a family that practiced family worship, and so there is no time like the present for us to chart a new course for our own children.

Getting Practical

At the core of family religion is the practice of family worship. The Westminster Confession says, “God is to be worshipped everywhere in spirit and truth; as in private families daily, and in secret each one by himself.”3 The same authors also commended to us a certain rhythm for how to practice family worship, “First, Prayer and praises performed…Next, Reading of the scriptures, with catechizing in a plain way.”4 So then the constituent elements are reading, discussion, catechesis, prayer, and singing. Each head of household should seek to institute family worship with these components on a daily basis in the home.

Reading, Discussion, Catechesis

Each family should read daily together. We have a Bible reading plan that is paced through the whole Bible over the course of 4 years. That equates to essentially one chapter a day with some margin for missed days. If you have no plan for what to read I recommend you start there.

The scriptures should be read well, as J. W. Alexander warns, “Half its meaning, and almost all its effect, are sometimes suffocated and lost, by a sleepy, monotonous, stupid, careless, inarticulate, drawling.”5 After the reading there should be straightforward discussion, plain application, and some related catechesis. For example, if you are in John 1 you can discuss the ways that John portrays Jesus, what those descriptions mean, and then use a catechism question, “How could Christ suffer? Christ, the Son of God, became a man so that he could obey and suffer in our place.” (First Catechism, Question 50).

Pray

After the discussion it would be appropriate for there to be a brief prayer. We can thank the Lord for his sustenance and ask him to apply his word to our hearts and the hearts of our children. It might also be fitting to ask for any prayer requests and pray for those as well.

Sing

In relation to the verses being read, or the discussion that was had, there should be some musical response. Tertullian describes the Christian marriage as a relationship where, “between the two echo psalms and hymns.”6 If you are in John’s gospel you may consider singing “O Come, All Ye Faithful”, or “Shine Jesus Shine”, or “The LORD By His Word Has Created (Psalm 33C).” If you are newer to singing perhaps you use the Gloria Patri or the Doxology as a mainstay before you get more adventurous.

Be Brief

On note must reign above all the rest with regard to family worship. For it to be a sustainable habit it must be a realistic habit, and there is no greater advice than to be brief.

“The length of the domestic service is worthy of attention. It was the fault of our forefathers to make it insufferably long.”

— J. W. Alexander, Thoughts on Family Worship, 194.

Family worship should not ordinarily exceed 10 minutes in length, so there must be intentionality to teach our children, but not do it in such a way that they are worn down.

Prepare

If these duties are to be carried out well then there must be intentional preparation on the part of husbands and wives. Husbands must study ahead so they are able to offer insights, application, or explanations of passages which may be unclear. This can be done in the course of personal Bible reading. If you are a husband make sure you avail yourself of good resources—like the Family Worship Bible Guide—and set yourself up for success. Wives should also read ahead and consider how they might reinforce the lessons from family worship to their children during the day. Perhaps they bring those core ideas up during a nap time, or pray them over the child as they go to sleep in the evening. There will need to be intentional effort on the part of both parents to arrange schedules in such a way that family worship is a logistical and practical reality in the home.

Invite

A final practical note, especially in modern culture, would be to open up your home to others. Tara and I have made a habit of inviting people over for dinner and doing family worship with them, but if I am being honest, we have not made the inclusion of others a regular part of our family worship. So families, consider your church family. If there are any people in the church who do not have a spouse, seek them out, and seek to include them in your family worship.

If you have an established habit of worshipping in your home, this might mean a fixed time of day where there is an open invite. This was the habit of many forefathers in the faith, including Corrie Ten Boom’s family. She describes their habit and their inclusion of others, “Father stood up and took the big brass-hinged Bible from its shelf as Toos and Hans rapped on the door and came in. Scripture reading at 8:30 each morning for all who were in the house was another of the fixed points around which life in the [house] revolved.”7 Toos and Hans were included in the Ten Boom family’s habit of worship, and we would be well served to follow the model of that faithful family.

Conclusion

If you do all these things, then remember you are not only obeying scripture, but you are blessing your children with a spiritual inheritance. To practice religion in the home, to make our households into little churches, is the prescribed manner to address the loss of future generations. As we do these things let us never forget that, “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Ps 127:1).

So raise your children in the faith. Teach them as you rise, as you eat meals, as you tuck them in at night. Let their habits of life be formed to prioritize their chief end—glorifying God and enjoying him forever.

Discussion Questions

1. Do you have a current practice of family worship? If yes, what does it look like?

2. What is one area of family worship you are trying to grow in?

3. Do you open up your home to guests? Have you sought to include others in family worship with your family?

4. If you are unmarried, what does applying family worship look like for you? How can you prepare now for the future? Are you able to practice family worship now?