Family Worship is not easy

There seems to always be a reason to not set aside time each day to gather as a family in the same room and reflect on God's goodness to us. Over the past three weeks we have either had a sick child, been late getting home, or simply been worn out most nights of the week. This is not conducive to spending time in God's word together.

We have skipped family worship several nights during this three week period, but we have been able to worship together a majority of the nights in each of these weeks. I attribute this partly to our not being extremely rigid in our worship activities. In other words, I do not have a detailed set of activities that we must complete each night in order to say we have worshiped together. Each evening of worship would be quite different if you were peering through our windows.

For instance, if the children are sick, they need to be in bed quickly so the number and length of songs we sing is shortened because they will not be interested in singing if they are sick. Or we may even exclude singing altogether.

Other times everyone will be keyed up because we came home late or they had long naps during the day so I will try to include more singing (and yes dancing at our house!) and we will recite scripture, read the Bible, and even read a prayer out of the Valley of Vision. My reading of scripture is often much more energetic on these evenings as well. I may also let the children stay up later on these evenings for more extended worship time because they will not go to sleep right away anyway.

While lack of rigidity may help, though, I believe the main reason we continue in worship is the Holy Spirit. He is driving us to worship. My efforts are of little use if the Spirit of God is not involved at the core of our time, and so I realize my need to continue to pray that God would increase our desire to worship Him each evening as a family. It is fun to lead the family in worship, but I must continually be reminded that my efforts are of little value without God's Spirit.