Practical Guide to Family Worship with Ryan Bush

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Hello, my name is Ryan Bush, and I am the author of A Practical Guide to Family Worship Bible Study Set.

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I want to take a few minutes and just share with you how this all works, because I want to help you get the most out of this resource.

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I really feel like it can be a great asset to you and your family as you begin the practice or even become more consistent in the practice of regular family worship.

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This first part is the workbook that goes along with the teaching sessions.

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If you open it up, you'll see a DVD on the inside, a digital access code that helps you get online access to that.

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Those teaching sessions will help you get a handle on what family worship is and the different elements that are included in that, as well as some of the practical implications and problems that you'll run up against.

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As you go through those teaching sessions, this workbook will help you take notes.

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It'll help you keep up with the different things that are taught. If you're going through this study in a small group, this is really something that each participant will need to have to work through as they go through the teaching sessions.

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Also along with this is the Guide to Family Worship. This is the actual tool that you will open up each day with your family to practice family worship.

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Ideally, every family member will have a copy of this because in this guide is the contents and the order of family worship that you'll go through each day.

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For each family member to participate, it's really helpful for each one to have this.

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As you learn the different elements and the biblical motivation and some of the history of family worship as you go through the studies, then you'll begin to think about how to implement family worship in your own family, in your own life.

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This guide will help you do that. In this guide, there are simple elements, the simple means of grace that the scriptures give to us to practice laid out for you.

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We have Bible reading. We also utilize catechism questions, a short part of the confession of faith, prayer, pre -written prayer from the

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Puritans as well as a hymn. As you gather your family each day for worship, if each family member has a copy of this guide, the way it works is that as you go around the room or around the couches or kitchen table, each child and the parents can read a section, can read a part of the prayer, can read a catechism question.

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It really helps to keep everyone involved if everyone has a copy to look at.

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In my family of seven, each of our family members has one. Even our youngest little lamb who doesn't even read yet, he has his own family worship guide.

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He marks it up. He follows along with us as best he can. And that's just to prepare him to be fully involved as he does learn to read.

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My hope and my prayer for you as you use these resources is that you would be blessed by spending regular time of worship with your family.

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As I've worshiped the one true and living God with my family, I can't express the joy that it's brought to my own heart, the ways in which it's nourished my own soul, and the ways that it's brought my family closer together.

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I can say without any hesitation that this practice in my own life and my own family has done more for the spiritual growth of my family than anything else we've done.

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Family worship is a special time set aside in which the head of the household brings the family together to worship

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God using the simple means of grace that the scriptures have prescribed. We want to help you do that.

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That's why we have created a guide to family worship that will give you insights and helps to begin this practice daily with your family.

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It is simple, but that doesn't mean that it's easy. I might tell you to lift this huge boulder and set it on the table.

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Now, that's not a complex task, but it's hard. Family worship can be hard.

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We need encouragement. We need some instruction. We need to know what the Bible says about shepherding our families well.

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That's why we've created this guide. We want to help you carry out this simple but sometimes hard task faithfully.

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Family worship can be very difficult for several reasons. We have some enemies warring against our progress, against our sanctification, our own flesh, the influence of the world, the devil.

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All of these things conspire to keep us from availing ourselves to the means that God has provided for us so that we would grow in faith, so that we would obey him more faithfully, so that we would love him more ardently.

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So, family worship is difficult quite simply because sometimes I'm lazy. Sometimes I'm selfish because my children are at times disobedient because my schedule is too busy.

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I'm filling it with things that shouldn't be priority. Family worship can be difficult because of all of these things and more, but it boils down to these enemies against our soul, and we have to put measures in place to fight against those.

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So every family is different, it really is. This guide is a unique tool because it is very malleable.

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It's very moldable. It simply provides you with some structure and some guidance in terms of engaging with the simple means of grace on a day -to -day basis.

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But it can be molded and tweaked to fit each particular family situation.

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So yeah, I can't really think of a situation, I can't think of a family context in which this guide couldn't work well.

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When I first heard about family worship and even felt convicted by it, one of the objections of my own heart was that this seemed like it was too much.

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It seemed like it might be a legalistic thing or something just weird. And it was at first.

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But as I've practiced it, it's become a precious, wonderful part of my family's daily rhythm.

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And also, as I looked back over church history, I saw that it was anything but strange or legalistic.

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It was an integral part of families throughout church history. One thing that we have to be careful about is not to seek to replace the local church with family worship.

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The local church is paramount. Family worship is very important, but it ought not replace the local assembly.

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And one key difference that you'll notice right away is that in family worship, we don't practice the ordinances of baptism or the

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Lord's Supper. Those are local church ordinances, and those are not part of the family worship setting.

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So family worship is a lot like the local church, but it isn't the local church.

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Family worship should support what happens in the local church, and it should point our family towards more faithful involvement in our local churches.

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You could... You could get after it. What are you doing? What are you doing watching this?

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Go prepare a sermon. No, yeah, yeah.

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You could prepare a sermon every day if you had the time and desire to do that, but no, it's not necessary to do that.

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That was actually one of the early struggles that I had, was finding the time to prepare a lesson or a

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Bible study or a short sermon each day for my family. And that really was one of the main reasons that I created the

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Guide to Family Worship, because I needed something in hand to teach my family that was already prepared when

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I didn't have time to prepare a short lesson or Bible study. So it's not necessary.

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It's certainly something you could do, but the Guide to Family Worship really helps with that. Just like local church, in family worship, we want to be regulated by the

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Scripture, and we know from the Scriptures themselves that they are sufficient for our sanctification, for our salvation.

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So in family worship, we want to make the Scriptures and keep the Scriptures as the central element.

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So each day in the Family Worship Guide, it starts with a Scripture reading, and that's something that you actually choose yourself.

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If you want to read a chapter and work your way through a book or a shorter section, that's up to each individual family.

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So we also include with the Bible reading a short memory verse each day to memorize what an important thing it is to hide

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God's Word in our hearts. So we help with that by giving a memory verse to work through, and the idea there is as you go through it, as you hit that memory verse month by month by month, that it will become something very familiar to you and easier to memorize as time goes by.

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When I began to develop this guide and practice family worship on a regular basis in my own household,

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I wanted to include the simple means of grace, which I did, but I also wanted to add some theological foundation there.

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So the catechism provides that. It's obviously rooted in the Scriptures, a very biblical, historical catechism, but it provides a platform in which you can talk about some theological questions and theological matters as you go through your times of family worship.

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The confession provides an opportunity and a platform to talk about theological issues on a deeper level.

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So as you read through that, oftentimes in my own times of family worship, my children will have questions about different words or phrases in the confession, so that's a perfect time to talk about things like perpetuation or the depravity of man.

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Those sorts of things come up when we read the confession together. One unique thing about the guide to family worship is that it includes a pre -written prayer.

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Now, these are prayers that we took from Puritan sources. I updated the language to make them more readable.

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And why include a pre -written prayer? We already know how to pray. You certainly should pray impromptu prayers in times of family worship, but having a pre -written prayer from a sound theological source is a very beneficial thing.

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For one, it helps us to expand our prayers. Oftentimes, when we only pray from our own mind and our own heart, we begin to pray the same things over and over and over.

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But if you hear someone else pray, someone who is saturated with the Scripture, someone who is walking close to the

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Lord, it can help you to learn to pray promises of Scripture that you've never prayed before.

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It can help get you out of maybe some ruts that you have been in in your prayer life, and it will teach your children how to pray in new and deeper ways according to the

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Scriptures. We also include a hymn in the guide to family worship because, well, singing is one of the ordinary means of grace that the

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Lord has provided for us. What a treasure trove of spiritual songs that we have throughout

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Christian history. We've included some of the best of those in a guide to family worship.

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Those can be sung a cappella or maybe with a pre -recorded version. If someone plays an instrument in your home, that can be utilized there as well.

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The key there is to simply sing together as a family, to sing from your hearts unto the