FAMILYthing
Since 2015, I have been pondering on how to start our Family Altar. To me, it needs to be liturgical like church worship and such a thought hinders my move to take action.
Then in 2018, I got anxious. God has given me and my wife four children, and as the head of the family, I should play the role as the spiritual leader, to initiate daily Bible studies, to create a habit to be close to God. So I sought the Lord on how to start the family worship that suits our family.
During Easter that year, God inspired me to read a chapter of the Bible each day by taking turns. That night, our family of six embarked on the journey of our family altar.
When we began the journey, our youngest was only three. While five of us finished reading our respective parts of verses, my wife would lead my youngest to read his children’s Bible. This method lasted till 2019. From 2020 onwards, our youngest can join us reading God’s Word using the adult version.
This is the flow of our family altar: we have an opening prayer, then we read a chapter of the Bible, or part of it, depending on the length, followed by a little sharing and a closing prayer. In order to let the children feel involved, they participated in leading the prayers. Sometimes they would expect a different style of family worship, one that was planned and led by them. They not only spent time to plan but also arranged time for practice. They incorporated hymns and action songs; a few times, they even acted out biblical stories and characters connected with the passage of the day.
We started with the Book of John and then the other three books of the gospel. By end of 2019, we had completed reading the New Testament, Psalms, Proverbs, Genesis and Exodus. Although the children were young, they really enjoyed this family altar with anticipation each night. Praise the Lord.
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.”(Deuteronomy 6:4-9 NIV)