Convictions about family worship from a 150-year-old book

I’m doing research on a new project and have been reading through a number of books on ‘family worship’ (also known as ‘family devotions’ in some circles). Over the years, I have often thought about leading some form of daily worship with my own family of girls (4 including my wife), but beyond evening prayer and songs, never did more than that. Recently, I started reading through Mark and praying with everyone after we finished breakfast, and it’s been good for all of us. In reading books on the topic, however, I’ve been convicted about how much more focus I should have been putting on family worship, and still can. There’s just so much to do as a father, and this always took a back seat – much to my chagrin. The book I’m currently reading, J.W. Alexander’s Thoughts on Family Worship, was published in 1847; his advice and observations are as relevant today as they were 150 years ago. It’s really not hard to do and doesn’t take much time; it’s just a matter of considering it important enough to do. Alexander goes a long way to showing how important it really is.

He talks about The Influence of Family Worship on Parents and explains it’s not just children who benefit from coming together as a family before God, but the father who is leading worship who will undoubtedly be convicted and strengthened in his faith as much (or more) than his children. I’ve found this to be very true, sometimes getting more out of explaining the passage at a simple level (my girls are 3, 6 and 8) since it has to be very clear and applicable to little minds. I’m only about four chapters into the book, but can highly recommend it as a good place to dig into all the different aspects of family worship. Since it’s so old, it’s public domain so you can read it free (or download a PDF or ePub) at Google Books or buy a copy on Amazon.