We want to begin by reading from Joshua 24. Joshua 24. I want to read 14, 15, and 31. Remember, this is Joshua's farewell address to his nation of Israel. Verse 14, now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt, and serve ye the Lord. If it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your father served that were on the other side of the flood, that is, back in Ur of the Chaldees, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. here in Canaan, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Then verse 31, and Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, in other words, the next generation, which had known all the works of the Lord that he had done for Israel. Let's pray. Gracious God, as we discuss the subject of family worship for just a few minutes, we pray that Thy blessing would rest upon it, that Thou wouldst be with fathers in particular, but also mothers when there is no father in the home or when the father is traveling, and be with those families also that are grieving over wandering, prodigal children, and don't have opportunity to do family worship with their whole family. Please help us to take the principles of this talk and to use them. Even if we live alone, we can learn much from it. So be mindful of each and every one in their own situation. And bless this topic, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, with my parents, had their 50th anniversary two years before my father died on the pulpit and went straight from the pulpit to glory. He fell over and had a heart attack. We gathered together to thank my parents, all five of his children, my dad for one thing, and my mother for one thing, and we agreed not to tell each other what we were going to say. Interestingly, all five of us thank my mother for her secret prayer life, and all five of us thank my dad for leading family worship, particularly the prolonged family worship on Sunday evening, which he held with reading scripture, singing, praying, and then he would always read a piece of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. about 30 minutes of reading that. And we would sit at his feet, literally at his feet, and we'd fire questions. And he would often put the book down, and he'd teach us, sometimes with the tears streaming down his face, about the glories and the beauties of the Holy Spirit's work in the heart of sinners. Well, on that occasion, my brother, my older brother, said, Dad, I want to thank you that I never had to doubt the existence of God. Because my oldest memory in life is when I was three years old, I was sitting on your lap, and all I remember, I don't remember what you said, but I remember you were teaching us from Pilgrim's Progress, and the tears were streaming down your face, and I was looking into your face, and I just remember thinking these three words, God is real. So thank you, Dad, I never had to doubt the existence of God. You know, family worship, leaves impressions in a family that is unbelievable. And anyone who does serious family worship intentionally, conscientiously, day by day with their children, the children will never forget that. Even if they go the wrong way in all the years, they'll always remember those times of family worship. And all five of us could say, that one hour we spent on Sunday evening All 20 years, my dad would get to the end of it. We'd start over. One time he tried holy war, but that didn't work. We weren't quite bright enough for that. And we'd go back to Pilgrim's Progress. So we must have gone through it about 15 times as children. We always had new questions. I'm not saying you have to use Pilgrim's Progress. I'm just saying that family worship shaped all five of us children in a powerful, powerful way. Another example, you probably remember the space shuttle Columbia tragically disintegrating during a high-speed re-entry into the atmosphere in 2003. And you recall that all seven astronauts were lost. What you didn't hear from the news media is that the lead astronaut was a conservative evangelical Christian by the name of Rick Husband. You also didn't read that before he went into space for 18 days, he made 36 videos and gave 18 to his son and 18 to his daughter and said, I don't want you to miss a single day of family worship. So I've recorded each family worship for you. I wonder how much those videos mean to those two children today. You see, family worship has fallen out of popularity. And even today in Reformed churches, I would suspect even here in a conservative Orthodox Presbyterian church, There are families that are not doing daily conscientious family worship the way our forefathers, all the Reformed forefathers, Puritans, Dutch divines, Scottish covenanters, German pietists, they all maintain this family worship that I'm about to present to you. And so I first received this topic when our oldest child was three years old. I was supposed to speak in South Africa on family worship. I spent weeks studying our forefathers on family worship and was just amazed what I found. I couldn't stop. Because we always did the old Dutch style in our family for mealtimes. You pray ahead of time, you read the Bible afterward, and you Pray again. That's how I grew up. And then Sunday evening, of course, with this prolonged family worship. But what I came to understand, as I studied our forefathers, is that there are two important ingredients there that are missing. The one is that the father, or in his absence, the mother, is to speak to the children about the portion read. so that there's actual dialogue every day in the home about the truths of God. And then there is always to be singing as well. And I'll explain why in just a few minutes. But these things were missing. And so we radically revised our family worship when our oldest was three years old. And I'm so glad, so glad that I received that opportunity to do that talk, because it changed our family. Now, I've had the privilege of serving three churches in my life. It's just a strange providence, but all three of them have been between 700 to 800 people each. And so when I look out over the church, I can pick out those families that are kind of like the backbone of the church, where the children stay, and the grandchildren stay, and the great-grandchildren stay. And almost in every case, it's not 100%, precisely those homes that do a daily conscientious family worship are the homes where the children stay with the church. And yet you can go to a Christian bookstore, and you find a section on church growth, and I've done this, I've opened all those books, and there wasn't a single chapter in those books on family worship. You want your church to grow internally as well as externally? Well, make sure that internally everyone is doing daily conscientious family worship, and there'll be a much greater chance that those children will stay with the church. Family worship is critical. The Puritans used to say, as goes family worship, so goes the home. As goes the home, so goes the church. As goes the church, so goes the nation. As goes the nation, so goes the world. Now, family worship is not the only factor, of course, in child rearing. But it is the most important thing we do. It's the foundation. If you do family worship, and you act like a hypocrite the rest of the time, you're gonna defeat it, defeat its purpose. But you can't effectively do all the other things that are right and skip over family worship. That's why if you live in a Puritan community in the 1640s, where the elders would come and visit you every year, one of their questions always was, are you keeping up a daily consistent family worship? If you said no, this is incredible. But if you said no, the elders would warn you that if they came by next year and you weren't doing it, you'd be put under church discipline and you couldn't partake of the Lord's Supper or baptism. Because they said, this is your main duty to do in the household. This is foundational to everything. So I regard family worship as the most important thing. in a father's life. This is number one, doing daily family worship. So just like Joshua said, as for me and my house, we will serve, you could translate it, we will worship the Lord daily. So what I wanna do with you is I wanna look at four thoughts with you very briefly. First, the duty of doing it. Second, how to do it, the implementation. Third, some objections, we'll answer those briefly. And fourth, motivations. Duty, implementation, objections, motivations. So Joshua says to his family, or says to the nation, rather, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Now, think about that. He's 100 years old. He's leaving the scene. And he tells the whole nation, my children will go on doing family worship. How does he know they will? Well, unless they're openly rebellious, they've been shown every single day how this goes. And so they're not just going to abandon him. We're empty nesters now, the last six months, and we still do family worship as if our kids were there. Because God says, we're two or three are gathered in my name, and we're two. But if we had skipped family worship, just I'd say on a given Thursday, push back from suppertime and just said, okay, we're too busy, we're gonna go our own way. My kids would have said to me, dad, what's wrong with you? What happened to you? Of course you do family worship. Now you find your own time every day, of course. We always did it after supper. And so that becomes what the Puritans called a holy habit. So when your kids get married, they will automatically take that over. Of course they will. That's part of the whole process. You get your physical food, then you get your spiritual food. That's just the way they've been wired. Even if they're not saved, they'll do it. So, that's how Joshua has so much confidence. As for me and my house, even though I'm leaving the scene, we will serve the Lord. Now, of course, those were the days when the leader of a nation had a profound impact on the whole nation. And so it doesn't surprise you when you look at verse 31 where it says, all the elders and all the people that outlived Joshua, and the original Hebrew means the next generation, the whole next generation, all those people served in fear of the Lord as well. That is, they did family worship as well. How many generations it continued, I don't know. But wouldn't it be wonderful if even one generation in your whole church were impacted by you doing family worship. So what must we do? The Bible says we must do four things. Number one, daily instruction in the Word of God. You've got to talk to your children every day. Moses says it this way, Deuteronomy 6, 6 and 7, That's a Hebrew expression saying, meaning, you do it every day. All these things are daily activities. Number two, You should have a daily reading of the Word of God, 2 Timothy 3, 14 through 17, and a whole bunch of other texts here. Don't have time to get into them, but obviously you know in your conscience you've got to bring the Word of God to bear on your family every day. So daily you read the Word of God. I, like Timothy, grew up under the instruction of the Word of God. Three, daily prayer to the throne of God. The book of Jeremiah says something amazing. It says, God will pour out His fury, imagine that, the fury of God on the family that does not pray unto Him. 1 Timothy 4, 4 and 5 says, we are to pray over all things. with daily supplication and thanksgiving, for all is sanctified by the word of God and by prayer." So that's a no-brainer as well, right? You've got to pray with your family. That's obvious. And four, which is not so obvious, but equally biblical, is daily singing of the praise of God. So daily reading of the Word of God, daily instruction in the Word of God, daily prayer to the throne of God, and daily singing of the praises of God. Psalm 118 verse 15 says, the voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tents not in the synagogue, in the tents of the righteous, for the right hand of the Lord does valiantly." And so Philip Henry, the father of the famous commentarian, Matthew Henry, said, this is a clear reference to daily singing. When you're in the wilderness and you're away from the synagogue, You could hear this tent singing, and then you could hear that tent singing. What are they doing? They're engaging in daily singing of the canonical manual book of piety, the Psalms, every day with their family. So, your family owes its allegiance to God. God has placed you, especially you, Father, to be the position of being more than a friend and an advisor to your children. You're their teacher and ruler in the home, and your leadership is crucial. So clothed with holy authority, you owe to your children prophetical teaching, priestly intercession, and royal guidance, just as we heard in the sermon this morning. Now, how do you do it? Let me say, first of all, get a place, a separate place in your house. This is what I advise you. This is not grounded in scripture, necessarily, but just advise you. We found doing it around the kitchen table with all the dishes there just doesn't work. You go to a separate room, you've got your chairs. We have three children, so we have five chairs set there, and we have our pile of books at each place, so it's all organized, ready to go. your Bible, your hymn book, or your Psalter, and if you're using a daily devotional, that, or using another book, that's there, and you're all set to go. During family worship, aim for brevity. The way to start out is to do like a three-minute family worship, and then bump it up to five or ten. For very, very young children, probably a ten-minute family worship is long enough. Once your children get a bit older, 15, 20, I mean, you have the freedom, of course, here to decide, but long enough to be able to say some meaningful things, and short enough that they don't get irritated. And three, don't indulge in any excuses to avoid family worship. Don't ever say, I just lost my temper at a child and I don't feel like doing family worship. Actually, you need to do it more than ever then, because you need to confess your guilt, finding your family. And don't ever say, I'm too tired. How strange that must sound in the ears of the Lord who walked with his cross to Golgotha and was so tired he almost fainted and didn't give up to die for you. You can handle a 15-minute family worship for him. And in the act of doing it, you may be revived as well. And four, lead family worship with a firm fatherly hand and a soft penitent heart. Expect great things from a great covenant-keeping God. Now let's get more specific. For the reading of scripture, have a plan. We suggest that once your children are about seven or eight or older, just read from Genesis to Revelation. A whole Bible makes a whole Christian, said J.C. Ryle. If they're younger, yes, we read a lot of Bible story, but we always read something from the Bible. Then we read little Bible story books. We read Leading Little Ones to God by Marion Schoolan. which teaches three to four to five-year-olds doctrine. Get some helps that way. Read the miracles of Christ, the parables. Read through the book of Genesis. It's all stories. But by the time children are seven or eight, they can start thinking analytically, start teaching doctrine at a deeper level. Then you're gonna want to give them the whole Bible. Account for special occasions. If you're gonna have the Lord's Supper that morning around, After breakfast, you might want to read Matthew 26 or Isaiah 53. You might want to break out of your order. My dad, whenever we went on a family vacation, the last thing we would do when the car was entirely packed, we'd go back inside the house. Everybody would get down on their knees in the living room. My dad would read Psalm 91 or Psalm 121 and then pray. Well, that's a pretty powerful tradition. So what do I do? I tend to read Psalm 91, Psalm 121 with our kids before we went on vacation. Involve the whole family. Involve the whole family in reading. My dad never did that. He always read everything. And I'll tell you, and he often didn't talk to us. He didn't know any better at that time, except on Sunday nights. So we often tuned out. That's what human nature does. You're tuned out. In the old tradition, the old Dutch tradition was, the kids repeat the last word. Well, that doesn't mean anything. It says, OK, repeat the last word. You think back a moment, oh, yeah, that was the last word. You've got to involve everyone. So what we did was we just simply said, OK, we're reading 20 verses tonight, so everyone reads four verses. And then, of course, the kids know they're going to be asked questions, lovingly, about those verses, so they pay attention. They're personally involved in the reading. Secondly, for biblical instruction, you need to instruct them at the level where they're at. Now this can be challenging. Even as a minister, when I read Ezekiel 47 to my family, I don't know what to say to them afterwards. I don't understand it very well myself. So that was a burden on the hearts of three of the men in our seminary. And so what we did was we developed a family worship study Bible in the King James version. And at the end of every single section, every single chapter, there'll be two or three major takeaways with questions at the end. And so we just train our fathers, read those little chunks, it takes about a minute and a half, after you read the Bible, and then discuss the question that's asked. Now, we've sold tens of thousands of these, but there are people who say, well, I just don't want to read the King James, and I love the Reformed notes in there, but Can't you do it separately? So we said yes. So we published the Family Worship Bible Guide separately. If you use another version, you can use this. This little book is 860 pages. It gives you the summary of the two major takeaways of each chapter. You can read it with your family. I almost can promise you that this would transform your family worship. Because ideally, ideally, what should a father do? Well, probably spend 30 minutes every morning looking over the chapter, making notes, how he should talk to his family. That's the way the Puritans used to do it. But that takes so much time. It's so hard for fathers to do that. Most fathers won't do it. So we've done it for you. You read it, you find it very, very edifying, very, very practical, and you just discuss the question with your kids. Sometimes the discussion will then take off in different directions than you anticipate. That's great. Sometimes you'll need to take the question at the end. You'll need to simplify it for children that are four or five years old. Well, that's easy to do. It's right here in front of you. So the Family Worship Bible Guide is our best-selling book right now. We published it a couple years ago. And we've sold tens of thousands already of this. And people just tell me all the time, it transforms my family worship. Use it. Use it. And you will benefit greatly, greatly from it. When you do talk to your children, after you read this portion and you ask the question, you discuss it, try to be relevant in the application. If there's something that you know of that happened to a child of God in your church through a particular text in that chapter, tell your children that story. If one of the verses in that chapter have meant a lot to you, tell your children why. Let the children know that God's Word doesn't just speak to people 500 years ago, but it speaks to you today. And so be relevant in application. And then be affectionate in manner. When your kids are young, put one on one knee and one on the other and look them eyeball to eyeball when you talk to them and just be affectionate. It's like the man, the wise man in Proverbs, right? My son, come near to me. I will teach you wisdom. I will teach you understanding. Children need to feel that you love the Lord and that you love their soul. And you want to teach them the things of God for the wellbeing of their soul. Now, that's where my dad did very well, also in prayer. I mean, he only had an eighth grade education, but he loved, man, all five of us know that he loved our soul. He could have loved our physical needs a little bit more, maybe. My mother took care of that, but my dad wasn't so interested in asking us questions about how our day went, but oh, did he love our soul. And he would pray, often with tears, often with tears, Lord, I can't miss any of our children on the right side of Christ and the great day of judgment. Let their lives be nothing but preparations to meet the Lord in righteousness and in peace. And then when we all got converted, he said, Lord, we can't miss any of the grandchildren, because my older brothers and sister were having grandchildren. You know, there was just this earnestness about him that every one of our family, he would often say this, Lord, let our family be an undivided family reserved for the heavenly mansions above. You know, those things just stick in my mind because they were expressed with so much affection. There's scarcely a sermon in my life that I preach that I don't think of my dad at some point, some expression he says. In-family worship. So take them on your lap, speak affectionately to them. Remember that soul love is the soul of all love. And then require attention. Don't ever let your kids engage in family worship sloppily. I remember one time, our son was like, I think, four years old, and we have a couch with a little thing at the end, and he's putting his leg over the couch on the end, kind of slouching. I go, son, we're doing family worship. Sit up. Respect the Lord. You see, and you only have to say that once or twice, and they do. Really, family worship is like a little mini short church worship service in the home, in a sense, isn't it? And so, when the phone rings, of course you don't answer it. Far, far more important. You're in the audience of the King of Kings, and you would interrupt that to listen to one person say something when they can leave a message on the answering machine? That sends a message to your kids. No, no, no. You are engaged in family worship. Nothing interrupts family worship. So require attention. And then for praying, for praying be short. Five minutes is long enough. Don't be short, short. Like so many prayers today around the family table are like four or five sentences that don't say much. You've got to pray for the needs of the family. You've got to know if you've got a child coming down with a sickness. Ask your wife if you don't know when you come home from work. Remember that child. If Johnny has a big test tomorrow, remember that. Remember their soul needs. Be direct in prayer. Be simple without being shallow. Be varied. We try to train our children to use the ACTS formula. Adoration, you first adore God. C, you confess your sins. T, you express your thanksgivings. S, you have your supplications, your needs. I mean, if you start out, one-minute prayer, that's fine, but build it up a little bit where it's a little more substantive, and try to make it a three-, four-, five-minute prayer, no more than five, but where you really pour out your heart, and your children feel that. You pour out your heart before God. And take turns praying. What we found out was very helpful for our family was I would always do the opening prayer of family worship. Then my wife and my kids would take turns. So I'd say, tonight it's your turn, Mary. Next night, your turn to pray, Calvin. And we came across this by accident, actually, because when my son was three years old, he looked up in my face once and he said, Dad, can I do the daddy's prayer? And I said, oh, three years old. Okay, I'll whisper a few words into your ear and you say them. And I did that for about a whole year, whisper some things and he would say each phrase for two, three minutes. And when it was his turn to pray, and then when he was four years old, I said, now you start. And when you run stuck, just give me a little poke. He's still in my lap. Give me a little poke. And he did. And he runs stuck and I whisper a few more things. By the time they're seven, we found they could take the whole prayer themselves. And that way, even though the Holy Spirit alone can teach them to truly pray, you're teaching them the things to pray for. The Lord can bless it to their heart. But also, if you have friends over then, the kids don't feel uncomfortable praying in front of their friends. They're so used to praying in front of the family. So that's a real blessing. For singing, sing doctrinally pure songs. It doesn't make sense to be reformed in all your teaching of children and then suddenly turn Arminian in what you sing. Sing the Psalms first and foremost because they're God's natural canonical book of manual for piety, but also sing especially the great classic hymns. Sing heartily and with feeling. And after family worship, when you go to bed at night with your wife, and hopefully you take turns praying at night in front of each other, and it bonds you together as husband and wife. Husband and wife need a prayer time together too, you see. Then remember to pray something like this. Lord, remember our feeble efforts at family worship today, and please bless them to the eternal and the spiritual well-being of our dear children. Now what about objections? Well, let me just mention a couple of them quickly. Some people say, our family doesn't have time for this. Here's the response of Samuel Davies, who was the southern counterpart to Jonathan Edwards, the great revivalist, who's preaching, Lloyd-Jones said, was the best preacher America ever had, Lloyd-Jones said, Samuel Davies. If you were formed for this world only, there would be some force in this objection. But how strange does such an objection sound, coming from an heir of eternity. Pray tell me, what is your time given to you for? Is it not principally that you may prepare yourself and your children for eternity? Have you then no time for what is the greatest business of your life? See how they view that? The greatest business of your life is doing family worship. There's no regular time when we can all come together. This is probably the only legitimate excuse. And I look back, I really regret that when our kids got older, they had college duties or jobs, sometimes one or more couldn't be there. I should have done a separate family worship with them when they came home. I regret not doing that. but get them together as best you can, as much as you can. Our family's too small. Well, that's not true. If you live alone, you can still use this book and you can do family worship and do it out loud. Why not? Luther said he never prayed quietly in his private devotion, because he said, I want even the devil to hear what I'm praying, because he's a defeated foe. And he said, beside that, my mind wanders when I pray to myself. And if you speak it out loud, you pray out loud, you help your mind not to wander. And beside, where two or three are gathered. So if it's just you and your wife, keep up your family worship. Let me skip the rest of those. I'm going to get to motivations. The time is ticking here. Motivations. The eternal welfare of your loved ones. God can bless family worship. He's done it thousands and tens of thousands of times in church history to the conversion of your children. Charles Spurgeon said his mother would take him on his lap when his father was gone in family worship, and she'd pray over him tearfully, and the tears would run down the collar of his neck, he said, as she would weep for him and say, Lord, thou knowest if these prayers are not answered in Charles's conversion, the prayers will bear witness against him on the judgment day. And Spurgeon wrote, the thought that my mother's prayers would serve as witness against me on the day of judgment sent terror into my heart. But he realized the love of his mother, you see, for his soul and made impressions upon him. So we are to pray with our children, teach them, sing with them, weep over them, admonish them, plead with them, and bring them to the Lord and seek to pull down the benediction of God upon them every day in family worship. Second motivation, satisfaction of a good conscience. Matthew Henry got all his children around him on his deathbed. This is what he had the boldness to say. He said, children, please forgive me for all my shortcomings. You know them all. They all forgave him. And then he said, but children, I have one thing to say to you. Don't you dare to meet me on the wrong side of Christ on the day of judgment. I have lifted up the name of Jesus in family worship with you every single day. You heard it. You know what you need. Don't go your own way. Turn to Christ. Don't meet me on the wrong side of Christ. Can you imagine being a child hearing that? And your dad's dying? What gave him such boldness to say that? Family worship. Family worship. When I was in Latvia, I was attacked, and I was gagged and bound up, and I expected to die. They kept shouting they were the mafia, even though they weren't, but I thought they were, so I thought I was just a dead man. And so I just prayed as I lay there on the ground as they rubbed a knife up and down my back and slapped the side of my face with it. I was just praying, commending my family to the Lord, ministry, everything, church, seminary, book ministry, commended all to the Lord one by one. And then I got this feeling like, oh, what would I say to my kids if I could just speak to them one more time? What would I say? It's only not because I'm a good dad, far from it. If it hadn't been for family worship, there would have been a thousand subjects I should have talked to them about. But you see, the Bible talks about every subject under the sun. And so if you talk with your kids every day about the Bible, the subjects at hand, you will talk about every subject under the sun. So I couldn't think of anything I hadn't already said to them. I probably could have said it better, but the point is this, family worship will give you the satisfaction of a clean conscience. And then assistance in child rearing. When you experience that those teen years, how easy it is for teens to drift away from their parents. But if you've been open every day in family worship, those kids, they don't just turn off that conversation like a faucet. They will naturally keep on talking to you, because they're used to talking about everything. I mean, when our son was like 10 years old, maybe he was nine, I think, well, nine or 10, I had to talk to him, of course, about the facts of life. I was a little bit nervous. I read a couple articles about how to do that, never done this before. I started talking to him and explaining to him about sexual things, and I just realized, I've talked to him about intimate spiritual experiences I've had. This is not that difficult. It just helps you. Talk to your kids about anything. And he must have thought the same way, because I got done. I said, if you have any questions in the future, you come to me, right, son? He goes, yeah, no problem, Dad. What's for supper? I mean, it was easy because of family worship. All right, I'm going to close with this example now. And if you forget everything else I said in the last 25 minutes, I hope you don't forget this. This is what family worship can do. in its ideal form for you. And this is the goal, to have this kind of relationship with your child, whether you're a mom or a dad. This is John Patton, missionary to the cannibals, when he's about to leave for university. He's 17 years old now, and he's leaving for university. His dad walks with him the first six miles of the way. This is what he says. My father's counsels and tears and heavenly conversation are as fresh to me today, 40 years later, as if it all happened yesterday when I left home. Tears are on my cheeks even now as I write, and whenever memory steals me away to the scene. For the last half mile, we walked in silence. My father, as was his custom, carrying his hat in hand, I knew his lips were kept moving in prayer for me. His tears fell fast when our eyes met each other in looks for which all speech was vain. We halted on reaching the appointed parting place. He grasped my hand firmly for a minute in silence and solemnly and affectionately said, God bless you, son. Your father's God bless you and keep you from evil. Unable to say more, his lips kept moving in silent prayer. In tears, we embraced and parted. I ran as fast as I could and went about to turn a corner in the road where he would lose sight of me. I looked back and saw him still standing with head uncovered, where I left him gazing after me. Waving my hat goodbye, I was around the corner in an instant, but my heart was too full, too full of love for my father, too sore to carry me further. I darted into the side of the road and wept for a time. And then rising cautiously, I climbed the dike to see if my father yet stood there. And at that moment, I caught a glimpse of him climbing the dike looking for me. He had not seen me, and after he gazed in my direction for a while, he got down and set his face toward home and began to return, but I noticed his head was still uncovered, so I know his heart was still rising in prayer for me, I'm sure. I watched through blinding tears until his form faded from my gaze, and then, hastening on my way, I vowed deeply and often by the help of God to live and act so as never to grieve and dishonor such a father and such a mother as he had given me. The appearance of my father when we parted, his advice, the tears, the prayers, the dike, the road, the climbing up on it, the walking away head uncovered, have all throughout my life risen vividly before my mind and do so now while I'm writing as if it all happened one hour ago. In my earlier years, particularly when exposed to many temptations, my father's parting form would rise before me in the midst of temptation like that of a guardian angel. It's no Phariseeism, but deep gratitude, which makes me here testify that the memory of that scene not only helped me, by God's grace, to keep me pure from prevailing sins, but also stimulated me in all my studies that I might not fall short of my Father's hopes, and in all my Christian duties, I might faithfully follow His shining example. And now comes the secret, the secret behind this incredible love relationship. Listen. How much my father's prayers at this time impress me, I can never explain, nor can any stranger ever understand. But when on his knees and all of us kneeling around him in family worship, he would pour out his whole soul in tears for the conversion of the heathen world to the service of Jesus and for every personal need. And we would all feel as if we were in the presence of the living savior. And we learned as children, every one of us, to love and to know him as our divine friend. And as we would rise from our knees, I used to look at the light on my father's face and wish I were like him, in spirit. hoping that in answer to his prayers, I might be privileged to carry the gospel to the heathen world in some way. No coincidence, said John Patton, spent his life ministering to cannibals. Where his wife died, his child died, his home was destroyed. And he had to, one night, climb up into a tree to escape the cannibals for fear he'd be killed by them and eaten by them. And then in the tree, he said he looked up into the sky and was so close to God, he said it was as if God wrote in golden capital letters across the sky, I will be with you always, even to the end of the world. the fruit of God-blessing family worship. Let's pray. Great God of heaven, we thank you so much for this amazing spiritual discipline used in church history for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of children growing up in Christian homes, this wonderful gift of family worship. Please help us, Lord. Please help us. Forgive our sins in family worship, and help us to do it conscientiously, to start out small, and to build it up, and to do it to the glory of thy name. Be with those who are not doing it at all right now. Help those fathers to go to their children, to confess their shortcoming, and to say, we're going to start today, and do help them to do that. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.