Okay, let's go ahead and start in prayer then. Almighty and gracious God, we thank you. We thank you for being in churches that encourage us as parents to lead our children. We thank you that we are in churches that put the center of our lives at worship. And Lord, we ask that as we go through this time of discussion and talking, that we would encourage one another to be more faithful and more joyful about worship. So God, we thank you for this opportunity. Give us clarity of thought and mind and keep distractions far from us. In Christ's name, amen. Okay, so this discussion, and it's that, it's a discussion. So I'm going to be asking a lot of questions. I get pretty animated. So if you're in the front two rows, I apologize if I swing and hit you. It's geared towards children. I wrote zero to eight. So Doug Concert said zero. I don't get it. Why zero? And that's because I think worship for children and training children in worship really starts when they're in the womb. I think it starts before they ever come out and you get to hold them and kiss them and touch them. Fathers should be singing to their children. Mothers are talking and singing to their children in the womb. They're learning the habit, even in the womb, that this is what mom and dad do. They worship. Go ahead. Have you heard of a recent book that's been published called Formation Generation? I haven't. By who? Anybody else hear of it? Excellent. That sounds wonderful. I'll get the title of that and the name. I think it's pretty well known. Who talks to their kids in the womb? Anybody? Sing? Who sang to their child? I think I'm a horrible singer. Just a quick story. Part of my courtship with my wife, my father-in-law came out on the ship. I was in the Navy. He came out for a week and a half. He examined all the pagans that I worked with, anybody who worked for me and anybody I worked for, and asked, you know, what kind of struggles does Tim have? Does he get angry? Does he curse? And he came away from this trip with two things I had to do better. I had to learn to spell better, and I had to learn to sing better. And so I thought I did pretty good until I learned Singing was going to be a greater challenge than I thought. But I do it anyway. So part of worship is singing. So when they're in the womb, sing to them. Let them, you pray for them, you talk to them, so sing to them. And I think that's an important part of the child getting familiar with the practice of worship. And singing is a big part of that, even though I don't like that part of it. Let's open with Deuteronomy 6.4 which says, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. I use this, a new King James version, so if anybody has anything different, but it's pretty similar. Family worship should be a daily activity. So I'm going to ask a couple questions. Who was raised in a home that did consistent family worship? Raise your hand high and keep it up. Can I look around, make sure your parents aren't here. Who enjoyed consistent family worship? Okay. I think a big part of family worship is enjoyment. We've heard a little bit of that through the lectures so far this week. But I think we need to enjoy and to teach our children to enjoy family worship. So a lot of this discussion is going to be as fathers, if we come to family worship and mothers with this humdrum, this is an obligation, I have to do this attitude, your kids are going to pick up on that. We're going to look real quick, again, at children very young to eight years old. So a lot of what I'm going to say is practical. It's going to be a little silly. That's how I do my family worship. But family worship can be done in a lot of different ways. Westminster Confession, Chapter 21. If anybody knows me, they know I can't go one Seminar without quoting the Westminster Confession. So I'm a little bit of a Nazi in that way. Neither prayer nor any other part of religious worship is now under the gospel, either tied unto or made more acceptable by any place in which it is performed or towards which it is directed. But God is to be worshiped everywhere in spirit and in truth. in private families daily, in secret, each one by himself. So more solemnly and in public assemblies, which are not carelessly or willfully to be neglected or forsaken, when God by his word or providence calls thereunto. So the Westminster Confession says that the public worship is to be more solemn, to be a little bit more serious. So I take that as I can do whatever I want in family worship. I can have way more fun and be a little less regulated than I would be in formal worship. So what is the purpose of family worship? Josiah, what's the purpose of family worship? Anybody want to help him out so he doesn't look silly? What's the purpose of family worship? What does Catechism Question 1 say the purpose of life is? To glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. I think that's a pretty good answer if you can say that the purpose of family worship is to teach our children to glorify God but also to enjoy Him. So again, if we're doing family worship in a way that we're lecturing for 50 minutes to our children and they hate it, they don't know that we're teaching them to enjoy it. What is the difference between purpose and benefit? What is the difference between a purpose and a benefit? Yeah. The purpose is why you do it. So to teach them to glorify God and enjoy is the purpose. But what's the benefit of family worship? Or is there any? We just do it because we want to torment our kids. Okay, our kids learn the Bible. What else? They get to have their fathers involved in their lives consistently. I think that's a huge benefit. They get to know my dad's the leader of this family. My dad is the one that I'm going to look to for answers in life. He's the one that I'm asking questions to. Dad's the one, not Billy down the street that I'm going to come to. I think that's a huge benefit. What else? Anybody listen to a one-year-old screaming and crying in church? I think family worship is a great place to train our children to sit through public worship, corporate worship. It's a great place to get them used to sitting still, training them in what we should be expecting of them in corporate worship. It's also a great place to train them what corporate worship looks like. When do we raise our hands? When do we stand up? When do we sit down? When do we pray? How do we pray? All of this is benefits, not the purpose, but a benefit of family worship. I don't. Well, what I typically do is have my wife, or I will either hold up the baby and walk with the baby a little bit, and I don't stop. I'll say, I'm going to keep going, and we'll walk a little bit. I think some of it's just discernment. If they're crying because they're hurt, or they're crying because they have a rash, I'm going to be a little bit more empathetic, because I would certainly want my wife to stop if I was crying. So I think some of that's discernment. But we started with our twins at one, encouraging them. So we'd stop, spank them, have them sit back down and start over again. Similar to what we would do in corporate worship. So, Mike. Well, it depends on what you mean by stop. I mean, if they're screaming. Right, right. Right. Well exactly, and it depends on why you're taking them out. If you're going to take them out and spank them and bring them back in, that's not going to be enjoyable to them. If you're taking them out and sending them to the nursery, then you're building a habit of, hey, I can cry and then go have fun. Exactly. If this is being recorded, if you wouldn't mind anyone being notified, I certainly will. So the question was from Mike that if we take, or if we stop, then we're training our children to go ahead, public worship's going to stop as well when they fuss, right? Okay. Thank you. Any other thoughts? Benefits of family worship? Janet, did you have your hand up? Okay. Good. Okay. Right. So building a personal relationship as you build a family relationship, so the one and the many. And I think that's great actually, that's one of the things I wrote down, is you're teaching them that we can grow in our relationship to God, not just individually. And that's one of the things the Westminster says, that you do it in family, you also do it privately. But they don't neglect daily family worship. And I don't want anybody to go home and feel horrible that you don't do family worship daily. We don't. I mean, we try. We do it as consistently as possible. But there are things that happen that you're not going to be able to do it daily. I don't think you, though, set up a time. We have some friends that do family worship Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And I think, again, you're building patterns. On Tuesday, Thursday, their kids know there's something else more important than family worship. So we attempt to do some form of family worship daily. Some are going to be more. Some are going to be less. We used to get a lot of flack. I think when our kids were about one and a half, our family worship lasted about an hour and a half. That's a long time. And I don't know that I would recommend, or I don't know if I would do the same thing again. But I was young, energetic, and could talk for a very long time. So it worked well for me. And they were captive. There are different things we do in public worship. So what are some aspects or parts of public worship? Singing? Praying? What else? Huh? Preaching? A message? Okay. Communion? Okay. We're getting close. Okay. A call. Big, big part of it, right? A call to worship. That's how it begins. That's pretty good. What do we do in family worship? All of those? Anybody baptize their child in family worship? No. Okay, we don't baptize. We don't do communion. Well, some of us don't. We can talk about that. There are There are a lot of things we can do in family worship. If you forget one of them, it's okay. If you choose to do more singing on one day and less on another, that's okay. Family worship doesn't have to look exactly like corporate worship. I think though there's wisdom in making it look as close to corporate worship as possible for the benefit of teaching them what it's going to be like on the Lord's Day, what it's going to be like during it. One part I didn't hear said is memorization. We don't do that in corporate worship, right? But we do responsive reading, right? Almost every church I've been to does some responsive reading, whether it's a catechism, I think the OPC is really big on doing larger catechisms, or it's the law, or it's a psalm. I think that catechizing your children during family worship is an excellent way to teach them the responsive reading. We started catechizing our children at about the age of one, a little before that when we could teach them some sign language. So we would start very basic, who made you, and they would point. to God. And then we would repeat back to them, God made you. Very simple, but it's getting them to understand you have a part in family worship. This isn't dad who's long-winded up here preaching at you. This is your family worship. Get involved. We've never stifled our children from singing and screaming which is their idea of singing when we sing, but rather encourage that and then as they get older, teach them how appropriately to use some self-control and I wouldn't expect my 11-year-old to scream during singing, right? So, there is training going on at this time, but the catechisms I think are a great way to incorporate that responsive reading. Any thoughts so far? Any other ideas that I've missed? Is it just dads that have to do family worship? No. I think moms not only should be a part of family worship, they must be a part of family worship. If the children see dad doing family worship and mom's in baking cookies or cleaning the kitchen, the child's going to get the idea that mom isn't responsible for my spiritual training. So family worship should be that. It should be family. It's not just dad teaching the children. My wife does. She reads on occasion. Yeah, absolutely. I think more than just on occasion, I think consistently. Mom should be a part of that training. Now one of the things is most of us homeschool, moms are such a huge part during the day that it's a great time to rest her voice if dad takes over family worship and let mom rest a little bit. So some of that's going to be a balance. For me, I was a brand new Christian when I got married about a year and a half. I was a Christian three years when I got married. Okay, three years. I felt like a baby. And my wife had been a Christian her whole life. Her dad went to Westminster West Seminary. She is far more knowledgeable in scripture than I am today. She's far more equipped to teach family worship than I am. But I still think as the head of my family, it's my responsibility to lead that. My father-in-law, when he told me I had to sing better, had great wisdom in saying that. Because he knew that I was going to be leading family worship. If you come to my house, I won't pick the note to start our songs on. My wife will do that. Because I know my strengths and great weaknesses. But that's, a big part of it is having your wives involved in that. And I think with that, children. Is there a question? I think children could be a part of family worship. At age four or five we started having our children lead worship. Come to me through the week. We would tell them on Thursday, Josiah, you're going to teach family Bible study, family worship, and you're going to do the lesson. So I want you to come and tell me your topic that you want to teach on, and I'll help you prepare it, but you're going to deliver it all on your own. And this started about five. And you get a lot of stories of, Jonah, a lot of stories of Joseph, Moses, Lazarus in the tomb, those kind of things. But it's teaching them, again, how to be involved in family worship, but also how, as a young man, to begin to lead family worship for his family many years down the road. My daughters, in preparing for this, told me that that's probably their funnest memories in family worship at 11, is the times that they got to come to me during the week, prepare a lesson, usually about 5 or 10 minutes, spending time through the week with me, studying the word of God, and in preparation for them to deliver this little message. Let the children pick the songs. Who knows Onward Christian Soldier? Raise your hand high so I know. Okay, everybody stand up then. This is something we do in our family worship. We're going to march around the room singing Onward Christian Soldier. Okay, ready? Follow me. Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war. with the cross of Jesus going on before. Okay, great. You can find your seats. Now, we don't do this in our living room. When we do family worship, we are marching, now that we live in the country, up and down our driveway. When we were in the city, we were marching around our city block watching our neighbors look at us like we were a bunch of idiots. But almost without exception, our neighbors asked, what are you doing? What are you guys doing? What are you having your kids march behind you for? You're weirder than I thought, Tim. But the kids loved it. They didn't have any idea they looked ridiculous. They knew, the song says, we're going out to war. We're not sitting in a living room to war. We're going outside. We're going in to the camp of the enemy. And so we do a lot of songs like that. We do a lot of praying. We pray standing up. We pray kneeling. We raise our hand. We fold our hands. If you remember, the Westminster Chapter 20 said, it doesn't matter where you do family worship, right? We're not in Rome. We don't have a particular place we have to worship. So we've done worship on the trampoline. We've done worship on the roof. We've done family worship in the basement, and in the tree house. We did it in a clubhouse. Again, I'm gearing this toward young kids, but this is all part of me trying to tell my kids, everywhere you go in life, everywhere you find yourself, I want you to be worshiping. And there really isn't a place that you're going to go that you can't worship. I've worshipped in jails when I went with Marty Allen into the prisons. I've worshipped on ships when I was in the Navy. You're going to find yourself in all sorts of places as adults. And so being a little silly about it and praying on the trampoline is a great visual to them that I can worship anywhere and everywhere that I go. Does everybody agree with that? Okay, good. I know this name isn't super popular in the CRE, but he had a big influence on me when I was younger. Joey Pipa says, when you're teaching, this is in the context of Sunday school, but there's really three types or three ways to get our children to understand a lesson. Can anybody tell me what those three ways to teach a lesson to your children are? Thinking in particular like a preaching or teaching type scenario, not necessarily singing. One would be lecture. He says the other is questions, like I'm doing now, a lot of questions. This is the best way to learn. And then discussion and involvement. And I think all three of those, it's not just three, there are hundreds of ways to teach your children, but I think lecture, questions, and involvement or discussion are really great for family worship. All of them are perfectly practical. Understanding your children's age and when to do any of these three or others is important. Are you going to lecture to a six-month-old for 40 minutes? No, probably not. Are you going to lecture to an eight-year-old? Yeah, I think there's time for that. Eight-year-olds can understand and listen to a lecture. Are you going to ask what is superlapsarianism to a one-year-old? No, you may not even ask it to me. At least I hope you don't ask it to me. So there's appropriateness in age to how you're going to instruct and teach them. So for my family, for me personally, we do a lot of involvement stuff. We do a lot of questions, a lot of getting the kids up, a lot of public speaking. We have our children stand up on the coffee table, and we'll ask them a question, and they'll respond back in like manner. This is all, again, to engage them into having a lot of fun. We've brought their friends over. I think Ryan, Hadley Lynn, and Carrie Lynn have been into our home for family worship. And it's a lot of fun. Does anybody have things that they've done growing up, I know a lot of you raised your hand, that you enjoyed about family worship? Something your parents did that you liked? We always had, well not always, but we started doing Excellent. Good. I think that's great. How did you pick the songs? Who has hymnals in their home? We do, okay. We tried to make sure we had Trinity hymnals, because that's what we were using in the OPC. And then when we switched and went to the Cantus, we made sure we bought those so we have them in our home. Because it's important to us, again, being a non-musical family, that our kids are at least seeing the words and looking at the notes of that which we're singing in worship. We've incorporated, we were in churches that did a lot of hymns to more upbeat, contemporary music. So we still have that ingrained in our feeble minds. So we still do a lot of that in our home. That and we're not skilled enough to sing the hymns the way RCC does at home. So we've tried to change that a little bit to what fits the Murray household. But at the same time, when we invite people over, they're not going to necessarily know the songs that we do. So we make sure we have hymnals so we can make them a part of our family worship. Practically, I thought I would go through a couple things. I know I'm going a little quick. Just some examples of a way of making a Bible study enjoyable. As fathers, for me, I struggled with, I've got to get this exactly right. I've got to say the exact right things, and it became, a little bit of a burden to me early on. One, I was trying to, again, shepherd a wife that knew far more than I did, so I was in study a lot, trying to make sure that my family worship was one where she knew I was the one teaching, and that she could learn from me. I quickly gave that up when I realized she's way smarter than I am. So now I'm imparting to my kids not how great and smart and theologically astute I am, but rather how much I love to worship God. And I'm a pretty simple guy, so I impart this to my children in pretty simple ways. So we're going to look at one right now. If you have your Bibles, if you don't that's fine. If you have your Bibles, turn to Romans chapter 5. I'm going to ask for a volunteer. I will need one. I think we have several in the front. Okay. Romans 5, 12 through 19, and this is similar to what I would do in a teaching style after we've prayed and sang. This is a type of lesson I would teach my children. This is a little bit longer passage than I would choose, but it's one that I've done recently. So, therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned. For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned, according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of him who was to come. But the free gift of God is not like the offense. For if by one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound. abounded to many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned, for the judgment which came from the one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. For if by one man's offense death reigned through the one, much more through Much more those who receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in the life through the one Jesus Christ. Therefore, as though one man's offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so, through one man's righteousness, the act, the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man's disobedient, many were made sinners, So also, by one man's obedience, many will be made righteous. Okay, Levi, come on up here. What do you see in here? What about the water? What is the water? Is it dirty? It's clear? Would everybody agree that's clear? Or fairly clear? It's camp water, so it's pretty clear. Alright, hold it. So, this is Adam's life pre-sin. Clear, free from sin, righteous. Right? God has given us, in Adam, this. You're not done, Levi. Come on up. OK, Ryan, come on over here. OK, this is sin. Only put one drop in, OK? One drop, or as close as you can. OK. Good, no problem. That isn't much. He didn't drop much in there. Okay, sin, I used red because it's visual. The kids can see it. It reminds them of blood. It reminds them of being tainted. What observation about the food coloring? Where is it? Yeah, all of it. So when sin entered the world, it affected all the world. It affected all Adam, not just his tongue, not just his feet, but all of him. Everybody agree? Ryan, you agree? Okay, so how do I get rid of this sin? Because you were given this by Adam. Levi, how can I get rid of this? Put more food coloring? White food coloring. Would white food coloring turn this clear? No, it wouldn't turn it clear. It would turn it a different color, sort of a muddy color. Okay, how about we add a little more water? This is good works he's adding in. He's adding in prayer and righteousness and singing and family worship. Did he get rid of the red? No. Okay, he didn't. This is a great object lesson for kids. It begins to get them to see there's nothing they can do on their own, apart from Jesus Christ, to get rid of this. So how can I get rid of this? Joe? Okay, so I'm going to dump this in here. No, now I just passed it on to you, my son. Right? So I haven't done anything but spread the disease. The only way to get rid of the sin is to dump it out through prayer and life in Jesus Christ and have the shed blood wash me clean. But now I've got an empty cup. It's good for nothing unless it is again filled with Christ. The Holy Spirit, right? Now, this is great. So we've been brought into the covenant. We've been baptized. We've been washed. We've been made free. We are now clean. But then you disobey mama. And you add again, sin. And once again, you're tainted. So the washing isn't once in baptism, right? Thanks, Levi. You can sit. Have a seat. Thanks. The washing is continual. It's a continual going to Christ in prayer. It's a continual repenting of your sins, dear child. Because you have been washed and made clean through the waters of baptism, but in your sin, not Adam's, you're defiled once again. So come to Jesus Christ and daily be cleansed by his precious blood. And that is an example of one lesson where you're teaching them where their justification and glorification comes from. This is lessons that are what you're hearing in your reformed, theologically sound churches. You can add when they're 13, 14, 15, double imputation and other theological issues that are going around the day. But at a very young age, your child can understand original sin And what they must do to be free from that sin. And I think that at four and five, my kids had a small grasp, not a great grasp, but a small grasp on who they are apart from Christ and who they are in Christ. And they don't want to be dirty. I've heard of one family that goes out and lets their kids roll in the mud to do this same lesson. I haven't been that brave. But they get their kids all muddy, and then they spray them off with a garden hose. And again, they let them roll in the mud. Same thing. I mean, you can adapt this however you want. And followers, if you're attempting to do this kind of lesson, where it's fun and easy, versus trying to come up with a three-point outline with an introduction and a conclusion, this is way easier. You can read and get this done pretty quick. And nonetheless, impart these great truths to your children. Does anybody have an example of a lesson that they were taught or enjoyed as a child? I remember Jana's dad teaching through, was it Leviticus? It was right when we were first starting courting. And actually it was Exodus. And he was going through all of the names. And I was 23 or something, pretty bored with this list of genealogy, this list of names of people coming out of captivity or coming out of Egypt. And I remember him telling me, Tim, I'm teaching you family worship now so that you can take this and make this fun and teach your children. You're going to have to figure out, I'm not creative enough, you're going to have to figure out a way that you can make Exodus enjoyable to your children. And that's your task. How do you make Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus fun for your children? You're going to teach them to do it even if it isn't fun. You're going to teach them during school that this is their obligation to learn the Word of God. as much as you can. Let them enjoy it. Mike? Sure. Every day. Not as much anymore. I did when I was younger. My wife wants to answer. Part of it comes from, again, what did the Westminster say? Not only family worship, but private worship. So most of these ideas came when I was preparing every morning for a family worship. So when I was doing my reading and studying, I was reading privately that which I was going to be reading with my family so that I was prepared for them. In part, not all of it, but a part of it is. Let's take a look at one more. Is this too simple? I mean, you guys all grew up in covenantal homes. Is this too simple for anybody? Okay. I didn't, so this is very good for me. Matthew chapter 7. This is a more familiar text. Verse 13 and 14. Enter by the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction. And there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life. And there are few who find it. Okay. So this is an illustration I use. Jonathan, would you be my example? Or no, you may not be able to. How about Ryan? Jonathan's going to do it. Okay, so we would do something like this. What I got here is a towel, which represents the broad, easy road leading to hell and destruction. And at the end of this, or in the middle of here, I would put candy, maybe a toy, something like that. And I would say, you can walk this path and get these earthly treasures of candy and maybe a penny and toys. But at the end, what you get is hell and damnation and misery. Or you can walk this line where God says there will be trials and troubles and it's difficult. And at the end, what you get is heaven and God's favor and his love. and you get all the treasures that one could desire. Okay? So, what path would you choose? Yeah. Until you're about four, it's going to be iffy, right? You're going to have to, this is a real object lesson. Rosemary, it took until about three, the candy was pretty tempting. So, you tell them. Choose the broad road, because you know what? Many do. Many choose this road, and it certainly looks like it tastes good. But it doesn't, sweet child. The rewards here are so much better. It depends on the candy too. Pick candy that isn't as tempting. Go ahead. So you're showing the objects here. I see the stream and I see the candy here. How, and I can see the object element here. How do you take and translate and make it into the object of what they have? We'll talk that. We'll talk about that. Because that's going to be the end of it. OK, so Jonathan, choose the one you take. OK, so he's a good child. He's one who's been corrected. And he's going to take the harder path. OK, so go ahead and start walking down this path. And I won't do this hard. But I would push my child. Because in this path, there's trials. Satan, the world, and your own flesh are going to push you off this path as often as they possibly can. And I usually use pillows. But there's going to be trials. You can't do this on your own. And I think at five, Lizzie was in tears. Daddy, you keep pushing me. I can't do it. Exactly. So what do you need to do? Daddy, will you stop pushing me? Will you please just let me do it? No, but I'll help you. Because Jesus says, if you cry out to him, he will be there. If you ask him, he will give you his hand, and he will guide you down this straight, narrow path. And here, I give him a hug and a kiss, and I reward them usually. Okay, I'm not gonna hug and kiss you, Levi, I love you, but not that much. Okay, go ahead, what do you got? I don't think she can pick yet. Okay, thanks Jonathan. So again, now to example what heaven and hell is, what is a child going to relate to misery and suffering? Spanking is a big part, right? They're going to understand torment through constant pain, misery. No, actually Levi, keep it up, maybe so. Okay, so there's a lot of ways as father, we've done things, we've talked about fire, we've read J.C. Riles. Just lost the name. Yeah, boys and girls playing in which they talk about heaven quite significantly. So we'll say something like, remember what J.C. Ryle says about heaven? Or remember what Pilgrim went through? And where was he trying to go? The celestial city? So that's where you're going here. You're looking at what Christian wanted. So getting them to understand the non-physical, the heaven and hell, is a little more challenging. So you can do things like this. Here in heaven, there's no spankings. Because there's no sin. There's no crying because you're not going to fall off the monkey bars. In heaven, there's no tears. There's no pain. There's no suffering. Here, you're going to always fall off the monkey bars. Here you're always going to sin. Because here, you don't have Christ. And so you're left to what? You're left being fully tainted, and sin runs your life, sweet child. So choose. Choose what you want, Levi. Okay. These are simple. I didn't bring it today. Another one we did is we went through the book of James, and we talked about our words, right? And what does James say about our words, our tongue? Super easy to tame, right? No, pretty difficult to tame. Our words hurt. And this is a great lesson if you have multiple children and they begin to bicker or they begin to fight. And so we've taken a tube of toothpaste and we've squirted out the tube of toothpaste onto the table and we gave them a toothpick and said, now put it back. Put the toothpaste back in the tube. Because every time you speak, you're spewing out words that you can't take back. Right? You can be forgiven for them, but you can't take them back. They're said. And so, try as you might. And we've had our daughters that are pretty persistent try for like 20 minutes to get that. They're going to prove me wrong, right? They're going to get that toothpaste back in that tube no matter what. But they don't. None of them have. I haven't. I'm pretty persistent. I tried. So all of these are simple, easy, fun lessons that begin to teach your children the difficulties. And then you call them on it. When your child calls their sibling a name, you say, do you want me to go get you a tube of toothpaste? Would you like to continue to spew out that vimin, that poison? Because that's what you're doing right now. So would you like a toothpick? You want to try and put it back? No, now you need to go back. How do you get clean? Well, now you repent. And so all of this is going back, back to repentance, back to looking to Christ, going back. And so worship is not happening now just once in the day. You're going back to that worship throughout the week. Who looks at their notes from Sunday during the week? If you take notes at corporate worship, does anybody go back and review their notes through the week? I'm going to pretend like you're all raising your hands. Because hopefully you're not just hearing it on Sunday and then going out through the rest of the week and forgetting what you learned, right? You're going over it. You're feasting on it all week. You're chewing upon it. And I do this but not as often as I should. But that's what you're teaching your children to do. You don't want them to walk away from family worship and forget what you taught them. So you're giving them at an age-appropriate level a way to chew upon the fat of home family worship. Okay. There's another part of this that we're just starting to experience. My daughters are 11. My son's 9. And putting toothpaste on a table isn't as cool as it was when they were 3 and 4. So now we start that transition process. And I think this is a challenging part for me because it's way easier to have the fun. And that's where my brain instantly goes because I'm a simple visual guy. But I think Again, if the whole purpose is to get our kids to worship and enjoy worshiping, we have to watch them, know our children. Yesterday we said, who are your children? Do you know who your children are? Do you know them on an intimate basis? What are their strengths and weaknesses in their learning? Eight, my daughters still weren't reading. They have dyslexia and they couldn't read. So giving them a ton of scripture to read wasn't doing it for them. For my six-year-old, or seven-year-old now, excuse me, Rosemary, she loves to read. So a family worship where she doesn't get to read is a disappointment to her. So I know Rosemary's strength, so as often as I can in family worship, I have her read. And then you transition. I hope that I'm not doing the food coloring and water when my kids are 16. Right? I hope they grow beyond that. If I haven't, please slap me because I've failed. Right? So they're going to be growing. And so you look for creative ways to begin to do this. And that's where the lecture and the questions and some of these other things start to take place and start to happen a little bit more often. What am I supposed to stop? Anybody know? Okay, so it's close to that now. Okay, any questions? Mike? Yeah. We've done, when we went to a church that didn't have Sunday school, we would just pick a book and go through it from start to finish. Now we try and use the Sunday school as a sort of incorporate the Sunday school into our family worship. And so we'll take the girls one week, or one month, and then Joey the next, and try and incorporate that into. And then as a family, we've been going through for quite a while the Book of Job. And it takes a while to get through that. So some of it is just, again, knowing what my children are struggling with and then picking a book that's appropriate to that. And so one of the things the Murray household has struggled with is endurance and struggling through things. I think everybody can say that, right? Being long-suffering. And there's no greater book than the Book of Job for that. So a lot of it is just watching their behavior, or my own, and saying, OK, I need to teach on this. Does that answer your question? OK. Mike, any thoughts? No, I really appreciate your comments about changing with your kids. It's really hard. That's something we've had to come to terms with last year. So our youngest is four, our oldest is eight. As long as you keep a corral, it's not that hard. You're all 0, 2, 4. You're just basically going to keep the potentials. As they get older, you have more ease. I think everybody's seen, anybody who goes to RCC knows I play Bible baseball with the kids after Sunday. This is another thing that came out of family worship. This is really good. You start giving them trivia questions. And we pull all of our trivia from their Sunday school material and from corporate, I mean family worship. And on Sundays we try and do it as much as we can from the lesson that the pastor spoke on that week. So again, this is an activity that we use to incorporate in. Tiana? Right. Good. Well, it looks like everybody else is going out, so let's go ahead and close. Did you have a question? Okay, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Leah. Sure. I think you should always strive to work against your personality, right? To make you more well-rounded. There are some great resources out there. There's a lot of things he doesn't do well, but James Dobson has some good ideas for family worship that are geared more towards the fun, silly stuff. Right. And I think, again, a big takeaway from this lesson, kids are going to respond to different things. My nieces wouldn't respond to this. They would be bored in 10 seconds. This wouldn't do it for them. So know your child. and adapt it to them. But find out. Try it once in a while. And even if it's against what you would enjoy, and see if it's what they enjoy. Because something that I've had a hard time dealing with as a father is my children aren't exactly like me as much as I want them to be. They do things differently. They like different things. So I found myself liking golf because my son likes to golf. And I can't stand that sport. But I force myself to go play it because he enjoys doing it, right? So the last thing in the world I want to do is go play with a doll, but for my daughter's sake I'm going to go do that. So I'm finding myself as a father always out of my comfort zone. And then there's times I say, okay, look, I've played with your doll five days this week. I just can't do it anymore. I'm beginning to feel a little feminine. So I need to go with Josiah and play basketball. So easy answer, yeah, I think you should get out of your comfort zone. But this may not work for some kids. So pray for it, for wisdom. Pray for God's guidance and family devotion. And this may, you may walk away going, oh, that's great for the Murrays, but that just won't work for us. Okay, let's pray. Almighty and gracious God, we thank you so much that you have made us a worshiping people, that we are not on this journey alone, that we can ask for help. We can cry out, Jesus, give me your hand and you will guide us down that difficult path. Because it is our desire, Lord Jesus, to honor you, to glorify you. We want our children to be sitting here in 10, 20, 30 years with their children. and raising a godly seed to the third, fourth, and twentieth generation. And God, to the thousandth generation. So we ask, Lord God, that you would give us the wisdom how to train our children and how to enjoy worship. In Christ's name, amen. Thank you.