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"We and our families stand in need of blessings in a domestic capacity, therefore in that capacity we should pray for them; in that capacity too we receive many blessings; therefore in that capacity we should return thanks for them; and singing of psalms is the most proper method of thanksgiving." — ๐๐๐ฆ๐ฎ๐๐ฅ ๐๐๐ฏ๐ข๐๐ฌ, "The Necessity and Excellence of Family Religion" in ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐ผ๐๐๐๐๐ก๐๐๐ก ๐๐ข๐๐๐๐๐ก๐ , Vol. 2 (1849 ed.), p. 47 [pictured: Jennie A. Brownscombe, ๐โ๐ ๐น๐๐๐ ๐ก ๐โ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ฃ๐๐๐ ๐๐ก ๐๐๐ฆ๐๐๐ข๐กโ (1914)] [PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=509582272104703&set=a.107210572341877] https://offgridsurvival.com/puritan-living/ https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2025/11/leading-family-worship-by-joel-beeke.html |
This blog post is Part 2 of a Sermon by Joel Beeke about Leading Family Worship. Please see Part 1 before reading this.
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If therefore our houses be houses of the Lord, we shall for that reason love home, reckoning our daily devotion the sweetest of our daily delights, and our family worship the most valuable of our family comforts. This will sanctify to us all the conveniences of our houses, and reconcile us to the inconveniences of it. - Matthew Henry [PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.azquotes.com/quote/860116] https://foundationrt.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Old_Matthew_Henry.pdf 5 He established a
testimony in Jacob - Psalm 78:5-7 (ESV) |
Motivations for Family Worship
Well, what are the motivations? Let me conclude with those. Let me give you four or five of them.
1. The Eternal Welfare of Loved Ones
Number one — the eternal welfare of your loved ones. God often uses family religion to save souls. Church is wonderful, and God uses and blesses preaching. Of course, that’s his primary means of grace. But you know what? There’s always something in the mind of a teenager in particular that’s a little bit artificial about church or even about the school environment. But home is where the rubber hits the road. If they see reality in you and in your wife in the home, and they hear it from your lips and they see it with your godly walk of life, as you lay down and as you rise up, as you talk about the things of God throughout the day even, reinforcing your family worship, they feel the reality. That is the most powerful thing you can possibly imagine.
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Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table. – Psalm 128 vs 3 (KJV) [PHOTO SOURCE: https://au.pinterest.com/pin/1121677850911528930/] |
I was in Italy recently and there were 300 ministers and they asked the question, “How many of you had God-fearing mothers who made a deep impression upon you about Christianity?” I turned around and looked, I don’t think it was so, but it looked to me like every hand in the whole place went up. It was amazing. Our mothers and fathers are incredibly important. Do you want your church to grow? Do you want solid, stalwart sons and daughters of the church of Jesus Christ? You train your church to engage in daily family worship. That’s probably the best guarantee, under the Spirit’s blessing, of solid growth. Spurgeon said, “I remember my mother tearfully praying over me, saying, ‘Lord, you know that if these prayers are unanswered in Charles’s conversions these very prayers will bear against him in the judgment day.’”
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 God used it in family worship in Spurgeon’s life to make him soft and tender for the things of God. Dear fathers, use every means you have and teach your fathers in your congregations to do so as well, to have your children snatched as brands from the burning. Pray with them, teach them, sing with them, weep over them, admonish them, plead with them. And remember, at every family worship, you are ushering your children into the very presence of the most high God. You are the same as Joshua, who said, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). Seek then to bring down God’s benediction upon your family. Seek their eternal welfare.
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Let me now therefore, once more, before I finally cease to speak to this congregation, repeat, and earnestly press the counsel which I have often urged on the heads of families, while I was their pastor, to great painfulness in teaching, warning, and directing their children; bringing them up in the training and admonition of the Lord; beginning early, where there is yet opportunity, and maintaining constant diligence in all labors of this kind. … Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church, consecrated to Christ, and wholly influenced and governed by His rules. And family education and order are some of the chief means of grace. If these fail, all other means are likely to prove ineffectual.” – Jonathan Edwards [PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.timothypauljones.com/family-ministry-as-it-were-a-little-church-the-puritan-model-for-family-discipleship/] |
2. The Satisfaction of a Good Conscience
Number two — the satisfaction of a good conscience. One of the Puritans, Robert Bolton, was perfectly healthy one morning when he arose, and he gathered all his children around him and he said, “Dear children” — don’t ask me how he knew this but the Lord must have shown him somehow — “I’m breakfasting with you this morning, and tonight I will be supping with the Lord Jesus Christ. I’m saying farewell to you today. You know I haven’t been a perfect father. I’ve had my shortcomings, my flaws, my faults, and I ask for your forgiveness. But one thing you know. I have taught you, I have prayed with you, I have wept with you, I have offered Jesus Christ to you every day in this family. You have not been without witness. You know the gospel. Now children, don’t one of you dare to meet me on the wrong side of Jesus Christ on the great day.”
Wow, a free conscience alone could make a man have the boldness to say that. Matthew Henry had much the same kind of deathbed. He got his children around him and said something very similar. And J.C. Ryle said this:
I charge you fathers, take every pain to train your children through family worship, not just for the welfare of their own souls, but for the sake of your own future comfort and peace. Your own happiness depends on it. Children have caused the saddest tears that a man has ever had to shed. Who can bear the reproach of a stinging conscience that condemns us because we haven’t brought up our own children in the fear of God when we were preaching to the masses?
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Let us protect our children; and let us not allow them to grow up into emptiness and nothingness, to the avoidance of good hard work, to introspection and analysis without deeds, or to mechanical actions without thought and consideration. Let us steer them away from the harmful chase after material things and the damaging passion for distractions... Let us educate them to stand with their feet rooted in God's earth, but with their heads reaching even into heaven, there to behold truth. - Friedrich Frobel [PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1276291] |
3. Assistance in Child Raising
Number three — assistance in child-rearing. You know, family worship helps promote family harmony in times of affliction, sickness, and death. It offers greater knowledge of the Scriptures. It helps our families grow in personal piety. It makes them more open to speak about things. If you can speak about the most intimate spiritual experiences with your children and about sacred things, tender things, in family worship, then you can speak to them naturally about religious things during the day, as you’re going on a trip, as you’re walking through the woods or whatever you’re doing. It comes naturally then because family worship sets the pattern. And then you can speak to them about anything. You can explain the facts of life to them. You don’t have to be embarrassed. You’ve talked about more intimate things, spiritually intimate things. It gives you open communication. It helps you in all kinds of ways.
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“Let family worship be short, savory, simple, tender, heavenly.” – Richard Cecil 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. – Deuteronomy 6:6-7 (ESV) PHOTO CAPTION: Amish family praying together before dinner [PHOTO SOURCE: https://au.pinterest.com/pin/317081630014236023/] https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2025/11/leading-family-worship-by-joel-beeke.html |
4. The Shortness of Time
Number four — the shortness of time. My son is turning 20 tomorrow. Where did the time go? Most of us have a window just short of 20 years, and that’s if we live to train our children. It’s gone in a moment. “What is our life?” James says, “it’s a vapor that appears for little time and vanishes away” (James 4:4). We ought to conduct family worship in the consciousness of the brevity of time and see every day as a gift of God to bring the word of God to them.
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1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), 3 “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” 4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. – Ephesians 6:1-4 (ESV) “Where the heart is rightly disposed, it doth not demand any uncommon abilities to discharge family worship in a decent and edifying manner.” – George Whitefield An Amish family gathers for a meal around their kitchen table. | David Turnley/GettyImages [PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.mentalfloss.com/culture/misconceptions-about-the-amish] https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2025/11/leading-family-worship-by-joel-beeke.html |
Dealing with Our Failures
But let me conclude now. I want to conclude in two ways. First of all, what if I failed? Some of you are going to say, “I’ve failed miserably and I didn’t even know about these things. I’m just feeling terribly guilty right now. My kids are too old.” Well, begin today. God knows our weakness. He’s mindful of our human frailty. Don’t beat up on yourself, but begin today. Confess to your wife. Confess to any children you still have in the home, perhaps confess to married children and say, “I’ve come short.” Give them a little book. Help them to do differently than you’ve done. But don’t just sit and wallow; confess and begin.
If you can’t do it with your children, begin with your grandchildren. Pray for them. Take them on your lap. Speak to them about the ways of God. J.W Alexander put it this way, “If you’ve never done it before, fly at once with your household to the throne of grace.” And don’t become discouraged if your children don’t take to it right away and don’t give up. If you did it in the past and you’re growing lukewarm in it, confess it to your family, saying, “We’re growing lukewarm.” Begin again with fresh eagerness. Go forward. Be realistic. Don’t expect perfection, but do it. Yes, you won’t have perfect children. Yes, you’ll have problems, but you will find that family worship will set the tone for your entire home and your communication, and it will help you in every way, God blessing it.
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14 “Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. 15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” – Joshua 24:14-15 (ESV) Stanley Knepp along with his wife, Shannon, and their children — Bryant, 12, Cody, 11, Darius, 10, Tyler, 8, Zachary, 5, and Andrea, 3 — sang “Be Present at Our Table” as a song of grace before eating dinner in their Loogootee home Dec. 30. Stanley, who described his family’s beliefs as on the more conservative side of the Mennonite faith, said the family will sometimes sing a “grace song” before a meal, as opposed to a nonmusical prayer. He said his family will always dismiss from the table with a song. [PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.jacobwiegand.com/simply-believers] https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2025/11/leading-family-worship-by-joel-beeke.html |
The Testimony of John Paton
Now, the last thing I want to do is to read something to you from the life of John Paton. This has moved me. This has been a mentor for me. This is my model of how I want my children to think about me. John Paton served as a missionary to cannibalistic people in the Islands of the South Pacific Ocean. He faced enormous difficulties and sorrows, but he persevered as a missionary in the name of Jesus Christ. Later in his life, when he looked back, he said it was his father that had the influence on him. He says:
Our father went daily, often several times a day, to retire, to shut the door, and we children got to understand that prayers were being poured out there for us, as of old by the high priests within the veil in the most high place.
But it wasn’t only in the inner veil. He also engaged them in family worship every single day. Paton wrote that when the day came when he had to leave home to go to Glasgow to study theology and to do urban evangelism, he had to walk 40 miles before coming to a train station. His father walked with him the first six miles of the way, and this is what he writes:
His consoles and tears and heavenly conversation are fresh as they were yesterday. Tears are on my cheeks as freely now as then whenever memory steals me away to the scene. For the last half mile, we walked almost in silence. My father, as was his custom, carried his hat in hand with his long, flowing hair. His lips kept moving in prayer from me, I’m sure. 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 moment he was silent. Then he looked me in the eyes and solemnly and affectionately said, “God bless you, my 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, I was around the corner in an instant, but my heart was too full and sore to carry me further. So I darted into the side road and wept for a while. And then rising cautiously, I climbed the dyke to see if he still stood there. At that moment, I caught a glimpse of him climbing the dyke on the other side looking for me. He had not seen me. After he gazed in my direction for a while, he got down.
He set his face towards home. His head was still uncovered, his heart I know, therefore, was still rising in prayer for me. I watched through blinding tears until this form faded from my gaze. And then I hastened on my way, vowing 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, his tears, the prayers, the road, the dykes, the family worship, the climbing up on it, the walking away head uncovered — have often all throughout life risen before my mind and do so now while I’m writing as if it was an hour ago.
It is 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 stimulated me all through my years of studies that I might not fall short of his hopes and in all my Christian duties, I might faithfully follow his shining example.
What led him to have such a love for his father and for his father’s faith? He goes on to say this:
How much my father’s prayers at this time impressed me, I can never explain, nor can any stranger 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, we all felt as if we were in the presence of the living Savior.
And we learned 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. And I would secretly pray that I might somehow someday be privileged to be part of an answer to his prayers, to carry the gospel to the heathen world in some way.
And John Paton went to cannibals. There, his wife died and his child died, and he had to sit on their grave so that the cannibals wouldn’t eat their bodies. What gave him the strength? God blessed his father’s family worship and his father’s shining example.
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“Where the heart is rightly disposed, it doth not demand any uncommon abilities to discharge family worship in a decent and edifying manner.” – George Whitefield 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. – Deuteronomy 6:6-7 (ESV) PHOTO CAPTION: The Martin family gathers at their table in Halfway, as a neighbor child (on the left) also joins them. The Mennonite family is devoted to their Christian faith, and avoids worldly influences that would distract them from God. Shanna Sissom/Plainview Herald [PHOTO SOURCE: https://www.myplainview.com/news/article/Mennonite-family-has-life-filled-with-devotion-8421237.php] https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2025/11/leading-family-worship-by-joel-beeke.html |
Joel Beeke is chancellor and professor of homiletics and systematic theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary and pastor of the Heritage Reformed Congregation, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/leading-family-worship
VIDEO SOURCE: https://youtu.be/OS3hFbvD_2U?si=F5o3R_wza5fHFby-
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“The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.” - Mario Puzo [PHOTO SOURCE: https://wheelbrothers.com/2014/01/16/the-strength-of-a-family-like-the-strength-of-an-army/] https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2025/10/john-troyer-memorial-report-2025.html https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2025/07/john-troyer-memorial-award.html |
5 Secrets the Puritans Used to Teach Their Children About the Scriptures!
Oct 7, 2025
VIDEO SOURCE: https://youtu.be/Rxgt96mP7Oc?si=T-4pWDC8gGt1S7LA
5 Habits of the Puritans for Studying and Memorizing the Bible
Oct 20, 2025
VIDEO SOURCE: https://youtu.be/1CKhpngw604?si=t86RiX499oJRixFD
“Parenting is not about controlling our children through consequences and directives. These are fear based parenting that teach our children to be reactive out of fear. Parenting is about influencing our children through love and understanding. This teaches our children to respond out of love. Thus, true control comes from loving influence.” – Heather Forbes
[PHOTO SOURCE: https://au.pinterest.com/pin/heather-forbes-what-parenting-is-not-about--4081455887428882/]
https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2025/11/leading-family-worship-by-joel-beeke_27.html
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“Parenting is not about controlling our children through consequences and directives. These are fear based parenting that teach our children to be reactive out of fear. Parenting is about influencing our children through love and understanding. This teaches our children to respond out of love. Thus, true control comes from loving influence.” – Heather Forbes [PHOTO SOURCE: https://au.pinterest.com/pin/heather-forbes-what-parenting-is-not-about--4081455887428882/] https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2025/11/leading-family-worship-by-joel-beeke_27.html |
RELATED LINKS:
https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2025/11/leading-family-worship-by-joel-beeke.html
https://churchandfamilylife.com/resources/60ca750123fa965169a3c94e
https://www.ntslibrary.com/PDF%20Books/FamilyWorship.pdf
https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/puritanevangelism.pdf
https://banneroftruth.org/us/resources/articles/2019/puritan-evangelism/
https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/leading-family-worship
https://www.apuritansmind.com/the-christian-walk/the-christian-family/family-worship-by-a-w-pink/
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“The purpose of management, leadership, parenting, or governing – any form of organizational leadership – is to solve today’s problems and get ready to deal with tomorrow’s problems. And that means managing change.” — Ichak Kalderon Adizes [PHOTO SOURCE: https://quotefancy.com/quote/2484957/Ichak-Kalderon-Adizes-The-purpose-of-management-leadership-parenting-or-governing-any] https://blackforestproject421.blogspot.com/2025/11/leading-family-worship-by-joel-beeke_27.html |
PURITAN PARENTING LINKS:
https://cbmw.org/2025/06/19/biblical-roles-in-parenting-help-from-the-puritans/
https://rtc.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2-Lordship-of-Christ-Over-the-Family_1.pdf
“How To Read The Scriptures” by Puritan Thomas Watson
https://www.pastorjack.org/?p=1737
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Uebrige Brocken - A circle of stones at Hutter Park in Innsbruck, Austria, commemorates 12 Anabaptist martyrs. — John E. Sharp [PHOTO SOURCE: https://anabaptistworld.org/history-stones-of-remembrance/] |
MENNONITE HISTORICAL SITES LINKS:
https://inoldcities.com/how-to-visit-mennonite-history-sites-in-europe/
https://hutt-writevoice.blogspot.com/2015/10/more-on-huttererpark-opening-in.html
http://www.religionen.at/151016_uebrige_brocken_englisch.pdf
