When people love God with all their hearts, worship comes naturally. WHATEVER we are doing for Jesus can be done as an act of worship. But our family loves music. I have a theory that most people do, but we learn early on from what we see and experience. So often, kids don’t see true, heart-felt worship, so they don’t want to sing out, or do hand motions, or even dance like King David did in the streets as he worshipped. I spent a couple years as a children’s minister and it was really sad to sit and watch as children, who should have been up on their feet singing with reckless abandon, just sat there, self-consciously, not worshipping God.
Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
Worship the Lord with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.Psalm 100:1-2
The King James version says, “Make a joyful noise.” You don’t have to be musically gifted. It just has to come from the heart! If you can play an instrument…great! Seeds Family Worship and Rend Collective also have chord charts on their websites. But if you can’t play an instrument, just sing(or shout, as the verse says)! Or let your kids play along on instruments. YouTube is also a great option, as long as you are singing along and not letting the TV do all the worshipping. There are some really good kids videos that have the words on them. (My only caution is to not listen to super upbeat songs right before bed, especially if your kids like to dance! We are trying to switch to doing some worship times in the morning because of this and so that Daddy can be there to play guitar more often.)
Just get started and don’t get hung up on what you sound like. Kids really aren’t that picky. But if you don’t sing out or get into it, they are going to copy you. If it’s important to God, it should be important to us. If it’s not important to us, it’s not going to be important to our kids. How well we do it really doesn’t matter. We just have to start.
What are your favorite family worship songs?
We love worship music and I was raised in a missionary Baptist church. Although I love all of the songs we’ve sang over the years, I love to hear Michael Smith above all other songs. Anything he sings just seems to move me. I have him on a Playlist so I can listen to all of his songs while I work.
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I believe family worship is a key component of family life. It grounds the family and binds them together.
Yes. That is a beautiful sentiment–kind of like “a family that prays together, stays together!”
and if the parents are not already worshiping God….it all has to start with them
Very true!
I do enjoy listening to some songs of worship and have usually left that for when I’m at church, but I really like the idea of enjoying those same songs at home with my family.
Youtube and Christian radio are great sources for music at home. You can even use Spotify to personalize your experience and find other things you might like.
I agree with this so much. If we want our kids to get involved, we should also be just as involved as they are. Worshiping God is something that definitely comes from the heart.
It’s so important at a young age to help kids understand that worshipping God is something more than what we do at Church. We love having family worship although some days it’s more challenging that others. Pointing the kids to Jesus and loving others is the key.
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