Core Family Values #1 – The Value of Worshiping God
When Rene and I sat down to create our core family values, we both agreed that the most important thing we valued was a life of worship.
So the Gomez family core value #1 is:
We value worshiping God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) as individuals, as a family, and with our church family.
Many times, when we think about worship or teaching our children how to worship, we think about how they need to be in “big church” with us. If we experience the church service as a family, we have taught our children about worship. Teaching our children to worship and worshiping as a family is much more than which service they attend.
The truth is we live significantly more life outside of the corporate worship hour. We decided to focus on worshiping God as individuals first. Our children need to see that time spent reading our Bibles, praying, and singing worship music is a priority for the individual. I remember when I was growing up I always woke up to my mother sitting in the kitchen with her cup of coffee and her Bible. It is a memory I treasure. Even now, when she comes to visits us, she almost always wakes up before us, gets her coffee and Bible, and sits by the window as the sun pours in. Unfortunately, I cannot say that I am quite as consistent as my mother. There are some days when my kids wake up while I am doing my Bible study. There are some days when they get out of bed at night and walk into my room while I am doing my Bible study. The important thing is they know it is going on, and it is important to me. In our home, when you turn seven you receive the privilege of a reading light on your bed and the privilege to stay up an extra 30 minutes on school nights (an hour on weekends) to read books. The responsibility that comes with this privilege is 10 minutes of that time needs to be spent reading the Bible. This has been one of our greatest parental successes. It has been such a blessing to see this discipline become an important part of their lives.
The second part of this core value is to value worshiping as a family. There are two parts to family worship. There is the formal and the informal. Our formal family worship includes seasonal family devotion time. Our family devotional time is much more consistent during the Christmas and Easter season. We have family devotional times during the rest of the year, but it is not as consistent as during those specific seasons. We do consistently pray and sing hymns together in the evenings. Many times, we use our evening prayer time to work on the kids’ Hymn of the Month for choir. On the informal side, we talk a lot about 1 Corinthians 10:31 – “So, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” We worship God as a family when we enjoy each other, when we play games together, when we work together, when we speak kindly to one another, when we eat right, and when we exercise for the glory of God. All of these are forms of worshiping God when done for His glory. He delights in these things. He wants to see us enjoy the blessings He has provided. We want our kids to know that by investing in the relationships in this home, by enjoying His creation, by playing and working hard, they are living sacrifices to God, and through Christ, they have become a living act of worship.
Finally, we want our kids to see us enjoy worshiping with our church family. In this matter, we have taken a blended approach. There are some Sunday’s when we are all together in “big church”, there are some Sunday’s when none of us see each other until we are going home, and there have been some Sunday’s when we have joined our kids in their classes or in children’s worship. If you have not gone and worshiped with your kids in a worship service geared toward them, you are missing out. It is a beautiful thing to see that worship can be fun, even silly at times. Bible stories can come alive, and you can learn some new worship songs that include jumping and spinning around. It is just as important for a child to watch you worship in “big church” as it is for them to see how you worship in children’s worship. Worship is all about God, not about us. He delights in many types of worship styles. While it may not be our preference to sing songs with motions, it is probably not our child’s preference to sing complex songs and sit still.
In the end, I want my kids to know I love to worship God, and I want them to see it in every aspect of our lives together.
This is one of a series on Core Family Values and the freedom they bring. Throughout 2014, Julie will share in more detail the Gomez Family strategy that will help your family see how you can develop your own family values.
-Julie Gomez
Julie is the wife of our Youth Pastor, Rene Gomez, and mother to Josiah, Lily, and Charlotte. She is also a CPA and finds herself balancing life at home, work, and church between January 1 – April 15.
