The Last Week of August

After the patient space of one full year dedicated to the humble discipline of Family Worship, it hath now pleased the LORD to mercifully birth the reading of the Holy Scripture into four new households this year. This is a visible testament to the Sovereign’s pleasure! Our own young ones, having been diligently instructed in this sacred practice, have carried the custom learned in our home directly into their respective dwellings. With a commendable zeal, they now intentionally read the Scriptures to their own unbelieving families—a work of bold, spontaneous evangelism.

A visible stirring is already observed amongst those who have heard the Living Word thus plainly read. The very heartbeat of this ministry in the home is to magnify the reality of God's great glory as the Scriptures are opened and the Psalms are either read or sung—and by the whole family participating in unison. The precious fruit of all this labor, however, is not presumed by us, but is dutifully left to God’s own decree. To engage in such devout worship with the family in the privacy of the home is nothing less than to obey and honor God in the manner most pleasing to Him, and it is a sure means of preserving the true faith across the generations.

Photo by Tish

I will make thy name to be remembered in all generations: therefore shall the people praise thee for ever and ever.
Psalms 45:17

Our earnest and unceasing prayer is that it would please our sovereign God to raise up a new community of families who shall render to Him His due honor by the daily worship of God in their homes. We supplicate specifically for the fathers of this generation, that they might fulfill their rightful and God-ordained duties as the appointed priest and teacher of the home, diligently instructing their households. Only then can we justly expect that the children shall be raised in the very fear of the LORD. For too long a season have parents wrongfully depended solely upon the ministries of the Church to rear their offspring in the doctrines of the faith. Thus, they stand dumbfounded and confused as they watch, with confusion and sorrow, when their children attain the age of young adulthood and swiftly embrace the empty world with its numerous vanities. Let the parents accept their holy charge! The domestic hearth is the first pulpit, and the father must reclaim the sacred responsibility of guarding the souls committed to his care.

The equation that governs the fate of the rising generation is stark and utterly simple: one single hour a week spent within the walls of the church, and that often without intentional, vital instruction, set against six full days surrendered entirely to the seductions of the world. It is plain and manifest that God does justly bestow His true blessing upon those families who so grievously neglect this ordained duty—a mandate given directly to the heads of the households, and specifically to the fathers. The so-called peace with which many are content is merely the silent life of false tranquility in the home, where every member minds only his own temporal affairs, and the children remain, by virtue of this neglect, as wicked heathens within their own walls. This is a tragedy played out against the ever-increasing spectacle of children who are strangers to holiness and brazenly hostile to Christ. The only recourse to stem this moral ruin is to return to the old, forgotten way: to intentionally lay hold of the horns of the family altar, to relight the sacred fire, and to consistently read the Word of God in the home, with every single soul present. 

The sacred mandate to teach the children was never entrusted solely to the church or the Sunday school, but was conferred directly upon the parents, and most emphatically upon the head of the family. Parents may earnestly pray for their children's conversion, but without even a hint of regular, dedicated instruction from the Holy Scriptures, their petition risks becoming a futile and dishonoring exercise.

Even amidst a nation of broken families, where the foundation of society crumbles into moral decay, God, in His preserving mercy, is maintaining a small remnant who have refused to bow the knee to the dictates of societal norms and spiritual complacency. These are they who diligently worship the Lord with their whole household. It is our confident, God-given hope that these very children—raised at the family altar—shall be the instruments to end the cursed cycle of parental neglect and worldliness. This shall occur when the Lord is graciously pleased to gift them their own families, which shall be singularly united and utterly devoted to the LORD.

This is the true, immutable manner by which godly churches are birthed: they are simply a gathering and an assembly of covenanted families who already worship the LORD with sincere discipline. Thus, we affirm the foundational truth that the true Worship of God does not begin in the sanctuary, but in the home.