Worshiping as a Family during Advent

See amid the winter’s snow
born for us on earth below,
see the tender Lamb appears,
promised from eternal years.

Edward Caswall, 1858

I am incredibly thankful that God gives us the season of Advent, when we get to anticipate the incarnation of our Savior, Jesus. The season is full of beauty, wonder, Scripture, and hymns, all pointing us to the first coming of our Messiah. If you have never celebrated Advent in your private devotions, you may feel overwhelmed in knowing where to look for Advent resources. Please do not let this deter you! Let me offer a few resources that will hopefully be helpful as you enter this season and will keep you focused on our beautiful trinitarian God.

Advent Devotionals and Hymn Resources

There are numerous Advent devotionals that will help guide you through Scripture reading in December, and I want to highlight two in this post. For my musical readers who love to sing along with Handel’s Messiah (I’m not the only who has taken her Messiah score on a long road trip and sung along, right?), check out Cindy Rollins’s Hallelujah: A Journey through Advent with Handel’s Messiah. Although Rollins does not offer a large amount of commentary, her book guides readers through the Scripture that Handel set to music. As you read each week, you also listen to specific selections from Messiah, which creates a wonderful combination of reading and singing Scripture.

The Advent devotional that our family has chosen to use this year is Sinclair Ferguson’s The Dawn of Redeeming Grace: A Daily Advent Devotional. Ferguson divides his book into four sections: The Family History, The Family, The Visitors, and The Journey. Throughout each section, he guides the reader through various scriptures on Advent, and provides a hymn and a prayer for each day. Ferguson’s book is a wonderful introduction to family worship if you do not already have a rhythm of family worship in your home. The chapters are on average about three pages, and the text for they hymns is provided. If you would like to include singing in your family worship (which I highly encourage), keep reading!

The best Advent hymn resource is Scott Aniol’s “Hymns and Carols of Advent and Christmas.” Aniol combines the Advent hymns from Hymns to the Living God into a free, printable document. What a tremendous resource! This makes incorporating hymns into your private or family devotions simple. By including hymns into Advent devotions, the meaning of Jesus’s coming is inscribed on our hearts through music. Be advised, you will find yourself singing these hymns and carols throughout your days! But is there anything better than sung Scripture?

Why Family Worship?

I write a lot on this blog about the importance of offering God “acceptable worship.” Mostly I write on acceptable worship within the gathered church setting, but God also calls us to worship him privately and in our families. One look at the feasts in the Old Testament reveals the importance of congregational and family worship. God instituted the annual rhythms of the feasts for the Israelites to remember and re-enact God’s provision from previous generations. Today, we celebrate through the church calendar the seasons of Advent, Lent, and Pentecost to name a few, which keep us centered on God’s rhythm of worship. In addition to these “larger picture” worship rhythms, we also have the rhythm of daily family worship. J. W. Alexander, son of Princeton Theological Seminary’s first professor, Archibald Alexander, wrote that family worship “is a service due to God in regard to His bountiful and gracious relation to families as such, rendered necessary by the wants, temptations, dangers, and sins of the family state; and in the highest degree fit and right, from the facilities afforded for maintaining it by the very condition of every household.”[1] Family worship, then, is a time of thanksgiving to, and worship of, God, which he instituted. This special time allows us to worship, sing, and pray as a family; a time that is insulated from the noise of hectic schedules.

If family worship is not already established in your home, let me offer a reason for including it into your daily practice, and how to begin the rhythm of family worship in your home. Family worship allows us time to refocus and retune our hearts to God. In a world of frenzy and chaos, there is no better opportunity to teach our children how to make God the priority, not culture. Turn off the television and read before bed, or make it a part of your dinner routine. Establishing the rhythm of worship will take determination at first, but you will quickly wonder why you did not incorporate it sooner. By prioritizing this special time, you are demonstrating to your children that God’s desires, as instituted in Scripture, are more important than our carnal desires.

Let this Advent season be the time you establish family worship as a priority in your home. Pray for God to show you the importance of incorporating it into your daily rhythm. Then join your voices in singing,

Hail! Thou ever blessed morn!
Hail, redemption’s happy dawn!
Sing through all Jerusalem,
Christ is born in Bethlehem.

Edward Caswall

For additional reading, see When are the Twelve Days of Christmas? Also pick up a copy of Scott Aniol’s Let the Little Children Come: Family Worship on Sundays (And the Other Six Days, Too)

For additional reading from Acceptable Worship, see Hymns on the Lips of our Children.

[1] James W. Alexander, Thoughts on Family Worship (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1847), 29.