traditions book quote 11

I have finished the traditions book!  Yea!!!!  I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, especially as it helped me to focus on the meaning of traditions that we want to build in our family, along with providing some great ideas and practical help.  Traditions are truly a huge part of family life, and I am grateful for this book and its emphasis to keep those traditions Christ and gospel centered for the sole purpose of passing on and teaching our children about the heritage we have as children of God.

Some final thoughts in Treasuring God in Our Traditions, by Noel Piper on worship.  Their church doesn't have a children's sermon as part of the Sunday morning service.  I'm assuming that the children sit with their parents through the regular service.  

Parents have the responsibility  to teach their children by their own example the meaning and value of worship.  Therefore, parents should want their children with them in worship so that the children can catch the spirit and form of their parents' worship.

Children should see how Mom and Dad bow their heads in earnest prayer during the prelude and other nondirected times.  They should see how Mom and Dad sing praise to God with joy in their faces and how they listen hungrily to his Word.  They should catch the spirit of their parents meeting the living God.

To sit still and be quiet for an hour or two on Sunday is ot an excessive expectation for a healthy, normal six-year-old who has been taught to obey his parents.  It requires a measure of discipline, but that is precisely what we want to encourage parents to impart to their children in the first five years.

Thus the desire to have children in the worship service is part of a broader concern that children be reared so that they are "submissive and respectful in every way" (1 Timothy 3:4) (p. 109, emphasis mine).