The ONE Weapon Few Christians Use to Guard their Household (Staying Close in the Chaos, 5/5)

Selena Frederick (0:00)

I think the final encouragement here is just, again, highlighting how the Lord has used it in our own household, in our souls, in the souls of our children. It's oriented our house around the things of God. Again, life can feel crazy and consuming. It is very anchoring, it is orienting. It's even been very challenging.

Ryan Frederick (0:17)

Do I actually believe these stuff? Sometimes I feel like I don't believe. I wonder if God's real. And this is exactly the place that question needs to come out. And I need to feel like they can ask those questions because I can then affirm them of their belief. I can affirm them of the object of their belief, I should say. It's Christ's grip on us, not our grip on him, that keeps us close.

Selena Frederick (0:41)

Ryan, this feels like a very timely series.

Ryan Frederick (0:45)

Why? Why do you say that?

Selena Frederick (0:47)

Well, because it feels a bit chaotic right now in our lives. And the title of the series is Five Ways to Stay Connected in the Chaos of Life.

Ryan Frederick (0:56)

That's right. I was looking at the next series.

Selena Frederick (1:00)

Well, I'll just try to keep up here.

Ryan Frederick (1:01)

Well, I was wondering how are you going to tie that in? Why is it timely? It's like we need to mature, because the next series is maturing as a married couple. So we'll talk about that more, obviously, as that series comes up. But yeah, we're finishing up this five-week series. And again, for context, well, first off, I'm Ryan. This is my lovely wife, Selena. We are the Fredericks. Our whole mission is to be that voice in your ear, reminding you that marriage is God-designed for your good and for his glory. Yeah, and so that's the furthest context. The nearest context for this series is that we're continuing, which you said.

And our goal was to be intensely practical.

So we thought to ourselves, what are things that you could do, what couples could do, if we're sitting down with a couple and they're struggling, whatever, or they just want to level up, what are some really practical things we could tell them? And so by way of recap, should we go through the five practical things very quickly?

Selena Frederick (1:55)

I think a quick recap. I mean, yeah, part of the context, too, is that we're heading into the school year. We're heading into kind of a new season of just, I don't know. I feel like it's a production season, right? It's summer is like kind of a harvest in some ways, and this is like we're heading back into it.

And so how can we stay connected through the various seasons of life? So number one.

Ryan Frederick (2:17)

Very simply, I'll go through these very quickly. Coffee time, that was the number one thing. Go back, check that out. Keep short accounts. Be quick to apologize, fast to forgive. Transparency, those sorts of things. Seizing small moments was number three. Number four was consistent intimacy.

And number five is today. And that's where we're covering family worship. Now you can consider this your perhaps biannual reminder. Because we talk about family worship quite a bit, and we'll explain why. But if you've heard this content before, just let this be the reminder to you. And of course, we're going to bring a little bit different take here, a little bit different angle.

But it's not a new topic by any means. So, yeah, I think family worship, more than any other thing that we've done as a family, this has transformed our household. Because it centers us on the Word of God as governing in our lives. And what do we mean by family worship? I guess we'll get into that in this episode.

Selena Frederick (3:25)

I guess, simply defined, it's read, sing, pray. So we read together, we read God's Word together, we sing together, we pray together.

So I think that's helpful. Going forward in the conversation. We will discuss more of it in depth, but I think it's important to just frame the conversation for that.

Ryan Frederick (3:41)

And it's consistently done in the home, together as a household. Our target is five nights a week, is what we aim for.

But there are, historically speaking, especially among the Puritans, family worship was something that they would do twice a day.

Selena Frederick (3:57)

Well, and we kind of do that in our morning time together. When you're working, and I'm worried the kids getting started with our home education tasks and whatnot, we usually begin with some sort of hymn. We begin with prayer. We begin with reading either our scriptures or sometimes it's poetry. So I would, the term worship, though, really means it's centered on Christ, on the scriptures. And so we'll also go through scripture memorization and whatnot. So it is rigid in terms of what you're using for family worship. It is scriptures.