Enjoying Family Worship

You're a parent and you're raising your children what is job one for you and will assume, keeping them alive is given beyond the puts job one Pierce, Jason Hauser, there's nothing more important. All of our lives and for us to teach our kids how to follow Jesus and in parents. We are the most influential voice in our kids lives that the greatest opportunity. Our kids are going to have. To walk with Jesus is going to be through us in the church and the youth pastors and kids passes all the other people in their lives, but we have the greatest voice and Jesus will empower you so I just encourage all families take that next step of faith, whatever the next step is for you. Have courage because it will make a difference in your life. And kids. This is family life today. Our hosts are Damon and Wilson. I'm Bob Payne can find us online@familylifetoday.com one of the ways we point our kids to Jesus. As we raise them is through Scripture memory not just for them but for us to talk about an easy way to do that today.

Stay with us and welcome to family life today. Thanks for joining us when we were raising our kids one of the things we tried to do. We try to incorporate Scripture memory is a part of what we were doing raising the kids.

Sometimes I have to confess, we were selective about the verses we wanted them to memorize for parenting purposes right so Ephesians 66 as they honor thy father and parents in the Lord to go right to something like that.

But our kids today.

If you were to begin this verse. Our kids are all grown and married, have kids of their own. If you were to begin this verse they would recited on Q and would roll their eyes while they were doing it. It's Proverbs 26, 18 and 19 years… Like a madman shooting firebrands and deadly arrows so is one who deceives his friend and says I was only joking.

And I love that is our kids all the time would would do something to their brothers or sisters tease him do something and then you'd don't talk to your sister. I was just joking and so we had that at the dinner table.

We would all chant diverse together like a madman shooting firebrands are deadly arrows. That's not a typical verse to memorize verses affect you say you like what it isn't that a verse that every parent should be able pull out their hip pocket and you need to remember. In fact, I'm just wondering if that verses ever been put to music and the people to find out if it hasn't been put to music.

It should be.

Jason Hauser is here with us from seeds, family worship, Jason.

Welcome back to family life today. It's so awesome to be here and that is a challenge to throw down the gauntlet and I have not something that I'm already imagining the music is not a ballot I can take Jason Hauser. We've got John Majors joining us on welcome to family life today. Jason has led seeds family worship for almost 2 decades now to write yet. Putting Scripture to music in a way that makes it easy for moms and dads and kids in the whole family to memorize the Bible. I love seeds. In fact, when we were up dating the passport to purity resource that family life created back in the early 90s with some songs some Scripture memory songs in the first addition that were appropriate for the early 90s I mean a lot of synthesizer and a lot of big hair as I can stuff and and we just realized now these songs have got to get updated so we went to Jason and said you can call me yeah you and we went to Jason and said, could you create these songs for us and so all of the passport purity and passport to identity music was created by Jason Scripture memory verses that are part of those programs, and speaking a passport to identity John Majors was the leader of that project when he was here as a part of family life, wrote a book that goes along with passport what entity called true identity that's for teenagers to read to help understand their identity who they arts.

The big question.

Every teenager is asking is, who am I what am I good at.

Why should anybody like me, why am I here exactly. I've always said I think there are two beliefs that determine every decision, every person makes every day whether your five years old or 52 beliefs and there sitting right here.

One is theology what we believe about God. That's what you're doing with Scripture to help kids understand theology and the other is identity. Who am I and I think I am also that every decision made its is based on do I really understand God's character and identity to understand who I am good decision that decisions are made on that and it's it's pretty cool as you are saying about without there sitting right here that are influencing those two areas and that's critical. Jason no. While I didn't know about this earlier that Dave and I as we memorize Scripture over the years.

There was one point that we were in seminary taking hermeneutics class and professor popped on ice the night before that we had to memorize 15 verses for the final Nextel.

Dave is really good at memorizing Scripture and I got so mad because he was done in my 45 minute Monteith reciting him and Mike on number four. Like I'm not doing this I can do sans sans memorize those and so I feel like you're such a genius to help assist families and individuals to memorize Scriptures through music. It is pretty amazing. Jason, how Scripture put the music does something different in our memory and in our I think even in our soul and God's word is living and powerful. So the spoken word.

I'm a big proponent of the spoken word, but the sun word the word with Melody there something that is transcendent about the Whites. I always tell kids you know music is really important to God. There are songs throughout the whole Bible, but the middle of the Bible is a collection of 150 songs and God wired us for music. He wears us to worship him. And when the ways we do that is to music apart. There's some statistics that say all of us whether we want to or not. By the time we leave home or 18 or 20. We note to the 3000 songs word for word right know what those songs are what those lyrics are that we have in our minds.

I mean, that can be debated but are not only there was the best lyrics right and we all have that.

But to be able to put God's word to music in the whole seeds family worship ministry came out of just serving kids at a local church in Franklin Tennessee in the writing Scriptures for vacation Bible school, but seeing how that impacted our kids and our teachers and how it impacted our church and think I just opened doors for it to become what it is today.

John will go back to a conversation you and I had more than a decade ago we were talking here at family life about how can we help moms and dads in the process of discipling their kids what kinds of tools. Could we come up with an we kicked around the idea that really now you and Jason are working together to put legs to this idea that was. That's more than a decade old. Talk about the thing that we heard all the time about passport purity was you made it easy for us to win as parents we got a huge win. Great connection with my kids run a difficult topic and Bob and I got thought about it. How do we take that from just one event you note in the lifetime of your child and turned into a daily thing a weekly thing and make it happen more often and get God's word hidden in their heart and that really led us to this idea of weekly family devotions with Scripture memory songs that plant God's word in your heart and those who keep coming back. At times you don't even expect if I Jason I when we were working on passport purity.

We left about some of the old salty songs. We still remembered you know, beloved, let us love one another."

I still know that because of my kids with you and sometimes song stick for the wrong reason that that tune was interesting and that's what people Jason and we wanted to have really memorable tunes that were also engaged. The whole family but also gave families an easy way to win. We talked about this idea. What if we took 100 verses and we said these are the essential 100 if every kid by the time he graduated had memorize these hundred verses, not just 100 random versus but what if you categorized them in and you really laid out a systematic theology utilizing those hundred verses how much farther ahead with that child be at age 18.

If those hundred verses were planted in his heart so that goes to college may behaviors to the left to the right he still got God's word hidden in his heart and God's word will not return void. I believe that he's can still hear those verses ringing in his head for the rest of his life if he plants in their early you guys this year in 2020 and put together a project that's really the kind of the first steps in that direction of the hundred or more than 100, but this is what your given life to write you work on it 20 and 2020. What I mean. Just think, as a family. You might be memorizing Scripture together, but it's often a struggle to get your kids to engaged to remember it. You might get it done but a week later they don't remember. But what if you can come away from the end of 2020 heaven memorize 20 verses together as a family like how that will begin to change your family the ethos of your family the conversations at the table. Part of the real value of seeds as we want to get the word planted because someone 19 talks about how I've hidden God's word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Let's hide it in there at a young age. Yes, and you never know how dads can bring that about. In college or whatever, but 20 versus how many families can say we have 20 verses together we can recite and we memorize them effortlessly just by just by listening and I know some Dead Sea. Another scenario now here is gone. Great money even if it is 10 then they hear 20 but they don't have this part. They don't know the music part is can make fun because when you say this is can be some you can enjoy changes everything is a part of it. Not only is it going to be stuck in memorable. It connection create joy around right yeah I don't have to work at it. That's the beautiful thing is, as you're driving your car, you can just be playing the music we have playlists on spot of pineapple music you can display the music and I got a video this past week of a little girl climbed up on their couch to her little Amazon Alexa and say Alexa play seeds, family worship, and I love that this little one. She's been you know and train that she can have God's word. She's excited herself to have God's word plain in her house and so you have God's word that you're just listening to you, not trying to memorize for a hermeneutics class, you're just as you're driving in your car, but then all of a sudden you know these 20 verses and you can structure them as a family and then start sharing what they mean. That's what's so powerful about what John's piece that he's bringing into seeds right now is is really doing some devotion so families can know the verses but then hey, this is what this means to your life and these are stories that share New Britain three or four devotionals for each verse or devotions for each verse you so with 20 versus 80 devotions so that the family they might say, okay, it's gonna take us two weeks to learn this verse that's fine they could do it in a week, but you could have the devotions read of the meal together you listen to the songs throughout the week and by the end of the week you want to be able have a Scripture tucked away in your heart right yeah that's that's a possibility. And there's a lot of different ways to approach it.

Every family has different structure. Jason our talk about this is our home. We do it over and over breakfast. I make a big meal because food is what brings people together. You know, instead of trying to create some separate family worship event that can be kind of intimidating. It's like not just bring everybody around the table. Read the story. Let the verses play and hopefully over time that's going to saturate Jason. They take a little differently, yet we do. Just like Sunday nights we we decide to have a family night. It's kind of been part of our family culture and such, but it just one night a week.

I think sometimes people think I'm in family ministry and that we devotions every day and we do all these things like we just fight that one night a week. We sit down, but we have spiritual family time and we share a meal like Johnson's food is powerful. You know, food can gather, especially at at all ages, but teenagers are little harder to wrangle at times but you make a nice meal and they'll show up right so you get everybody together and then you we just sit down and and will have our family time and we just have sometimes were in different things over the season, but for this these devotions are easy just you could literally be sitting at the table are like our family we going we eat dinner and then we going to living. Then we sit around and then we have our devotion time and then we pray just that were devotion time can be intimidator. I guess it sounds great. We want that then I think we get stuck like look like what we do you'd like change my voice and you know and sell what you've done is you've made it easy so you pull your family together. Walk us through what you exactly do you shared your meal, which is a great idea and now you're pulling out music. The Bible, what are you talking about, well, so with our family. I want to keep it as and I'm talking to the average that out here who's going like you said what are you talking about devotion like that word of heard pastors talk about that. That's so intimidating I'm barely getting to the word myself like I do say look look look look just tell your family, hate, I'm not studying the Bible very much. I want to more. Let's all do this together and were to keep it simple. All we do is we sit down at the table for the meal and while the kids are shoving food in their mouth, and can't interrupt yet. I just start reading the story and their all their story based because I think that's a reason Jesus often taught was stories a draw to draw everybody and even if you disagree. Even if you don't like it, which can be part of the conversation as well. Right you might say that I thought that was stupid. Let's talk about that. That's okay. Now you're not accusing dad of that and some other guy who wrote in some other story, but I just read it. There's a question to ask to get conversation going, just asked the question sometimes will have 1015 minutes of conversation. Sometimes silence and I just move on. I will put any pressure on anyone you know if there's great conversation, great. If not, no big deal and we pray to wrap up just a simple prayer.

If you feel comfortable praying. We even wrote a prayer you can just read the prayer. It's great if you want by yourself. All we care about is you start the habit of starting to connect around Scripture together because there's were in the midst of a pandemic, but there's a bigger one for kids are leaving the church in droves after high school. Just say and see the only way were to be able to reverse that is to be bringing the gospel into the home every day saturating our homes of the gospel everyday, and so were just trying to make an easy tool for doing that your kids coming you're partnering with Jason so your kids or your older sons 16 is 15 down to seven. How do they do with the music. Do you bring home some of the songs. Jason was put together imago and I like that song so much. My strategy with the music is just to let it play whenever were making the meal and when were cleaning up and I just let it play and many times when we were going to school.

I just let it play what people are getting ready for school. I didn't ask for permission.

I didn't try to build it up and try to convince them that they're gonna love it. I just let it play just let it work in the background so we actually don't play any music during the devotion time at all now. Later in the union and sometimes a little kids will love to do hand motion videos and they just eat that up. The oldest is no go anywhere near that and I don't write put that on so you just kinda gotta know what your family like you know what's going to serve them was going to meet one of the things that I've always found interesting about seeds music is that it really does seem to connect with three-year-olds and 18-year-olds and 35-year-old moms and dads.

I don't know what it is about what you do musically that has that broad appeal, but your conscious of the fact that you're trying to write songs that the whole family can connect the background of seeds. When I first started the whole seeds ministry is working with a kid named Matthew West and he was a kid back then just getting started that produced his first album and so we wrote some of the first seats family worship songs they sang on the albums but Derek just kind of like writing worship songs with the pop rock feel to them so they just modern worship songs, but they have a kid energy and they have different vocals, different people singing of guest artists and myself, but really Kevin that the energy I think connects with kids, but then it's their worship songs written to the word, Disney's figured out how to connect with moms and dads and kids musically and you bring a lot of that same pop sensibility exact. So we got got a keyboard here. I think we need to hear how I think our audience needs to kind of hear what a verse put the music sounds like a seeds project and what their family could be listing. Do not click memorizes a passage okay I write awesome. We had this on the first I want to do this I like to do for you guys is it about the madman in the right one. You know madman will be the next is yet another reason to have me back to the madman this on the Dell do with what I believe that the title come from our new album, it's John 336 and it testifies like that we believe it's a great song is to declare that I believe in Jesus.

I believe he's God's son while you can set up.

I'll just let listeners know you can go to our website. Family life today.com and there's a link there that will give you information on how you can get access to the devotionals and to the songs that are part of the 20 verses in 2020 program that seeds is put together. John's been working on is this one of the songs from the 20 and 20 going okay and what's in a mode again I believe are I John 336 already in the main and the main and the unplugged version that we heard right. Yes you produce it out with drums and guitars and the whole lot of like young people succumb or see the youth their teenagers and sing with me so yeah we have a big gang vocals and this feels like high-energy worship for families and tell everybody who's a part of the seeds band these days. Why, you know it's interesting, I been doing this long enough to grow a worship team.

I'm actually producing that the new music with my oldest son Ben who is 21 and in my middle and he plays guitar and then my middle son Brandon's 18 he plays keyboard there both just incredible musicians. They both love the Lord and it's amazing to see what God's done their lives and then my nephew plays drums and my niece Kylie.

Now Kylie Lynch what she does on the hand motion. She's worship girl for C so we are a family team, a family band when family ministries is pretty amazing. There is pressure being born in your family well. This is an intimidating issue for a lot of moms and dads. Most moms and dads I know feel like they're not doing enough like their failing at this.

I look back and think we could have and should have done more. I think our kids, it's a you're too hard on yourself but as parents. There's nothing we care more about then that our kids love the Lord and I think up in the church, so we never saw modeled. We had no idea what it looked like so for someone to give us tools that is a gift. As you guys were talking and even thinking Jason I recall, but we used to do when our kids would go to bed now. I intend to be scared at the wound up and so we would let them listen to certain music kind of what we talked about earlier saltine the singing songbook. And you know in that was Scripture & thinking man is wearing the car as you mentioned earlier, as you just playing a lack center music in the house, or even going to bed. If they listen to that and that God's words sink deep thinking like you can't screw up. They did have a lot of Scripture memorized. They do know a lot of Scripture and they've been a lot of adventures going out and doing you know, worship nights, and we made some incredible memories just in in discipleship. You know with our kids just doing life with us. One thing Bob I want to just add to what you're saying to about people being intimidated to do this. That's a big part of what we want to help people do just to make it easy and every step forward is a win. I know it's the small victories you have to preach sermons to your kids, you know, but it's really stepping in the just saying at work I just have a what I call us just a spiritual family time. It's a time to get together to talk about the Lord, you know, but a Scripture that that I go back to over and over and I share with moms and dads. I want to share with the families. Here is the great commission, but thinking about it for families and Jesus said, go and make disciples of all nations is put your children go and make disciples of your children baptized in the name them in the name of the father the son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

So Jesus gave his disciples a call that was so much bigger than them. Despite parenting is bigger than all of us and it's intimidating to do. But Jesus said, I will be with you in this.

But there's nothing more important in all of our lives and for us to teach our kids how to follow Jesus and and parents. We are the most influential voice in our kids lives that the greatest opportunity.

Our kids are going to have. To walk with Jesus is going to be through us in the church and the youth pastors and kids passes all the other people in their lives, but we have the greatest voice and Jesus will will empower you so I just encourage all families take that next step of faith, whatever that next step is for you. Have courage because it will make a difference in your life and your kids haven't devotions that are story based. I'm just imagining now kids going are you gonna redo us a story to the rather than dad having to be the one sent okay so you read this thing. What's our story tonight there to be more drawn to that again I'll just point our listeners to family life today.com or we got a link to the 20 verses in 2020 project that you guys who put together this is free.

Families have access to this, go to family life today.com and take advantage of the work that John and Jason have been doing the songs the devotionals, all of it go to family life today.com for the 20 verses in 2020 project and get access to all that John and Jason have put together and I should also mention there's another resource available online that we put together a family life. That's called take your marriage from good to great. This is not about Scripture memory for families. This is about how you can strengthen the foundation of your marriage relationship with some easy to access easy to engage with content. A couple of online courses some messages you can listen to from Bodie Baucom and Paul David Tripp Julie Slattery Gary Chapman there's a downloadable e-book that were making available all of its free and we got a little extra incentive for you to engage with this content.

Everybody who signs up for it and downloads it your automatically entered into a contest where somebody is gonna win a trip to family life to sit in on an upcoming family life today recording session and then have dinner that night with David and Wilson will cover the cost of your flight will cover your hotel will get your rental car.

Just make sure that you're taking care of while you're here, there's no purchase necessary. The contest ends August 14 some restrictions to apply. You can find the official rules@familylife.com/good contest. So check out the take your marriage from good to great, free resource, and maybe we'll see you at an upcoming family life today recording session and then finally we are hoping that everybody who's a family life today Lister will get a copy of my new book which is called love like you mean it. It's a look at the biblical definition of love, which is the definition we have to embrace if we want the kind of marriage.

God intends for us to have the Bible makes it clear what real love looks like. And that's what this book is all about the book is our gift to you this month.

When you make a donation to support the ministry of family life today when you help us help others when you give us so that we can reach more people more regularly with practical biblical help and hope for their marriage and family. That's what your donation does so if you can make a donation today would love to say thank you by sending you a copy of the book love like you mean it.

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You can donate online@familylifetoday.com or call one 800 FL today to donate and were grateful for your partnership with us here in the ministry of family life today and we hope you can join us again tomorrow when working to continue talking about creative ways to engage the whole family in Scripture memory will hear another song from Jason Hauser tomorrow so I hope you can tune in for that I want to thank our engineer today. Keith Lynch along with our entire broadcast production team on behalf of our hosts Dave and Ann Wilson on Poplar pain.

See you next time for another edition of family life today. Family life today is a production of family life of Little Rock, Arkansas. Accrue ministry help for today hope for tomorrow