Sermonette: Let's Huddle Up in Faith! Part VIII

Over the past weeks, I’ve shared about a simple five-step nightly faith practice called FAITH5.

FAITH5 is a nightly ritual that helps families grow closer to one another and to God, one night at a time. All that benefit and it only takes just a few minutes! Each night at bedtime, families “Huddle Up” to check in. Here are the five steps of the FAITH5 Home Huddle:

1. SHARE your highs and lows

2. READ a Bible verse or story

3. TALK about how the Bible verse might relate to your highs and lows

4. PRAY together

5. BLESS one another with the sign of the cross

Over these past weeks, we’ve delved deep into each step of the FAITH5, and the benefits and blessings that come with each one. This week, we think about FAITH5 as a ritual.

Rituals are tools that hold us when we can’t hold ourselves. You might think of FAITH5 like a healthy family habit that provides structure and a strong foundation in the midst of life’s ups and downs, in the midst of our highs and lows.

Rituals are what we return to when life is falling apart. This is why FAITH5, practiced every night, will hold your family together in a world that can indeed tear it apart. We’ve all seen it. Trouble comes and families are not able to weather the trouble well. Relationships are strained and even severed. FAITH5, practiced nightly, can help turn that tide and will serve as a tool for the formation of the following:

Intention: As parents, it is vital that we have a plan - a plan to raise thoughtful, informed, kind, and strong kids. But the truth is that most of us are not looking at the long term because we are just trying to get through THIS day. FAITH5 helps build intention into your family’s life. What you intend comes to be. And if you intend to grow a connection with each other and God, that is what will happen.

Communication: Consider what happens as kids grow and then head into their adolescence years. It is assumed in American culture that kids will rebel, that they will back away from communication with their parents as they age. This is a lie. Yes, of course, they need to assert their independence. They need to differentiate from their parents. But FAITH5 practiced every night actually keeps communication strong through adolescence and beyond. The key is to practice open communication about everyday matters, EVERY DAY. FAITH5 provides this.

Validation: Sharing FAITH5 each night before bed leaves each member of the family feeling validated for their experience of what is good and what is hard in life. In the TALK step, all family members share how they hear God speaking to them through the Scripture, and each one is validated in their sharing. Validation is such a vital part of growing up, and helps kids to know that they and their ideas matter to their family and to God.

Identity: FAITH5 provides a strong foundation of identity on which kids can grow. They feel solidly grounded in their family unit and solidly grounded as a child of God. With the growing influence of social media and technology on the identity of our young people, FAITH5 is a more powerful tool than ever before.

Values: When parents share their own highs and lows with their kids every night, values are communicated organically. When dad shares that his low is that his co-worker’s father has cancer, he has just taught his children that in THIS family, we care about our co-workers’ lives. When mom shares that her high is visiting her grandma in the nursing home, she has just taught her kids that family and legacy matter.

Faith: FAITH5 is grounded in God, and when a family practices it every night before bed, faith can’t not be formed! In American Christian culture, we have come to falsely believe that faith can be formed by bringing our kids to Sunday school only. But the truth is that our American culture quickly undoes what we are able to teach kids in just one hour per week. Faith must be practiced in the home, and FAITH5 is an easy-to-use tool for all parents. The Holy Spirit uses each of the five steps to build a strong foundation of faith on which children can grow and learn about, and come to know deeply, our good and gracious God.

So, start tonight! There is no time like the present to huddle up in faith! Start tonight. What do you have to lose? Time? Never, as time is not spent on FAITH5, but is invested in your family’s future.

Deuteronomy 6:6-9 - And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.

To learn more about FAITH5 Home Huddles, go to http://www.faith5.org