Though I grew up in a less-than-perfect family (like every human), one positive thing my family did marked me forever. Every Saturday night, my siblings and I, one after the other, would take a bath and then deliver our shoes to my dad to be polished, all in preparation for the Sunday-morning worship service at the Toledo Gospel Tabernacle. There was never a debate about whether we would go. We never needed to fit church into the family calendar. The weekend schedule of the Tripp family was planned around the one thing we would never think of missing: Sunday worship. For that, I will be forever grateful.

It seemed like we were always the first family to arrive. My dad hated being late for church. And because he had lost much of his hearing in World War II, we always sat right up front. I heard well over a thousand sermons in that church, preached from all over God’s word. I learned all of the great hymns of the faith, many of which I can still sing by memory. I learned the core doctrines of the faith as I sat there with Mom and Dad.

I grew up thinking that “going to church” was a normal part of life. It didn’t seem religious to me or super-spiritual or like some unique commitment. From my youngest days, it seemed to be something that all Christian families did. For my family, there was no exception to this Sunday rule. Even on vacation, my mom and dad would locate a church for us to attend. I am so thankful for the way this important spiritual habit was nailed into my understanding of life.

But as I look back, I’m not sure my mom and dad ever talked about preparing our hearts for worship.

Everyone a Worshiper

Luella and I are the parents of four children, all adults now, and when they were growing up in the house, we committed to talking with them about the importance of Sunday. I was a pastor, which meant we were in church every week, so we wanted to ensure church attendance was more than just a routine. We didn’t implement any rituals or habits on Saturday night (like my dad did) but instead had an ongoing conversation about worship. Specifically, worship is not first an activity that we participate in, but our identity as human beings.

Note the words of Romans 1:25: “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” Clearly, when Paul uses the word worship here, he is not referring to a formal religious concept. He is talking about something that happens in our daily lives. We must understand — and help our children understand — that worship is much more than a religious activity. At its most basic, worship concerns core human identity.

Every human being is a worshiper. God wired every human being with this impulse for worship to drive us to our Creator. So, the most irreverent, irreligious person worships. Paul doesn’t divide people into those who worship and those who don’t. No, Paul divides people by who or what they worship. And there are only two choices: you will worship your Creator, or you will worship something in creation.

“You will worship your Creator, or you will worship something in creation.”

As a parent, you want to use the situations and relationships in your children’s lives to remind them of this spiritual reality. Maybe you do so when a daughter is obsessing over somebody liking her in school or being accepted by her peers. Perhaps sports or academic success has become something of an idol for your son, and you can use that concern as an opening to have the conversation once again about his identity as a worshiper.

My youngest son was a basketball player in high school, and he was practicing out in the backyard one day. I heard the ball stop bouncing, and he came inside and asked me, “Dad, when do you know if a good thing like basketball has become an idol in your life?” Praise God, praise God, praise God! I was thrilled in that moment because it meant that our fifteen-year-old boy had come to grasp his identity as a worshiper and that his heart was prone to run after idols. That was the result of divine grace by means of many conversations and comments.

Every Week a Reminder

If our children begin to recognize their identity as worshipers and the tendency of their hearts to chase after the creation instead of the Creator, then the Sunday gathering starts to make more sense. No longer is it a weird religious activity with singing and reading, standing and sitting. No longer is it merely a duty, an inconvenience, or even a fun social event to run around with friends. Instead, corporate worship gets attached to the core of who they are as human beings and how they operate. On Sunday, we gather together to be confronted with our idolatry so that we can confess it and know the freedom of worshiping God alone.

In the same way, you want to talk with your kids about the most beautiful relationship they could ever have — their relationship with God. We were created to live in a worshipful, obedient, and dependent relationship with our Creator. But sin shattered that perfect relationship and separated us from God. And the consequences have been plaguing us ever since.

God did not design us to live independently of him. Healthy independent living is a delusion. Only as we submit to, fellowship with, and depend upon our Creator will we be who we are supposed to be and do what we are designed to do. We need help not just because we are sinners or failures in some way, but because we are beings designed by a wise, loving, and good God for dependent living.

The regular gathering of the church is the assembly of God’s needy children. It’s a reminder that we are created for him and that life is only ever found in him. The church gathering weekly reminds us to lay down our pride, our self-sufficiency, our delusions of independent strength, our fear of what others will think, and our self-righteousness, and to humbly open our hearts, confessing our need once again to the One who has the power and willingness to help.

Prepare Their Hearts

Sunday worship makes sense only if you understand that you were made for relationship with God, that by instinct and design you are a worshiper, and that because of sin, your heart will chase after created pleasures that promise life and freedom but fail to satisfy.

Talk to your children about their need, their weakness, and their dependency. Contrast those qualities with a society that encourages independence and isolation. Teach them about the beautiful reminders Sunday worship provides. And by grace, may they grow excited about communing with God and the saints every week!

My dear wife, Luella, and I recently celebrated fifty years of marriage. It is mind-boggling to think that a girl from Cuba and a boy from Ohio would end up in the same lunch line, at the same college in South Carolina, on the same day, at the same time.

When I first noticed her in the cafeteria, I was captured right away. For me, it was, without a doubt, love at first sight. For Luella — it was just first sight! As the weeks progressed, and I got to know her more, I became convinced that I loved Luella. I had never felt this way toward anyone before. So I began looking for an opportunity to say those amazing, life-altering words: “I love you.”

I wanted the moment and the location to be just right. I knew this was an important moment, and I didn’t want to blow it. I finally found what I thought was the perfect moment, and I ventured out and said what I had wanted and waited to speak. I looked into Luella’s eyes and said, “Luella, I love you.”

I thought I would hear birds sing and violins play. Instead, Luella’s response was swift and pointed. She said, “You love me? What do you know about love? Don’t ever say that to me again!” I heard birds dying and violins breaking. I couldn’t believe it! After all my waiting and planning, she had thrown the words right back at me. But she was right. That 17-year-old Paul Tripp didn’t have a clue about the nature of love.

Fifty years later, it should be evident that she eventually responded in kind and said, “Paul, I love you.” Things have never been the same since. We reminisce on those early days and joke and laugh and celebrate. But we also worship. The only reason we bumped into each other in the lunch line in college is because a God of awesome sovereignty was weaving together our life stories.

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, . . . determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place. (Acts 17:24, 26)

In this aspect of our marriage, we find it easy to worship our sovereign Lord and his choice to bring our lives together. But when it comes to another area of our relationship and celebrating and worshiping God’s choices, I know that I have struggled. I would imagine you have too.

Celebrating What God Has Made

A healthy, flourishing marriage requires this essential spiritual discipline: worshiping God as Creator and celebrating his choices. Scripture repeatedly calls us to worship God as we stand in awe of his created world, but how often do we remember to celebrate his creative decisions in our spouse?

“A healthy, flourishing marriage requires worshiping God as Creator and celebrating his choices.”

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are certain aspects of you that God has created in which you didn’t have a choice. He determined how tall you would be, whether you would tend to gain weight, your natural degree of physicality or athleticism, the color of your eyes, the tone of your skin, the texture of your hair, the shape of your nose, and the size of your hands. All those qualities are choices of the Creator. How can you look at another human being, as vastly different as we are from one another, and not see the glory of God?

Here’s a fun activity that I would encourage you to do (but be subtle about it!). Take notice of all the different noses you see today. A weird ask, I know, but of all the billions and billions of noses he created, God has yet to repeat a single model. I’m not an ear, nose, and throat doctor, but how incredible is the nose as an aspect of our physicality? Think about everything it can do. Imagine if your nose were upside down. Not only would that look very weird, but you couldn’t go out in the rain.

Although some Westerners are obsessed with the shape and size of our noses and seek to alter them, I don’t think many Christian marriages fall into conflict because of this specific body part. However, the same is not true for many other aspects of our created person (and I’m not talking about body parts).

Who Designed Your Spouse?

God created every aspect of your spouse’s personhood. He administrated every choice of hardwiring, tone of voice, innate personality, natural gifts, and whether he or she is mechanical, analytical, or relational. Neither you nor your spouse chose any of these qualities. You didn’t wake up at six months and say, “I think I’ll grow up to be a mechanical guy,” and your spouse didn’t determine at 5 years old, “I’m going to have a natural inclination for intellectual pursuits.”

All these choices were made by the divine Artist, who has infinite creativity. But there are moments in our selfishness — when that other person is in the way of what we want — that we all wish we could rise to the throne of the Creator and re-create our husband or wife into our image (or at least into someone who would be easier for us to live with). The way to fight against this selfishness is to return to the essential spiritual discipline of worshiping God as Creator and celebrating his choices. When we forget to do that, here’s what tends to happen: the very differences that attracted us to our spouse in courtship now irritate us in marriage.

I once was counseling a husband and wife, and the woman was an academic type. She loved books, learning, and discussing high-level intellectual and philosophical theories. Her husband was a mechanical man. He liked books, too; he just wanted to prop things up with them! This woman was convinced that her husband was less than her because he didn’t enjoy reading. Now, is reading a beneficial activity? Of course it is, but this woman was so obsessed with trying to re-create her husband in her image — with her personality, giftings, inclinations, and preferences — that she was suffocating her husband and causing tremendous conflict in their relationship.

Before You Were Even Born

We cite verses that celebrate God’s choice in creating us in his image from before birth, but often in marriage, in subtle and not so subtle ways, we question the Creator and thus dishonor and disrespect our husband or wife. We end up criticizing the other for choices he or she didn’t make.

Consider these Scripture passages the next time you are tempted to ask your spouse to change in areas where change is simply not possible:

You formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. (Psalm 139:13)

Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb: “I am the Lord, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself.” (Isaiah 44:24)

“When we celebrate God as Creator in our marriage, we can begin to look at one another with wonder and joy.”

When we celebrate God as Creator in our marriage, we can begin to look at one another with wonder and joy. When you look at your spouse and see the Creator’s glory, you feel blessed by how he or she is different. You are amazed and respectful of the experiences and perspectives that your spouse has brought into your life, which you never would have had without this person. And you look for ways to communicate your appreciation and gratitude.

Where in your marriage are you grumbling against the Creator and telling yourself you would have been a better creator in designing your spouse? When are you criticizing your husband or wife for choices that God made? This type of attitude never results in the esteem and honor of your spouse; it never results in unity, understanding, and love.

God’s Beautiful, Uncomfortable Plan

First Corinthians 12 talks about the variety of spiritual gifts and the need for a diverse body of Christ, but the same principle can apply in your marriage. God’s goal in marriage is not uniformity; his goal is unity. Unity is what you pursue in the face of difference. God’s good and beautiful plan is to put someone next to you in marriage who is different from you and doesn’t see the world the way you see it. That’s a good thing that God does to mature you and create dependence on him.

When dealing with differences and the creative choices God has determined in your spouse from before he or she was born, treat your husband or wife with appreciation and grace. Don’t demean and criticize for choices the other did not make. When you forget to worship God as Creator and celebrate his artistry, the sinful nature defaults to cursing the Creator’s work. If you think you would have been a better creator than the Creator, you will never treat your spouse with esteem and respect, forming a marriage of unity, understanding, and love.

But when you celebrate the creativity of God and how he formed your spouse and brought you both together for his glory and your good, you quit being irritated by the differences and start celebrating how they have enhanced your life. As a result, you will not only give room to your spouse’s unique giftings and perspectives, but you will honor him or her in what you do and say, even (and especially) in the moments when you’re confronted with your differences.