By Shela Ervin

 

God, in his good wisdom, has given us a secret weapon for family discipleship, and it happens to be baked into the pattern of our daily lives. This secret weapon is the dinner table.

 

Everybody has got to eat! Breaking bread with others naturally draws us into relationship and conversation. But the patterns and rhythms offered us by daily coming together at supper time gives us simple helpful opportunities for training our children toward goodness and truth.

 

It’s most common to pray before a meal, but we should never take these opportunities for granted. A mother or father can either demonstrate that prayer is a formality to be flippantly offered up before taking that first bite of supper, or a precious opportunity bought for us by Jesus to address and have the ear of the Ruler of the universe.

 

The common dinner prayer is a chance to teach our children how to pray in a posture that acknowledges the presence and power of the living God every single time we pray. It’s a chance to show them how to acknowledge the Lord for his attributes, his kindness, and his provision.

Dinner time prayer is also a setting in which kids can learn to pray aloud in a group, and to strengthen their voices in faith as they pray on behalf of the family.

 

In order to sit down for a meal, dinner must be cooked, the table set, and everything cleaned at the end. The regular rhythms built around dinner are a chance to set patterns of service. Train your children to help set the table, to pour one another’s glasses of water, and to take the initiative to see what else can be done, like clearing one another’s plates.

 

During the meal, kids can take turns asking questions of other family members, practicing the art of drawing others out, rather than remaining self-focused. Better yet, invite friends over and practice the art of hospitality together.

 

A happy heart is not something inherited, but cultivated. After most of the day has gone, supper is the perfect time to reflect on the day and to pause on the many parts that we may be grateful for. As simple as this exercise may seem, it is most pervasively overlooked in our current culture that is focused on offenses and feeling victimized by life’s circumstances.

 

Dinner time gratitude sharing is a chance to teach our kids that not only the spectacular, but the ordinary repetitive realities that make up our day ought to be appreciated. It’s an active fight against the entitlement that creeps up in every sinful heart and the cultivation of humility.

 

The way a person narrates an event reveals the way he interprets it. The act of narrating an event solidifies our view of it. We can use our dinner time conversation to ask our children to tell the story of their days. Then we can model what it sounds like to narrate our own days with God at the center of it, acknowledging him as the one who ordained each event, provided for each need, and guided each moment.

 

Conversation around the dinner table is also a key time for parents to lead out in making sense of what our kids see happening in the world according to the Bible. We all know that many godless voices are speaking into our culture, calling evil good and good evil. Keeping the conversation alive about righteousness and truth over a warming supper meal is an important strategy for maintaining our children’s biblical view of the world’s events.

 

Discussing theology, the truth about God and his Word, is not always a most natural thing in the flow of any given day. But as AW Tozer once said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Dinner time is an opportune time to introduce regular meditation on the things of God, distinct from times that make it seem necessary to talk about the Lord, like family worship time or Sunday worship with your local church.

 

You can make it interesting and bring up difficult questions about God or the way he does things. Don’t underestimate the depth of your kids’ minds, but rather introduce the questions and see what comes out of their hearts. You can ask questions like, “If God is sovereign and controls everything, why do you think we should pray?” or “What does Scripture say that the new heavens and new earth will be like?”

 

The fruit of biblical discipleship cannot be produced in a single day or week, but rather over ordinary faithful conversations and experiences shared together. Don’t let the dinner time opportunity pass you by.

 

Shela is a happy helpmate to her husband in gospel ministry, mom to two young ones, and creates goods & resources with hopes to strengthen Kingdom families into Christ until he comes.

 

Family Dinner Is A Discipleship Opportunity by Engage Magazine

The Power of Family Meals by The Disciple-Making Parent

Meal Times Are God Times by Desiring God