Family Devotions around the Dinner Table
Family devotions around the dinner table are a wonderful way to foster meaningful conversation and provide spiritual nourishment for your family. By gathering together in this intentional and sacred space, you create an opportunity for everyone to come together and connect on a deeper level. The act of sharing a meal while engaging in devotional practices not only satisfies physical hunger but also nourishes the soul. The dinner table serves as a central gathering place where family members can come together after a long day and share their experiences, thoughts, and feelings. It is a space where conversations naturally flow, and by incorporating devotions into this setting, you can infuse these conversations with spiritual depth and meaning. This intentional practice allows for the exploration of faith, and values.
The dinner table is a great time for family devotions. Dinnertime provides an opportunity to connect over food while having fun, joyful and meaningful faith-building conversations. So what exactly are family devotions? The words suggest the idea of devotions with your family, which is a small snapshot of the bigger picture really. Family devotions could be described as home fellowship or parent-led devotions.
My husband and I want to model for our children the reality of a genuine relationship with Christ. We teach them how to pray, how to study and memorize scripture and how to show Christian love to those around them. My husband and I are not leaving it to chance that our children will absorb a biblical worldview on their own without our instructions. We can’t simply rely on Sunday school or youth group to take on these tasks. The responsibility lies squarely on our shoulders.
HOW WE HAVE DEVOTIONS AT OUR HOUSE
Our children are still quite young and we want to make studying the bible fun. A great way to inspire dinner table devotions is with wordplay. Each evening we begin dinner with a prayer and a question. Everyone is given an opportunity to answer the question. Sometimes I will even use strips of paper as a table cloth and let the children write their answers at their place setting.
“Are you careful about the words you say?”
“Are you as kind to your brothers and sisters as you are to your friends?”
“Do you do lots of good things?”
After the question has been answered, my husband will lead us in our family devotions. He has a daily family devotion schedule planned out with a story and bible verse{s} that relate to the stories. The stories help our children understand the bible verses that he reads. Each story is a lesson and the daily question, story and bible verses all connect and relate to one another.
It is a time commitment, which may take us away from other pursuits. However, missing a television program or a load of laundry is a wonderful trade off to keep these devotions in our daily lives. Having this set time for fun and spiritual growth as a family demonstrates to our children what is really important.
We always end our family devotions with an ACTS prayer.
A(Adoration)
C (Confession)
T (Thanksgiving)
S (Supplication)
Remember to take time for prayer, worship and the study of God’s Word with your children. What do you do to nurture your children’s relationship with the Lord?
HERE’S ANOTHER GREAT DEVOTIONAL HELP
Your family’s gathered around the table. What’s on the menu? Cold stares? Stale prayers? The same old leftover questions about “what happened at school today”? Next time you sit down to eat, enjoy some spiritual food too! Get everyone talking—and learning—with the nourishment of mealtime devotions! Encourage quality family time and pass on a strong spiritual heritage with these family devotions to engage children in fun, lively, productive dialogue.
These family devotions I created have always been a family favorite and will make mealtime fun, and encourage lots of great conversation.