What Are We Having For Dinner? A Free, Fun, Flexible Family Devotional

What Are We Having For Dinner? A Free, Fun, Flexible Family Devotional - Parenting Like HannahAre you having family meals together? What about family devotionals? Both will better equip your kids to make godly choices and build stronger faith foundations. The good news is that you can combine a family dinner with this fun family devotional.

So let’s get started!

Materials: food for a family meal, optional food from Bible times

Procedure: Choose one of the following Bible stories and application principles to share with your children.

  • Passover. Exodus 12. The Passover Feast began during the tenth plague on Egypt and the Israelites escape from slavery. The Passover had very strict rules. At the original Passover, neglecting to put the blood on the doorframe would have meant the death of their firstborn children as well. God loves us, but He still has rules that many would consider strange or strict. Just like the Israelites though, ignoring and disobeying them can result in serious consequences, both on Earth and eternally. We need to make sure we read the Bible to know what God wants from us and make sure we obey Him. There is grace, but God has always and will always expect obedience to His commands.
  • Esther. Esther 5-7. Esther, now Queen, needed to convince King Xerxes to overturn the order to kill all Jews. In the Persian Empire, Xerxes was extremely powerful. From earlier in the book, we also know he wasn’t afraid to banish a wife who failed to please him. Xerxes also had no idea Esther was Jewish. Which meant these dinner parties could literally mean life or death for her and her people. Yet Mordecai had earlier counseled her that God (implied) may have placed her in the palace for this very assignment. God has good works He has planned for your kids to do. They need to understand this and begin learning how to discern what those may be. They need to develop their gifts so they will be ready when God wants them to use those gifts to serve Him.
  • Mary and Martha. Luke 10:38-42. The story of Mary and Martha is usually told to remind us listening to Jesus is more important than any worldly thing we could do. Yet there are other lessons which can also be learned from this story. Mary and Martha were happy to open their home to Jesus. Mary especially opened her heart and mind to what he had to say. Both loved him and trusted him, as we learn later in the story of the death of their brother Lazarus. Your children need to open their hearts, minds and lives to Jesus. They need to not just love him, but trust him as well.

Have your children help you prepare a family dinner. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it’s great if there are things they can do to help prepare the meal itself. If you want to get creative, plan a menu that includes foods which would have been eaten by the people in the Bible story you chose.

As you eat dinner, read or tell your children the Bible story you have chosen. Talk about the application principles. What would those principles look like lived out in each of your lives? What changes do you need to make to live out these principles? How can you encourage each other to do what God wants you to do?

Published by

Thereasa Winnett

Thereasa Winnett is the founder of Teach One Reach One and blogger at Parenting Like Hannah. She holds a BA in education from the College of William and Mary. She has served in all areas of ministry to children and teens for more than thirty years and regularly leads workshops for ministries and churches. She has conducted numerous workshops, including sessions at Points of Light’s National Conference on Volunteering and Service, the National Urban Ministry Conference, Pepperdine Bible Lectures, and Lipscomb’s Summer Celebration. Thereasa lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband Greg, where she enjoys reading, knitting, traveling and cooking.

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