Mealtime Prayers: Impromptu or Memorized?

00:00:05.200 | In episodes 123 and 124, we talked about prayer, and in 124 especially, we talked

00:00:10.440 | about mealtime prayers. Pastor John, in your opinion, what's more valuable?

00:00:15.060 | Impromptu prayers before a meal or memorized prayers?

00:00:19.000 | I think the wise thing to do would be to mix it up.

00:00:27.400 | If the only prayers that children hear their parents pray are memorized prayers,

00:00:35.500 | it will probably communicate to them that's the only way you can pray to God,

00:00:42.800 | at least at mealtime. And yet, I don't want to discount memorized and well-thought-through prayers

00:00:55.400 | because they too have a blessing, and the blessing they have is because they say things often

00:01:02.200 | that we need to say and might forget to say if we hadn't thought them through.

00:01:10.200 | They're also easy to memorize for little children, and they have a kind of family identification

00:01:19.500 | and bonding effect. So, if I think of our family, Tony, years and years ago,

00:01:27.500 | I wrote three prayers, one for the morning, one for lunch, and one for supper.

00:01:37.500 | And if our family gets together now, and these boys, my four sons, Taltha's still at home,

00:01:44.500 | my guess is, well, I'll give you an example. We went to Brazil for Benjamin's wedding.

00:01:50.500 | That's been some time now, but that's how old he was, and Carson was already married.

00:01:55.500 | And this Brazilian family turned to me and said, "Would you say grace over the meal?"

00:02:04.500 | And some of them were believers probably, and some weren't. And I took a risk, and I said,

00:02:09.500 | "Well, I'll tell you what. I'd like my whole family to say the grace for you."

00:02:16.500 | And then I began the prayer. Let me see if I can put my finger on it right now.

00:02:26.500 | Here's the morning one. "Our Father, every day you give the food by which our bodies live.

00:02:32.500 | For this we thank you from our heart and pray that as we this day start,

00:02:37.500 | we may allow our eyes to see your endless generosity."

00:02:42.500 | So I wrote that. I wrote one for noon, and I wrote one for supper, and we said them.

00:02:49.500 | There in Brazil, we got all the way through our prayer together as a family.

00:02:55.500 | And so I'm just illustrating that I believe in prepared, memorized prayers.

00:03:03.500 | And I want to say, to hear a dad or a mom pray, and to let the children pray spontaneous prayers,

00:03:10.500 | has something also very important to communicate.

00:03:13.500 | Thank you, Pastor John. You can find the other mealtime prayers he's written

00:03:17.500 | by searching for his article titled "Piper's Mealtime Prayers."

00:03:21.500 | There's an article at Zaringod.org.

00:03:24.500 | There you will find thousands of other free books and articles and sermons and other resources from John Piper.

00:03:29.500 | I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.

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