In episodes 123 and 124, we talked about prayer, and in 124 especially, we talked about mealtime prayers. Pastor John, in your opinion, what's more valuable? Impromptu prayers before a meal or memorized prayers? I think the wise thing to do would be to mix it up. If the only prayers that children hear their parents pray are memorized prayers, it will probably communicate to them that's the only way you can pray to God, at least at mealtime.

And yet, I don't want to discount memorized and well-thought-through prayers because they too have a blessing, and the blessing they have is because they say things often that we need to say and might forget to say if we hadn't thought them through. They're also easy to memorize for little children, and they have a kind of family identification and bonding effect.

So, if I think of our family, Tony, years and years ago, I wrote three prayers, one for the morning, one for lunch, and one for supper. And if our family gets together now, and these boys, my four sons, Taltha's still at home, my guess is, well, I'll give you an example.

We went to Brazil for Benjamin's wedding. That's been some time now, but that's how old he was, and Carson was already married. And this Brazilian family turned to me and said, "Would you say grace over the meal?" And some of them were believers probably, and some weren't. And I took a risk, and I said, "Well, I'll tell you what.

I'd like my whole family to say the grace for you." And then I began the prayer. Let me see if I can put my finger on it right now. Here's the morning one. "Our Father, every day you give the food by which our bodies live. For this we thank you from our heart and pray that as we this day start, we may allow our eyes to see your endless generosity." So I wrote that.

I wrote one for noon, and I wrote one for supper, and we said them. There in Brazil, we got all the way through our prayer together as a family. And so I'm just illustrating that I believe in prepared, memorized prayers. And I want to say, to hear a dad or a mom pray, and to let the children pray spontaneous prayers, has something also very important to communicate.

Thank you, Pastor John. You can find the other mealtime prayers he's written by searching for his article titled "Piper's Mealtime Prayers." There's an article at Zaringod.org. There you will find thousands of other free books and articles and sermons and other resources from John Piper. I'm your host Tony Reinke.

Thanks for listening.