A yummy breakfast recently in my home—fresh, homemade yoghurt from my little organic grocer, almonds, blueberries, strawberries, a little honey and croissants. Of course coffee and tea to top it all off!
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
Romans 12:2
Discipleship principle 1
All table time discussions, all meals made, all beauty given is to make Christ real, so that those who are with me will want to enter into a relationship with Him.
As I am studying the 24 Ways with my podcast friends and teaching Proverbs to my membership, I realized how much I wanted to reemphasize the power of the dinner table to discuss these things. Eating, asking questions, talking about the stories (What about the little boy in your stories who told the lie? what were the consequences? How can telling a lie in a hospital, a battlefield, a school change the outcome of situations?—Learn to ask questions to draw your children into a discussion that will cause then to engage and digest the scripture you are teaching them?
Think about this: How many hours a day do you spend on your computer, or phone or in front of the television? How about your children? Do you spend that much time at your table being friends, talking about life, sharing your values and wisdom? Which do you think will be the most influential? The voice of the one where you spend the most time will probably indeed win.
Thousands of times a day, we are accosted by messages from the world. Commercials, ads, the internet, television, social media: instagram, facebook, pinterest, twitter, magazines pour the messages of the world into our lives constantly. These messages will shape the values, convictions, foundations of truth, view of morality in subliminal ways as well as active ways. We are also influenced by peer pressure where we see and hear these messages all the time.
Yet, if we do not want to have our own hearts and minds shaped by these worldly values, we have to figure out how to build a home culture that is more appealing, more satisfying and delightful so that we will be the foundational influence in the lives of our children and for ourselves. In this podcast today, I will be reviewing chapters 4 and 5 from The Lifegiving Table and I hope it will further encourage you as to why investing in the value of our table is profoundly important to the shaping and nurturing of our souls as we seek to grow strong in Christ.
Imagine, even if you just eat together 365 times each year, one meal a day, and start out with prayer of thanks to God, how in a lifetime, it will be over 7000 times that you and your children will practice remembering God as the center of your life together before you eat. It will place patterns in our brains with the habit of being grateful to God every day together as a family value.
What does it mean to be transformed, changed, and reshaped as an antidote to being conformed to the world? In this episode, I ponder these ideas as she discusses chapter one of the Life-giving Table and teaches us about how family culture has the distinct and grace-giving power to both change and protect us. I want women to understand how to inspire those at your table that instills a sense of "this is who we are" and "this is what we believe" into the hearts of her children as they gather at the table, and gives tools to not only create a vision to define our own family culture, but to practically cultivate a legacy.
I hope that you are encouraged by today's podcast.
Find more inspiration in The Lifegiving Table where I will be taking the Discipleship principles each Wednesday.
