Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Daily Bread



Daily Bread

“Give us this day our daily bread.”  Mat. 6:11

“Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.”  James 1:17

            Many people take time to pray over their meals to say thank you for the meal that the Lord has provided them.  Some at the end to the day will say a prayer of thanks for some blessing that they feel came from the Lord.  A child might say thanks for parents or grandparents and maybe for some toy that they have gotten.  When we say thanks to God we are acknowledging where these things come from.  God gives us our daily bread and so we need to look at praying for what we need.
            The Life Application Bible says, “When you pray “Give us this day our daily bread,” we are acknowledging that God is our sustainer and provider.  It is a misconception to think that we provide for our needs ourselves. We must trust God daily to provide what He knows we need.” Acknowledging God as our provider is seen later in chapter six when Jesus talks about worrying about food and clothes.  Jesus says: “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33). By seeking Christ, we will by default acknowledge that it is God who is our provider.
            Praying for what we need is to be for this day. We are given today and today should be the focus, or most of our prayer.  Jesus would say in verse 34 of chapter 6 that, “Each day has enough trouble of its own.”  Today, we need food to eat we need to be sustained today.  If the Lord wills us to have tomorrow, we will need to pray for what we need when we get there.  This being said, we don’t take steps to prepare for tomorrow, but our main focus should be on today. Tomorrow will have its own worry and so to focus more attention on that we forget to live today, and we can miss out on the needs we have today.
            Now when asking God to give us our daily bread, does not mean that we don’t work.  God has given us abilities that are also gifts from above.  This gives and abilities are to be used, to the glory of God.  When you think about this, it is to God’s glory that our work provides the things we need to sustain us.  The book of Proverbs talks about the lazy man going hungry (Proverbs 19:15).  Work has always been part of Gods plan, just read Genesis Chapter 2 where man was to attend to the garden that God had planned.  We are to work, and our work provides us food, but all that does come from God.
            Lastly, we need to pray for what sustains us, not to spend time praying like God is a genie that grants us wishes. Now, God gives us beyond what we ask or even imagine, but we aren’t to be greedy people.  Our focus is always to be on God and His righteousness.  We are to seek His kingdom as well.  As we grow we need to pray and seek the will of God for our lives.  That in turn should be reflected in our prayers.
            Prayer is a reflection of us knowing and loving God.  As we grow in our walk with God it will be reflected in how we pray.   Our prayer should be to have God teach us His will, so that our prayers will be a better reflection of our walk with God and what we need from God.  It should be a prayer of our hearts that God would teach us to pray.


All Scripture is from New American Standard Bible.  Copyright 1995 by the Lockman Foundation, La Habra, CA

Life Application Study Bible.  Copyright 2000 by Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash