PRAYER PRACTICE
Out loud, pray for God to
speak to you through your reading. Praise God for giving us His word. Ask the
Spirit to help you read with faith, and to live out what you hear from God
through the passage.
DAILY
READING
DEVOTION /
REFLECTION
Content with
Food and Clothing
By Pr. Dave
Mann
“Give us this
day our daily bread.”
It may
surprise some people, but in the model prayer that Jesus provides for us, we
are encouraged to pray for material provisions.
Not everything that the Lord desires for us is exclusively
spiritual. God made us with physical
bodies and he instructs us to ask him for the necessities of life, some of
which are indeed physical – daily bread.
However, we
live in a society in which we are coaxed on a regular basis to be discontent
with what we have and to long for more.
The ads on television and social media prompt us never to be satisfied
with what we have. Thus, we can ask the
Holy Spirit to lead us toward two important understandings in this petition of
the Lord’s Prayer.
1) We should be aware of the enticements of
the world toward materialism, and to fervently resist those allures, asking
only for daily bread. The Apostle Paul
in 1 Timothy 6 warned our 1st century brothers and sisters against
the temptation of coveting the accumulation of wealth. How much more do we who live in an affluent
society of the 21st century need such a warning? Love of wealth is a dangerous
temptation. It is through this craving that some have wandered away
from the faith. Love of money is at war
with the love of God!
2) We should recognize that God himself is the source of all the good gifts that we find in our lives. Gratitude is the normal response for these blessings. I was attending a worship service in Haiti, among believers who had very, very few material things. The worship leader began with these questions and exhortation.
How many of you had something to eat this
week? (hands in the air)
How many of you have clothes to wear to
worship today? (hands in the air)
How many of you were NOT in the hospital
this week? (hands in the air)
How many of you awoke this morning to find
breath in your lungs? (hands in the air)
Isn’t God good?! Let’s worship the Lord for all of his good
gifts to us! (Shouts of “Amen!”)
This petition in the Lord’s
prayer is both a challenge to understand that we have much more than is required
for our daily bread, AND a grateful recognition that God is the source of these
blessings.
Heavenly Father, thank you
for your abundant grace, providing me with so much more than I deserve. Guard and protect me from believing the
alluring words that I need more and more things. You are all that I need. I pray and I live in Jesus’ name. Amen!
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