Matthew 6:9-13 (NKJV) 9“In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. 10Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven. 11Give us this day our daily bread. 12And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors. 13And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
As we study the weapons of our warfare, we have come to the subject of prayer. Prayer is a major weapon in our ability to resist the devil as we are exhorted to do in James chapter 4. We have looked at prayer from many different perspectives. The most important thing to understand when we consider prayer as a weapon is the fact that it is communication with God. Communication is a key to any relationship. In the case of prayer, our communication builds the connection between us and him. We feel his presence and our faith is strengthened as we do. Prayer puts us in the realm of the spirit, and in that realm we are unstoppable.
In our last post we began to look at the pattern of prayer Jesus puts forth in Matthew 6:9-13. We found in Luke 11:1 even after all they had seen and heard in their time with him, the one thing they wanted him to teach them was how to pray. They recognized Jesus’ prayer life as the key to the power they experienced in his ministry. It is important to remember that, although I am not saying it is wrong to pray the words Jesus prayed in the “Lords prayer”, that is not what he said. He said we should pray in this way. If we want to be effective in prayer, we need to learn to follow this pattern.
As we looked at the first two verses of his prayer template, we found that Jesus is establishing the proper posture in prayer. That posture involves understanding that prayer is about the relationship we have with our Father in heaven. We must understand his holiness and sovereignty. We must be motivated by the establishment of his kingdom and his will. When we put ourselves in that posture, we will be in the proper position to resist the devil in our prayer life.
As we move on in Jesus’ template for prayer, we find that, although we certainly are praying for God’s will in the earth, he is very concerned with his will in our personal lives. Having established the proper prayer posture or attitudes in verses 9 and 10, in verse 11 we find that part of effective prayer is to be willing and unafraid to ask our Father for what we need. Some might say that this is just a reminder that God will provide our “daily bread”, however, Jesus is praying as he says these words. God wants us to come to him with our needs!
I believe God wants to bless us abundantly. I believe God wants to give us the desires of our hearts.
Psalms 37:4 (NKJV) 4Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.
However, all of that begins with our daily bread. I have seen God bless me and my family with wonderful things. He has done “exceedingly abundantly” above all we could want (Eph. 3:20.) I do not believe it is wrong to have some money in the bank, drive a nice car or live in a nice home. I do not believe God is offended if we are rich in this world as long as we remember why we have what we have and who it is that provided it (1 Timothy 6:17-19.) I do believe that all of that begins with “our daily bread.”
I have shared before that my wife and I have built our lives on Philippians 4:19. This verse tells us that God will provide all our need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. We settled that early in our ministry life. We have believed for many things that go far beyond our needs and seen more than a few of them come to pass. Nevertheless, what we have established first and foremost is God’s promise to provide all our needs.
What Jesus understood was that when our needs are met, we can be free to believe for more but never be under pressure to see more. If we have what we need, we are at peace. Everything else is optional. We will be free to allow God to do those things in his way and his time, and we will not be so prone to compromise to get them. Poverty is being without what we need, not without what we want. If God makes sure we have our daily bread, everything else will fall into place.
There is another tie in related to the idea of daily bread. After their deliverance from Egypt, Israel spent a great deal of time in the wilderness. The wilderness is a type of the wandering all of us do in times of pressure. In their wilderness they were given a promise of “daily bread.” The Lord caused manna to come down from heaven every morning. They could only gather what they needed for that day. If they took more, it would be rotten by the next morning. They knew that every morning they would have their daily bread. This meant that they were dependent on God for their provision each and every day.
I think this is part of what is behind Jesus’ request for daily bread. We must understand that God’s provision is for each day. Our needs for the day we are living will be provided. This certainly includes our provision for physical needs, but I think it could be seen as much more. The manna God provided Israel was their whole provision. They needed nothing else. As we pray and believe for our daily bread, we are really asking for all we need to make us whole. The implication is that God will give us everything we need every day.
Although the manna provided by God contained everything the people of Israel needed to survive and thrive, that did not mean they were always satisfied with it.
Numbers 11:4-6 (NKJV) 4Now the mixed multitude who were among them yielded to intense craving; so the children of Israel also wept again and said: “Who will give us meat to eat? 5“We remember the fish which we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; 6“but now our whole being is dried up; there is nothing at all except this manna before our eyes!”
We find that, for some, the manna was not enough. I believe it was enough to meet their nutritional needs, but the people became bored with it. They wanted something different. They compared the manna with what they had in Egypt. The problem was that they forgot the price of the meat, fish leeks, onions and garlic. The price for what they had was slavery.
God will always provide good things for his children. However, we must be careful not to forget the price we paid for what the world gave us. We were slaves to sin and bound for an eternity separated from God. I find it interesting that in Numbers 11:4 it is the mixed multitude that gave in to “intense craving.” They were people who had attached themselves to the Israelites but were not Israelites themselves. They wanted the blessing they saw on the Hebrews, but they did not understand where that blessing came from.
We must be careful when we allow the “mixed multitude” of worldliness to influence us. Not all people in the church are really born again. If a person has no real relationship with God through the new birth, he cannot see nor understand how things work in the Kingdom of God (John 3:3.) There are many voices in our world trying to convince us that what God provides is not enough. However, anything we receive that does not come to us by faith in God will eventually drag us down and away from God’s best.
Proverbs 10:22 (NKJV) 22The blessing of the LORD makes one rich, And He adds no sorrow with it.
It is God’s will to give us all that we could desire. However, he will give it in a way that brings no sorrow with it. What comes from the hand of the world will always be a problem. Lord, give us this day our daily bread. We will depend on you for all we need. We can and will ask for what is beyond that, but we will leave the when where and how to you. Then we shall be at peace.
Leave a Reply