Give us this day our daily bread. Matthew 6:11, NKJV.
Here we are again Lord; in need of a word from you! So speak Father for we are listening. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.
Yesterday we began a conversation on this verse. Today we would like to take another look to see what else the Lord is going to say to us through His word. We will be talking about the right relationship of the spiritual bread to the physical bread. A good place to start would be in Matthew 4:4, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’ ” Now let us review the message of chapter 6.
In Matthew 6, Jesus told His followers that they should not be preoccupied with food and clothing, among other things. That these were “things” that the Gentiles sought. He reminded them that He, their Heavenly Father, knew that they needed those things. Therefore, they were to occupy themselves in a search for the more “important things of life,” His Kingdom and His Righteousness!
As I try to understand the way God sees things in contrast to how I see them, I ask questions such as: How does our search for His Kingdom and His Righteousness ensure that all our other needs will be provided for?
I come up with answers like the following: there is much to be gained in the mere act of searching. For one thing – as we search, we tend to pay more attention to what is going on around us. Oftentimes, this increase in attention to the formerly unnoticed, could lead to a change in our course of action. A new course of action that could open doors of opportunity that would help to supply those “other” needs. Doors that would otherwise have remained closed if we had not searched.
Another consideration would be, that as we search for the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness it may suddenly occur to us that what we began searching for was not as important as we thought it was. Saul started on his way to Damascus clothed in his cloak of self-righteousness, to make a name for himself. He started out in search of “any who were of the Way, whether men or women, [that] he might bring them bound to Jerusalem” (Acts 9:2b).
When he was thrown off of his “high horse” it suddenly dawned on him that he was searching for the wrong thing. That he was fighting a losing battle. This led to a completely new course of action. He became Paul, the one who, as he drew near the end of his life, was chosen by God as the valedictorian of his class. He had mastered the course of “Salvation Through Faith in God’s Grace.“ His new search had led him to claim Christ’s Righteousness as his only hope for entrance into the Kingdom of God.
All the “things” he had once sought and held as priceless, became useless in comparison to knowing God (Philippians 3:10). His search had been successful. He had found the Pearl of Great Price, Jesus the Christ (Acts 9:5,6)!
When we give the necessary importance to “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” the truly important things of life will be ours as well as “all these things”, including our daily bread.