“Give us what is needed for our sustenance…TODAY, as You will through all our days.”
As I write this, we just came through the annual celebration of Father’s Day. Interestingly, Father’s Day was started right here in Spokane, the city where I live in the United States. It’s as if the holiday was in the queue for this segue.
There are few who have not experienced father wounds, whether they admit it or not. Our counseling years were filled with others’ laments even as our own hearts lamented with and alongside them. The ones who reached out to our heavenly Father in brokenness of spirit experienced His incredible nearness. Non-redemptive motivation found Mercy elusive when their stubborn grasp barred the door and shot the locks.
For those who testify to a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, have you stopped to consider that your personal relationship flows both ways? He the Son said, “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father.” His personal fingerprints evidence how intimately He cares and makes Himself known – The Father Who Is.
Four Petitions Regarding Personal Need
As Jesus taught the petitions of His heart to His disciples, He laid out the priority Our Father holds as we pray. Bringing our things into right perspective to Him turns the outflow of our life as we take to heart His Name and holiness; His Kingdom with us, present and known; His will and what He wants to come into being.
After the first three petitions that relate to our Father, Jesus turned to the next four petitions of personal need that relates to us and others. Don’t ignore the first three in a hurry to park on the pinnacle of personal need. Holy Spirit will always bring our needy selves back to the issue of yielding to Our Father’s name, realm, and will. Everything else our life consists of flows from His wise heart; He Whose plan is to do us good and not harm.1
“If you then, with all your human frailty, know how to give your children gifts that are good for them, how much more certainly will your Father who is in Heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” Luke 11:13
It is a lifetime of we do not know what we do not know as we continue walking with Christ. Lessons learned, overcoming victories, needs met and needs provided, reconciliations, rest after trial and testing, constancy of sustenance resulting in daily provision, increased substance in our being…Heaven’s resources are not static.
“Give us this day our daily bread”
Coinciding with Exhorter in the seven portions of the human spirit, the Wisdom principle of sowing and reaping is inextricably linked to this fourth petition: “Give us this day our daily bread.” It is about long-term faith, daily.
Though the word daily is seldom used elsewhere in Scripture, its only use in the New Testament is in the two recordings of Jesus’ prayer in Matthew 6:11 and Luke 11:3. In Greek, it points to that which is sufficient for a day. The Bread of Heaven substance for our soul and spirit can be trusted with the provision of substance for our daily bodily need. This is not a prayer of wants; it is a supplication for one’s daily supply of food.
While reading Brother Ed’s booklet of study on The Lord’s Prayer, what landed in me was his conviction that if we would see beyond a long-memorized prayer, we would see “that it is about the coming of God’s Kingdom upon the earth and about faith in the days before the Son of Man comes. It is about the release of His will upon earth and about provision when all natural provision is cut off.” It is a prayer for the pressures of this closing age.
Our Day and The Days Before Us
Areas of our world have past and presently experienced all natural provision being cut off. Famine reigns over swaths of our globe, leaving suffering and insufficiency in its wake. I am confident there are believers in Christ in such regions who could tell story after story of God’s miraculous provision on their behalf. Many of us have such stories as well, preluded by countless believers in past ages who found meaning in praying for their daily bread.
Our day and the days before us are flying faster than a weaver’s shuttle. It is becoming rarer that we talk of change from year to year; so much is changing in a matter of months, weeks, and at times, overnight. But this I know and am persuaded: the faithfulness of Our Father never changes for those who look to Him. Pressures now being experienced and those that will come, do not signal lack of any good thing from the Lord’s fullness.2
When Jesus taught His disciples – and us – to ask Our Father, “Give us what is needed for our sustenance, TODAY as You will through all our days,” it was predicated on His prophetic word through Daniel and David before Him, and what He said that Matthew later recorded. Each passage is one of three principles of survival that will keep believers in the time of trouble quickly coming upon us. It would be well for every believer to take these to heart.
The People that Do Know Their God
For those who follow biblical prophecy, the Book of Daniel is a strong companion to the Book of Revelation. Daniel 11:32b-34a specifically points to that time when all the forces of hell have squared off against the people of God. Where we are in the prophetic timeline is not my focus of this article. I am passionate that every believer in Christ Jesus come to the true knowledge of Him through His Word and the life that Holy Spirit gives.
When Daniel received his prophetic visions of the future, he surely didn’t know you or me. But our Father does. It is why the first principle of survival is uttered for the time when the strong rule of the anti-Christ oppresses believers on all sides and prevents their laying up supplies. We see how that could be. Be wise, but not greedy. Should we find ourselves so oppressed, do not be over-anxious. Our Father’s hand is our source for life, even as the sustenance that we are used to, which the world offers, is depleting. Even now many antichrists have come.3
Hopelessness and helplessness are twin enemies of the evil one. If there is ever a reason to know Our Father, it is to obliterate the lies about Him that originated in the Garden of Eden. Daniel gives us a powerful word of truth about God’s people who have learned that weakness and deprivation does not mean there will be no provision:
The people that do know their God (intimately and in a way that defies all contradiction) shall be strong (made strong out of weakness) and do exploits (carry on with the normal functions of life). Daniel 11:32b
Shall be strong and do exploits both come from a word that means to take hold of a situation with strength, even though weak at its inception. It speaks to increased strength as the work progresses. And it goes beyond that to describe those who have had every bit of stamina pressed out of them, only to find themselves infused with fresh, vital power as life’s demands continue. Even now, many are living this reality of God’s timeless Word.
His Strength is Made Perfect in My Weakness
Though there is more in the Daniel passage, I want to highlight what God told Paul in II Corinthians 12:9. Paul had been given great revelation from the Lord, but purposefully, it was accompanied by ‘a thorn in the flesh.’ After asking three times that it be removed, God spoke to him with truth that changed his outlook and mindset:
…but He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you [My lovingkindness and My mercy are more than enough—always available—regardless of the situation]; for [My] power is being perfected [and is completed and shows itself most effectively] in [your] weakness.” Therefore, I will all the more gladly boast in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ [may completely enfold me and] may dwell in me. (AMP)
Full Provision from the Resources of God’s Kingdom
The second principle of survival is found in a prophetic psalm of blessing that David uttered in Psalm 41:1-2. Like Paul and Daniel, both of whom survived all manners of hardship and life-threatening circumstances, David too knew his life was held in the Lord’s hands. He wrote this psalm of victory despite betrayal:
Happy is one who cares for the poor; the Lord will save him in a day of adversity (time of trouble). The Lord will keep him and preserve him; he will be blessed in the land.
You will not give him over to the desire of his enemies. (HCSB)
Those who have come to know the authority of God’s Kingdom in their lives are given a great assurance. Care for the poor and destitute ones, in whatever form that investment takes, means provision in your own time of need. When the time of trouble comes, living believers who practiced giving to the poor in times of prosperity will find full provision from heaven’s resources. We are not in the great tribulation to which the time of trouble refers, but trials and tribulations affect believers now. This is a living word for us that is wholly trustworthy.
Jesus knows and commends those hearts who embrace the principle of sowing and reaping. He first personalized it in Matthew 25:40 when He said, “Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, you have done it unto Me.” Jesus does not identify Himself with causes as much as with all of those who are weary, heavy-laden, sick, sinful, or in prison. His blessing is to all who sympathize and help them.
Those who practice sowing (giving, and not just money) will find Jesus’ exhortation true in days of reaping –
“…For if you give, you will get! Your gift will return to you in full and overflowing measure, pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, and running over. Whatever measure you use to give—large or small— will be used to measure what is given back to you.” (Luke 6:38 – TLB)
Making the Kingdom of God the Sole Object of Your Search
Matthew 6:19-34 follows this model prayer He taught with powerful instruction concerning preparation for the time of trouble and tribulation. Jesus prayed these seven petitions of His heart; and He taught how to prepare.
33-34 But SEEK YE FIRST the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take THEREFORE NO THOUGHT for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. (KJV)
Making the Kingdom of God the sole object of our search places our value of our life in Christ over the material things of this world. All of which He knows we need. It is the third principle of survival in the time of trouble.
Take “therefore no thought” comes from a Greek word meaning to have a divided mind. The basis of worry, stress, depression, and anxiety, it means have no anxiety regarding the future. He knows a mind trained to be single on the Lord and the resources of His Kingdom can abide in peace in time of trial.
F.B. Meyer wrote: “There is all the difference between foresight and foreboding. It is the latter that Jesus chides. The farmer must sow in the autumn that he may reap in the summer, but there is no need for him to lie sleepless through the nights of winter, worrying about the yet distant harvest. Trust Him and be at peace.”
~ Nancy
1 Jeremiah 29:11 2 Psalm 34:10 – The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing. 3 I John 2:18
Additional reading: I John 2, esp. verses 18-29; Book of Revelation, with blessing for those who read it, those who hear it, and those who take it to heart – Wellspring post Christ Supply; Coaching posts Big or Bitty – It’s Treasure and Bring Home the Harvest and What to Do When Guilted Into Giving
Click here for a printable PDF of this article: Redemptive Gifts Pattern of Seven – Give Us Our Sustenance, Today & All Our Days
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