Danville Enlightener

VOL. VIII, No. 12

March 25, 2007

Will You Pray This?

In the midst of the “model prayer” Jesus told us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” (Matt 6:11).  How many of us struggle with this? How many of us actually pray for our daily bread? Do you pray this prayer? I don’t mean by my question do you pronounce those specific words. I mean do you have the spirit that truly represents those words?

Faith in God involves trust, trusting God to do what He says, provide what He promises and defend what belongs to Him. Furthermore, prayer involves trust; it involves trusting in the power of God, the providence of God and trusting in the love of God. Thus, why believe in God (faith) if we do not trust Him? And why pray to God if He lacks the power or love or answer?

So, when Jesus teaches us to pray He is teaching us to trust as well.  “Give us this day our daily bread” is a seminar in trust. Trusting the Lord to provide for us each day; no more and no less. Isn’t this how Christians are to live their lives? Sure it is! “Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” (Jas 4:13-15).

It seems we try to live our lives as though we pray, “Give us this day our weekly bread,” or “Give us this day our yearly bread.” Oh, I know what many say about this. They say Jesus is addressing the needs of people who were unable to keep bread (refrigerators or freezers) so it would’ve been a waste to pray for more bread than could be consumed in a day because it would ruin. This is just an effort to ignore this valuable lesson in trust.

This is not about bread it is about trust! It is about attitude! What this appeal encourages is a spirit of dependence, of living a day at a time. We are not to lay claim upon tomorrow because we do not know what it might bring forth.

All you and I have is today, so why petition God for bread for a day that may never be? On another occasion Jesus put it this way. “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” (Matt 6:33-34).

Jesus is telling us to live by faith, one step, one day at a time. Don’t expect to know too much about next week, and still less about next year. But know that God will provide for what’s ahead even though it may appear that the pantry is becoming empty.  The Lord says, Trust Me.

And this is what’s hard; hard, because we instinctively want to cushion the future, whether it is with retirement guarantees or a large nest egg. Wisdom and foresight has always encouraged saving and money management and forward planning. And nothing said here is meant in any way to discourage that. But the promise is for one day at a time and this must never be forgotten

The provision of daily bread engenders trust in a way that nothing else does. Sensing daily needs shapes us into daily servants. Greed destroys! Wanting more than we need is what bends our lives out of shape. It destroys us; but it harms others too.

We teach our children the difference between “want” and “need,” but we are slow to learn the lesson ourselves. We see others with their toys and we envy them. Envy is followed quickly by resentment and bitterness.

The wise man wrote “Two things I request of You (Deprive me not before I die): Remove falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches-- feed me with the food allotted to me; Lest I be full and deny You, and say, who is the LORD? Or lest I be poor and steal, and profane the name of my God.” (Prov 30:7-9)

There are few Christians that handle wealth well, just as there are few Christians that handle poverty well. That is why we need to be careful in embarking on a life-style that is designed to bring along with it increased temptations to conform to the spirit of the world.

“Give us this day our daily bread” is code language for, “Lord, help me to be content with whatever you are pleased to give me. I will not ask for more than I need.”

Will you pray this?

-- jrb

Blaming God

After wave and wave of tragedy pounded upon Job, his wife felt that God was to blame and that Job should verbalize that blame. “Then his wife said to him, do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die! But he said to her, you speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity? In all this Job did not sin with his lips.” (Job 2:9-10).

Job knew that blaming God would be wrong. Such feelings can be strong and yet are as tragically out of touch with reality as a skinny victim of anorexia nervosa feeling convinced that she is fat.

Tragedies abound in life and none escape them; they exist because sin is present (Rom 5:12). Instead of God being the cause of suffering, he is the cure. Paul knew this; he said that Satan was the cause of his suffering (2 Cor 12:7) and that God was the relief (2 Cor 12:9-10). If we lose sight of this we might avoid the only source of comfort and healing.

Let me illustrate this with a story.

A doctor is particularly fond of a little girl patient of his. All that she can focus on, however, is the vaccinations the doctor gives her and the painful stitches in her cuts. To her childish mind, the doctor is not a healer but a torturer. One day the little girl is walking along the sidewalk when all of a sudden she sees the doctor coming. In her mind she sees her tormentor and in her panic she runs into the road and is hit by a car, breaking her leg.

In time, her physical pain is overshadowed by the shame of walking with a severe limp. It scars her whole life, making her unpopular at school, later interfering with her marriage prospects, her career opportunities, her self image, and countless other aspects of her life.

All of this inflames her hate for doctors. She spends her life avoiding them and by doing so never learns that a simple surgery would have totally cured her limp.

Like that child, a misunderstanding causes far too many to waste their lives resenting and avoiding God.

Job would not fall into that trap. He would neither blame nor resent God. “I may not understand, but I’ll trust Him” Job seems to say.

Blaming God keeps us from the one Person who fully understands our anguish, who offers perfect comfort, and is able to bring emotional healing. Resenting God is ultimately as self-destructive as suicide, and as counterproductive as a drowning person fighting off his rescuer.

Blaming God is a trap, a self-destructive trap. Monkeys are easily trapped by placing food behind a small opening. When they slip their hand in and grab the food, their hand becomes a fist that is bigger than the opening. Refusing to let go, they remain firmly caught until seized by hunters.

For as long as we make a fist at God we, too, are trapped. While we hold on to our bitterness, we are unable to leave our painful past behind and get on with life.

-- jrb

"As I See It"

By now you have heard about rescuers finding Michael Auberry in the mountains of North Carolina. A Boy Scout on a camping trip Michael wandered off and became lost and remained so for four days before being found by rescuers and a two-year-old Shiloh shepherd called Gandalf.

The finding of this lost boy caused feelings of relief to come over every parent I’m sure. There are not many things that are more freighting for parents than for their children to be missing. “Lost” is a terrifying word, whether lost in the neighborhood, lost at sea or lost in the mountains. And when the alarm was sounded that a twelve-year-old boy was lost it didn’t take long to marshal a force volunteers to seek and find Michael.

Kent Auberry, Michael’s father said, “To have our son back is a tremendous blessing.”

Reading this I could not help but think of another father who said, “Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found. And they began to be merry.” (Lk 15:22-24).

Children are lost every day and many never return. No, I am not discussing being lost like Michael Auberry was lost – I am talking about walking away from God; wandering away from the spiritual moorings they have been taught.

While we would never ignore the plight of children lost in the mountains, those children who leave God are sometimes disregarded. It might be that busy adults never realize the spiritual troubles being experienced by their sons and daughters. It could be that many adults think it is natural for the young to wander (rebel). Those young people are lost and it is not even known by their parents.

AS I SEE IT, there is something much, much worse than a child being lost in the mountains; it is a child being lost in sin. “Then Jesus said to them again, I am going away, and you will seek me, and will die in your sin. Where I go you cannot come.” (Jn 8:21).