We are taught how to pray in Mathew 6: 9-13 NKJV. Most of us know it well and were taught as children to memorize it. “Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. 10 ‘Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.11 ‘Give us this day [e]our daily bread.12 ‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.13 ‘And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from [f]evil. [g][For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen”. In this simple prayer, we recognize God as our provider, and we rely on him for our daily needs as well as our spiritual.
When we come to God in prayer asking Him to meet our spiritual needs, we sometimes leave out our own physical needs. We cannot allow our physical needs to prevent us from coming together as believers. God wants us to rely on Him for everything. A pastor was telling me after a recent visit to Africa, where he was preaching and sharing the gospel with a new congregation, that he was trying to share with them about Jesus. The families were flooded out of their homes, their crops ruined, and their children were starving due to the lack of food and clean water. They could not even meet in their church due to the amount of water and flooding. They had nothing…physically.
The people in attendance were not putting God second behind their own physical needs but instead, making HIM a priority in their lives. They were not there to be fed physically but spiritually. They wanted to hear the Word of God! They were there to receive the “Bread of Life.” In John 6:35, Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.”
This made me realize that often we are lacking in our physical needs. But, we cannot allow these physical needs to prevent us from coming to the Father for our spiritual needs. We must come to God first and ask…. “Give us this day our daily bread,”
Brother,
John Swonger
