Week 26 Day 5
Pray:
Ask God to reorient you to Himself. Confess any known sin. Thank Him for His forgiveness. Be still and reflect on Jesus and His sacrifice for you. Ask the Holy Spirit to open your heart and mind to God’s Word. Pray for others in your life that they, too, would know and love God today.
Read:
Matt. 6:9-13 This, then, is how you should pray: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
Reflect:
There are two mistakes we can make in regard to how we think and pray about our daily, or more mundane, needs. First, we can determine that God is much too busy to be concerned with trivial things. I must only ask for things that are of great importance. The second mistake is to pay so much attention to our daily needs that we forget there are bigger things going on in the world. How do we hold these things in balance? That word “balance” is the key. God is not “busy” in the normal sense of the word. His omnipotence (all-powerful) and his omniscience (all-knowing) mean that nothing he does is taxing or distracting for him. He doesn’t grow tired or overwhelmed. All that he does, he does without effort. All there is to know, he knows immediately and completely. This means there is no detail that is big or small in terms of scope for God. All details are equally small or big, depending on how you want to think about it. You have an all-powerful, all-knowing Father in heaven. Your daily bread is a concern to him, as are the multitude of other things that happen in your life day-to-day. It is no compliment to God your Father to think, “I’ll not bother him with insignificant things.” Don’t good fathers value what is important to their children? A very small child might be concerned with something that is trivial, but the good father will not make light of what is important to the child. On the other hand, we must grow up in our faith. We must not approach life like a perpetual child where the earth revolves our own needs. We must see there are many people with many needs all around us. We must see that God has multi-generational purposes of which I am one part. We must work to have perspective as we pray for our daily needs, but not our daily “greeds.” So, balance is the path forward. Pray as a child to a good father. Whatever is on your heart you can take to God, no matter how small. But seek to grow up in your faith as well. As you pray for your needs and wants, move to the place where you consider the needs of others more consistently. Pray for “our” daily bread. Have a heart for what God is doing in your life as well as the lives of people all around you and all around the world.
Pray:
(Personalize this prayer today; make it specific to the circumstances that face you.)
Ask God to lead you through His Spirit as you go through your day. Ask Him to bring to mind the truth of the gospel and its implications for what you will encounter today. Tell Him “Yes” to His will and ask Him for His power and protection to live this “yes.” Ask God to create and reveal opportunities to proclaim the good news today.