Give us Today our Daily Bread

Daily bread, we all need it.

Bread represents what’s necessary for life – there’s a lot we think we need that we really don’t. There’s a lot that we want and seek and when we get it actually adds to our perceived needs rather than reducing them.

When David said in Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…” he didn’t for one moment mean the wants of the 21st century, he meant the daily needs of his life.

It’s good to have food to feed and sustain our lives, but life is so much more than that. We are more than flesh and blood, we are body, soul and spirit.

It had been a busy and tiring day for Jesus and his disciples when they finally arrived in Sychar in Samaria. As they were hungry the disciples went into town to get some food and left Jesus sitting down by the well. When they came back and found Jesus ministering to a spiritually hungry woman they were amazed. Wasn’t he tired? Wasn’t he hungry? Where did he get the energy? They thought perhaps someone had given him something to eat and he was feeling renewed, but Jesus said, “I have food to eat that you do not know about…” (John 4:32), but by implication they were going to!

Yes, food and drink go so far, but they don’t and can’t sustain the spirit. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God” says the scripture. Yes we need the Word, food for our souls, the bread of heaven. To that end God has given us his Word, the scriptures, God-breathed and profitable in every part. Not just the favourite parts but all of it. The whole counsel of God. We need to feed on them.

Then again there is the Bread of the Word that he quickens to us in a moment – a scripture perhaps we’ve known and read many a time that suddenly comes alive by the Spirit in that moment of need and speaks to and energises our lives.

There is also the Bread of his Presence – he himself is the Bread of life. It means spending time in His Presence, being with Him, sharing fellowship, listening to His Voice – didn’t Jesus say, “my sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me”? God’s voice is not locked into the printed page, he still speaks today, and we, you need to hear Him. One Word from Heaven (the context of the prayer) can make all the difference!

Today we hear a lot about the right kind of diet, what we should and shouldn’t eat – we take great care of our bodies, but what about our souls, what kind of diet are you living on? Are you spiritually malnourished? Are you getting a complete spiritual diet? Do you only read certain parts of the Bible? Do you ever stop to listen to his voice?

What is the bread you really need today?

Go ask Him for it.

The Importance of the Word

The last couple of weeks we have looked at the necessity of work of the Spirit. In this post I want to focus on the importance of preaching/teaching which was a vital part of the growth, establishment and expansion of the early church.

Not only did they know God present and active through the Spirit, but they knew him speaking powerfully through the Word and continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine.

Those who were called to lead were to be men of the Word and Spirit. In fact at one point when the apostles threatened to be overwhelmed by the increasing needs of the rapidly expanding church they appointed men full of the Spirit and faith to look after the practical needs arising so that they could give themselves to prayer and the Word.

But a question is sometimes posed – if we have the Spirit so dynamically present with us, why do we need the preaching/teaching of the Word?

A Few Good Reasons:

Here are a few good reasons…

1. Because we are living in a fallen world, and therefore our knowledge of God and of ourselves is skewed.

2. The enemy is always out to destroy the true knowledge of God – both for the those who don’t know him and those who do.

3. The enemy is out to prevent our relationship to God first of all by seeking to prevent our being saved through faith in Christ, and two, if he can’t do that, he will seek to undermine the relationship we do have with God.

4. The enemy is out to prevent our maturity – the Word keeps us focussed, reminds us where it’s at and refines us.

5.  The enemy is out to prevent our equipping for the purposes of God – all Scripture is God breathed, and is given not only to challenge and change us, but to equip us to fulfill God’s purpose.

The knowledge of God, growth in walking with him, being transformed and being equipped don’t just happen by being filled with the Spirit, our minds needs to be educated, old thoughts and ideas need to be challenged and changed, all of which the enemy is against, therefore in teaching we are confronting and demolishing strongholds, whether in the unsaved mind or the Christians.

The Big Issue 

What place does it have in your life?

What place does it have in your church?

Are you, me, we taking it seriously – in other words acting on what we hear?

A Conversation or Authoritative Word

Last week Steve Chalke a British Evangelical came out in favour of giving God’s blessing to homosexual relationships.

There were a few problems with his arguments….

1. He referred to his pastoral concerns being a guiding influence. I understand these concerns, but the reality is that this amounts to nothing more than deciding what’s right or wrong by the way you feel over an issue and is an extremely dangerous approach to ministry (interestingly Brian McLaren has moved in the same direction). The problem is that our feelings however strong are the wrong place to decide what is right and what is wrong, whoever you are, whatever your desires might be. Feelings are very subjective, not only that, they can fluctuate. What I feel is right and wrong you may not. These things need to be governed by something or someone higher than ourselves. For the Christian that means they must be submitted to and governed by the Word of God. The abandonment of the Christian values found in the Word of God by the world has led to relative moralism, sadly, it’s now entering the church.

2. Steve Chalke referred to the Bible as a conversation between God and man that is still in progress, and as time goes by we are learning what’s right and wrong for our generation, adapting and changing as our understanding progresses. Now this is not what Christians and churches have believed down through the centuries. For the majority the Bible has been the God breathed, authoritative word, totally sufficient for faith and conduct, something that we submit our minds to, rather than stand over it in judgement.

3. His so-called thorough examination of what scripture teaches was anything but, it was more a dance around some scriptures, drawing in anything that he could lay his hands on that might be used to bolster his argument, rather than looking at the subject in detail. In many ways it is reminiscent of cult teaching where we keep moving to maintain the argument, but don’t stop to examine the subject in detail.

These are serious things, perhaps it’s part of a wider problem, where we speak of the scriptures as the Bible rather than the Holy Bible; where the Word is not read and listened to as God’s Word. Where it is no longer preached and expounded as the authoritative Word of God but a place of good ideas.

Studying scripture recently I was amazed at how much the Word played in the revivals/renewals of the Old Testament, not by making them feel good and right about themselves, but how they had sinned and fallen short of God’s standard.

Brothers and sisters, have we become so ‘free’ that we’ve forgotten what it is for the word of God to search us and convict us?

Have we forgotten what it is to ‘tremble at the Word’? (Isaiah 66:5)