Word For Today: Tuesday, October 29 Give Me Only My Daily Bread

WORD FOR TODAY by JESUS FIGUEROA

DAILY DEVOTIONAL * WWW.JESUSFIGUEROA.ORG 

 Tuesday, October 29

Give Me Only My Daily Bread

⁷ Two things I request of You (Deprive me not before I die):⁸ Remove falsehood and lies far from me; Give me neither poverty nor riches— Feed me with the food allotted to me; ⁹ 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.

Proverbs 30:7-9 (NKJV)

3rd Devotional Most Read; (Origanally posted 11/25/12)

Daily Reading Plan

Dan 7:1–8:27, 2 Thess 1:1– 12, Job 41:21–34

Bible Versions:

Proverbs 30:7-9 (MSG) ^7-9 And then he prayed, “God, I’m asking for two things before I die; don’t refuse me— Banish lies from my lips and liars from my presence. Give me enough food to live on, neither too much nor too little. If I’m too full, I might get independent, saying, ‘God? Who needs him?’ If I’m poor, I might steal and dishonor the name of my God.”

Proverbs 30:7-9 (NIV) ⁷ “Two things I ask of you, Lord; do not refuse me before I die: ⁸ Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.⁹ Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.

Proverbs 30:7-9 (NLT) ⁷ O God, I beg two favors from you; let me have them before I die. ⁸ First, help me never to tell a lie. Second, give me neither poverty nor riches! Give me just enough to satisfy my needs. ⁹ For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?” And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name.

Thoughts of Devotion:

As we read this portion of Proverbs we see a great example of a model prayer. The psalmist asks the Lord to guard him from the extremes in life. His request is that the Lord only gives him his portion of daily provision. No more, no less! Imagine for a moment, praying to God to not give you more. This sounds a bit irrational, someone might ask, “Why pray those prayers?” Even if we begin to meditate closely on our prayers, I’m scared to say that very few follow this prayer. But I firmly believe that these prayers are the ones that will free us from greed. At the root of it all, the psalmist understood the danger in falling blindly into one of these extremes of life. The two extremes, abundance and famine. We must understand this morning that God has his set and balance provision for us, so we may be protected from covetousness in our life.

The prayer of the psalmist reminds me of the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples saying, “Give us this day, our daily bread”(Matthew 6:11). Understand a clear truth, when one prays as Jesus taught, this frees us from coveting what we don’t have. On the contrary, we can give thanks to God for always faithfully providing what we need. In other words, our needs not wants!! In my opinion this is praying without covetousness in our hearts.

We must decide this morning to trust in God. Psalms 37:25 says, “I have been young, and now am old;

Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, Nor his descendants begging bread.” God never forsakes you, HE can surely, without a doubt supply all your needs. There’s no need for us to have to worry, or even fall into covetousness just to desire more things, we really don’t need. On the contrary, the danger is in having so much that we might fall into the pride of auto-sufficiency and sadly forget about God.

Let us pray to the Lord today that we may see life with the eyes of Jesus. A perspective where we live with contentment. The abundant life that Jesus offers us on a daily basis. Not dominated by obtaining more, or complaining for not having enough. A life where we are grateful for what we have today. I invite you this morning to raise praise to God in gratitude for his daily provision in your life. Thank you Lord!

Foundational Scriptures:

Matthew 6:11 (NKJV) ¹¹ Give us this day our daily bread.

Job 1:21 (NKJV) ²¹ And he said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

2 Corinthians 6:10 (NKJV) ¹⁰ as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.

Ecclesiastes 5:10 (NKJV) ¹⁰ He who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver;Nor he who loves abundance, with increase. This also is vanity.

Mark 4:19 (NKJV) ¹⁹ and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

Deuteronomy 8:12-14 (NKJV) ¹² lest—when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them;¹³ and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; ¹⁴ when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage;