ROUGH MONTH

     Greetings in the name of the Lord.  This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.  I want to apologize to any readers (and to myself).  Think of this as a life-application to the first topic of this blog.  Taking the first step after a setback.

     I am not one for making excuses, but I would like to share some of the reasons for the delay in the blog for this month.  I could almost write a country song from this year alone.  Sadly, I had several events that shift some time prioritization, hence the delay in writing this blog.  I was struggling with my school work, as I found it difficult to break the bad habits of a lifetime of English writing.  So I had to work extra hard on my English class which caused more effort in my other course, so most of my free time was school.  There is also a Youth fundraiser going on for the month of October and my wife and I have been spending a good portion of our time helping with that.  Finally, the most heart-breaking reason is that after 12 great years we had to make a tough decision to euthanize our dog, Toby.  His health was declining, but then took a rapid change for the worse and we could not allow him to suffer.

    I will do an entry on this in more detail because this was a lot more painful than I expected to be and I am still in the healing process.

   Again, I apologize for the lack of content this month.  I will pick up with the forgiveness portion of the Lord's prayer later this week.

   Thank you and God bless,

SCHEDULE CHANGE

Dear Readers (or my hoped for readers)

     This is a dynamic blog so changes are inevitable, as seen by our first few entries.  Life has a way of order or re-ordering our schedules.  I enjoy writing this blog and will continue to do so.  I have lots of ideas where to go with it.  However, my family, school, and church schedule make posting by Wednesday of each week difficult.  So I have decided to push my self-imposed weekly deadline to Saturday of each week.

     Change is the one constant in life (outside of God that is).  So with the change of schedule there may also be changes to what I blog.  I plan to continue the prayer study articles weekly, but I may start randomly posting throughout the week if a topic jumps to mind and I search for a way to express my positions or thoughts on the topic.

    According to the stats for the blog there are several people who click onto this page a week, so thank you.  I would like to hear from you.

    Anyway, thanks for your patience (assumed).

God bless.

DAILY BREAD

“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…” (Matthew 6:9-11 NIV)

       Jehovah Jireh means God, my provider (The Lord will provide) but what exactly does He provide?  That is the section of the Lord’s prayer I would like to explore this week.

       We all have needs.   We all have wants, desires, and wishes.  Does this mean we get to make a wish to our Father and it is granted?  The answer to that question is no.  God is not a genie in a bottle nor is He a shooting star to be wished upon.  In the context of the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus is laying out the proper way to pray in all of life’s situations.  He covers who we pray to and why we pray to God.  Jesus teaches us to focus on the todays of life.  Now Jesus is teaching us to ask God to provide our daily bread.

       Bread was a very big staple of the Israeli diet in Jesus’ day and even today.  You can see examples of a typical meal turned miraculous when Jesus feeds bread and fish to thousands on separate occasions.  So when we are to ask for our daily bread, we are asking for our daily portion of life sustaining food.  So it can be taken quite literal and asking God to physically feed our bodies each day.  But it is also symbolic of our needs physically, mentally, and spiritually.  God already knows our needs and He is willing, in love, to meet our needs.  We are simply returning glory back to God when we ask.  When we pray we draw closer to God.  When we ask for our needs, we are acknowledging God’s kingdom reign in our lives. 

God bless.

       

TODAY

“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…” (Matthew 6:9-11 NIV)


      My apologies, I have not kept my schedule as I had hoped.  It is finals week for my summer semester and there are several other irons in the fire, that I lowered the priority on this weeks journal entry.  I have not completely forgotten or overlooked it, but I have been unable to give it the time it deserves.  Instead I will share one of the poems the Lord has allowed me to pen, that will help reinforce the last lesson.

Today Is The Day

Today is the day

Blessings will come my way

I will receive and I will give

I have died so that I may live

Today is the day

It is great I must say

For this is the day the Lord has made

So I rejoice and will be glad as it is said

Today is the day

For one like me, made of clay

The breath of life is in me

And God's Son's sacrifice set me free

Today is the day

Troubles and trials will come my way

I rejoice in the Lord in all things

This song of praise my heart sings

Today is the day

Despite what this world may say

God is good through it all

Because it is on Him that I call

Today is the day

It is a great and wonderful day

God made them all this way

Today is the day!

 God bless

GIVE US TODAY

“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…” (Matthew 6:9-11 NIV)

         Before we move into the first of the petition portion of this prayer, let me throw back to last week’s topic “Your Kingdom come,” I noticed I left out the portion of “on earth as it is in heaven.” As I felt this needed little explanation.  When asking God’s reign to come and His will be done, it is only natural to assume that in the heavenly realm (i.e. the presence of God) there is no sin, there is no flaw, and there is no rebellion.  So this portion of the prayer acknowledges how far we have fallen from original design and that we want the purity of God’s reign as it is in its heavenly perfection.

         Now onto the petition portion of the Lord’s Prayer.  “Give us today our daily bread.”  The simplistic appearance of this first request is a lot more than it seems.  These six words alone are enough to establish a daily devotional ministry (Daily Bread).  There are books and sermons galore on these few words of the Lord’s Prayer.  I will try to summarize in two parts.

Let us first establish that by the context of this portion of the prayer, that it should be done daily.  Today and daily give that away.  If you read through the life of Jesus, you will observe a very distinctive pattern of prayer.  Jesus prayed.  He prayed often and powerfully.  “But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” (Luke 5:16 NIV).

Jesus uses this lesson on prayer to prepare us for two big concepts.  First is for us to focus on the today of our life.  We are not promised tomorrow and we can do nothing about yesterday.  Each day the believer needs to focus on that day.  The today mentality is expressed in “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.”  (Matthew 6:34 NIV).  James also discusses tomorrow “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.  What is your life?  You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”  (James 4:14 NIV).  It is well established that we need to focus only on today.  The second big concept is of our daily needs (which I will cover next week).

A today focus is important because this is the only day we have at our disposal.  We do not know when we will be called home, we do not know when the Day of the Lord (end times) will come.  It may be this very hour.  So “Give us today…” and let us live today according to God’s will.