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&In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths&

"Our Daily Bread"

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"Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.  Thy kingdom come.  Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread.  And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.  Amen.  Matthew 6:9-13.  When the Lord Jesus was teaching His disciples to pray, He gave them this prayer as an example as to what manner to pray.  He did not tell them to pray this prayer, but to pray after this manner.  What He was actually telling them was that if they covered all the points in this prayer, there would be nothing lacking.  First and foremost, God to whom the prayer is being made should be acknowledged as our Father.  Now God is not just our father as is our earthly father, so His place in heaven should be acknowledged.  His holiness should be acknowledged for He is the holy one.  His Kingdom should not only be acknowledged, but welcomed and sought for.  It should be made clear that His will is what is sought, both here on this earth and in heaven.  Our requests for provisions should be made known and our dependence upon Him for those provisions.  And since none of us are perfect, forgiveness should be sought for.  It should be acknowledged that we are weak and totally dependent upon Him for protection from temptation and evil.  And His power and glory is to be proclaimed.

Indeed, should all these points be earnestly and truthfully covered, we could not and should not be lacking in anything.  If you will notice, I took the liberty of making the line which reads, "Give us this day our daily bread" bold.  The entire prayer is very important, but I wanted to bring special attention to this line as there are so many people who don't seem to realize just what this line is saying.  The one thing that God wants us to do most of all is to trust Him and yet He has been so good to us that we tend to take for granted His mercy and His kindness.  Our daily bread.  That's the provisions we need to sustain us this day.  Guess who woke us up this morning.  Some may say it was the alarm clock and some may say it was the chickens, but I beg to differ with them all on this.  Personally, I can't remember the last time I heard an alarm clock or a chicken, but that's beside the point, because if one is inclined to sleep that late it still is not the alarm clock or the chicken that wakes them up.  The Lord wakes us up every morning for it is He who allows our hearts to be beating and our lungs to be pumping and all our other necessary body functions to be activated when these things take place.  It is a sad fact that way too many people even those who claim Him as their Father don't trust Him enough to ask for their daily bread.  They want the assurance of having next weeks and even next months and for some even next years bread put away just in case God can't deliver in the future.  Friends, God wants us to realize that the future is when the time comes for us to take another breath or for those who tend to hold their breath, when the time comes for our heart to beat again.  What He wants us to realize is that without Him, however long it may be, there is no future.  Now, my wife tries to buy enough food to last us several days as it is so far to go to the store, but only because the Lord has been so good to us as to give us provisions a plenty, but He doesn't want us to depend upon those provisions.  Our daily bread.  There will come a time and it could very well be before I finish this little article, when I will need no more bread and just like I am trusting Him for my deliverance when He is finished with me on this earth, He wants me to trust Him to sustain me until that time.

If you will look a little further down in the example prayer, you will also see that the Lord instructed them to ask to be delivered from evil.  Friends, this old world, just as Gods Word warned us is growing more evil every day.  All you need to do is to read the newspaper or watch the news on television and you will see this to be true.  There are those who lay down at night and can't get a good nights sleep for fear of the evil that lurks out there.  It is truly an evil world in which we live and there are indeed many dangers that we face that we never even know about, but God doesn't want us to depend upon or trust in our ability or the ability of the police or any other power to deliver us from those dangers.  It is Him and Him alone that He expects us as His children to trust.  Those of you who know me, know that I am totally against the word (not word) "luck".  There has been a lot of joking about me and that (not word) and I really don't mind, but I am convinced and I believe that the Lord has shown me that there truly is no such thing.  The very night the Lord saved me, which by the way was a Friday the 13th, He impressed this fact upon my heart and He has demonstrated many times the proof  of this.  All this, though relevant, is not what I am trying to get at though.  The only point is that God wants us all to trust totally in Him for our everything.  Now, there may be some who would say that there is nothing wrong with being superstitious and that this is just my opinion.  Well, the word luck is not in the Bible, but the Lord has used the word superstitious one time in His Word.  It can be found in the book of Acts.  "Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.  For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with the inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.  Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you."  Acts 17:22-23.  Many people friends are trusting in an unknown god and they call it luck.  These people will not be able to sleep at night when things go bump in the night or when those terrible storms are raging all around.  Some would ask, "Do you mean to tell me that when you lay down at night you can guarantee that no one will break in and kill you or that when there are tornadoes popping up all around you won't be blown away?".  No, I cannot guarantee that, but what I can guarantee is that God who is my Father in heaven, (not luck) is in complete control of all the evil and the storms and every other thing that goes on in this world.  Some would say, "Is that much better than luck?".  Praise the Lord, yes, oh yes, it is.  When I lay down with luck, I could make it through the night or I could not.  When I lay down with the Lord at night, He could or He will wake me in the morning.  I could pass from this life in that time, but if He so chooses, He will wake me in my new home with Him.  Luck cannot promise or deliver that.  The key thing here is, "thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven".  Friends, God is in charge and He alone determines our destiny, so the only question to ask is do you know Him?  Do you lay down at night with the assurance that He will wake you up in His tender care?  If not, I beg of you to trust Him today.