My Daily Bread

Each morning, as I begin the day, I look to the Lord for his word for that day. As Isaiah 50:4 says:

"The Sovereign LORD...wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught."

It's not good enough to live off yesterday's word. Paraphrasing Jesus' words in Matthew 4:4 for myself:

"[David] does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God."

But who wants to eat stale bread? If we expect, in the natural, to eat fresh bread each day, why should we expect anything different when it comes to spiritual bread?

The gathering of the manna in the Old Testament is, I believe, a beautiful picture of how the gathering of spiritual bread works. In fact, the very words quoted by Jesus in Matthew 4:4 come from Deuteronomy 8:3:

"[God] humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD."

So if the sending of manna was designed to be a picture of the spiritual bread (the words that come from the mouth of the Lord), what does the gathering of the daily manna actually teach us? Exodus 16:19-21 says:

"Then Moses said to them, 'No one is to keep any of [the manna] until morning.' However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them. Each morning everyone gathered as much as he needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away."

Remember: According to Deuteronomy 8:3, God sent manna in order to teach the people of Israel that "man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD." This means that God was teaching them to gather their "spiritual bread" also on the same basis - morning by morning, without lazily "hoarding" it over several days (in order to save the effort of collecting it on a daily basis).

All too often, we try to live off yesterday's grace. But God's grace is a daily grace. It cannot be stored ahead of time, but is only made available at the point of need (Hebrews 4:16). As Louis Cassels explains:

"If God wants you to do something, he'll make it possible for you to do it, but the grace he provides comes only with the task and cannot be stockpiled beforehand. We are dependent on him from hour to hour, and the greater our awareness of this fact, the less likely we are to faint or fail in a crisis."

Lamentations 3:22-23 reveals that God's compassions "are new every morning." Each day, God's grace is revealed as sufficient for the day (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). This means that I cannot survive on yesterday's grace. Like the manna in the wilderness, God's grace is fresh and new each morning. I need to take time to draw on his grace each and every day.

For this reason, I regard the basic unit of my walk with the Lord to be "the day." As I worship the Lord in the morning, and read his Word, I am looking for the "theme" that will develop for that day. That theme may be God's faithfulness, or his holiness, or a challenge to trust him.

Once the theme for the day is identified, all sorts of theme-related things begin to happen. Songs and hymns come to mind, all theme-based. I come across other scriptures based on the same theme. And even my conversations with others will often "coincidently" gravitate to that theme. The theme becomes the basis of my response of faith to the Lord for that day, and also the basis of my thanksgiving at the end of the day.

Just to give an example, this is how it worked for me today. As I started the day today, I asked the Lord to give me his word for the day. I read a number of passages of Scripture, all encouraging and challenging, but the moment I came to Zephaniah 3:14-17, I knew that this was my "word for the day." It says:

Sing, O Daughter of Zion;
shout aloud, O Israel!
Be glad and rejoice with all your heart,
O Daughter of Jerusalem!

The LORD has taken away your punishment,
he has turned back your enemy.
The LORD, the King of Israel, is with you;
never again will you fear any harm.

On that day they will say to Jerusalem,
"Do not fear, O Zion;
do not let your hands hang limp.

The LORD your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing."

There are a number of potential themes here, including joy, salvation and singing, but the phrase that particularly struck me was: "Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands hang limp." In the light of the post I have almost finished (and will publish later today) on the subject of "Facing Fear", this verse is particularly significant.

So I began to talk to the Lord about this promise and command: "Do not fear." As I prayed, an old song came to mind, which I began to sing. It goes like this:

Fear not, for I am with you
Fear not, for I am with you
Fear not, for I am with you, says the Lord
(Repeat)

I have redeemed you
I have called you by name
Child, you are mine
When you walk through the waters,
I'll be there
And through the flame
You will not be drowned
You will not be burned
For I am with you!

Fear not!

From there, another scripture was brought to my mind - the passage that this song is based on. Isaiah 43:1-2 says:

"But now, this is what the LORD says - he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: 'Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.

This scripture triggered yet another scripture, which is found in Isaiah 41:10,13:

"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand...For I am the LORD, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you."

So this has become my theme for the day with the Lord. God has redeemed me. Even though I walk through deep waters or a blazing fire, I will not perish, because the Lord has taken me by my right hand. Therefore, I will not fear!

Now, because I view each day as a basic unit of my walk with the Lord, I find that God also weaves many of these daily themes together in a beautiful tapestry of promise that can only be viewed by reflection - in other words, looking back on the previous days and meditating on what the Lord has been saying so far. In other words, just because I look to the Lord for a fresh word each day does not mean I neglect what the Lord has been saying on previous days. In fact, new revelations of God's grace often come out through these reflective times.

As one example, the "daily bread" I received from the Lord last Tuesday was from 2 Samuel 22 (see "Loosed from the Cords of Death"). This morning, I received an email from Donna Burttschell, at Oasis Community Church in San Antonio, TX, and she wrote:

"As I was praying for you this morning (reading Psalm 118) I was also led to Psalm 18 (all of it) and then to verse 50 - '...he shows unfailing kindness to his anointed, to David and his descendants forever.'"

As I looked up Psalm 18, I was excited to discover that Psalm 18 is the same as 2 Samuel 22! In other words, Donna had been led, independantly from me, to the same promise from the Lord, found in a totally different part of the Bible! Talk about spiritual déjà vu!

And so I re-read Psalm 18, as if for the first time, and this time the emphasis for me was upon a couple of verses:

Verse 32 - "It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect." This corresponds with Isaiah 41:10, which says: "So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

Verse 35 - "You give me your shield of victory, and your right hand sustains me; you stoop down to make me great." This confirms again the word I got from the Lord in Isaiah 41:13, which says: "For I am the LORD, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you."

Coincidence? Hardly! In fact, "coincidences" only happen to a life that is bereft of an overriding purpose. But for the God-designed life, every "coincidence" becomes a "God-incidence", where the serendipitous principle of Romans 8:28 comes into operation. As the Amplified Bible renders it:

"We are assured and know that [God being a partner in their labor] all things work together and are [fitting into a plan] for good to and for those who love God and are called according to [His] design and purpose."

So what is the Lord saying to you today? What spiritual manna have you collected? What is the special grace he wants to reveal - the mercy that is new every morning? What theme does the Lord want to establish for you today?

Can I encourage you to press in each and every day to discover the word God has for you - the manna that is unique for the day!