"Our Daily Bread"

Substance for our daily lives! There are several different ways that you can view what that statement means; more often than not, you would relate it to the Lord's Prayer, and would then associate it with the Word of God. The Greek word is 'epiousios', and it only occurs twice in the New Testament writings, Matthew 6:11 & Luke 11:3; both of which are the accounts of the Lord's Prayer. After having a discussion last night at church with a fellow Elder, I was instructed to be praying about something; something which for some will seem unusual, to say the least; but it was the beginning of our conversation that really pricked my heart, and it had to do with the giving of our tithes and "Give us this day our daily bread". At first I did not see the association between the two, but the more that I have prayed about it, and thought about the whole Bible, with It's many different examples about our dependence upon God, and our need to not only give, but to give with an expectant heart; not expectant upon being paid back, but expectant of blessing God with our obedience; the more I see Jesus as our Daily Bread, and the more I see giving our tithes as the substance of our obedience to Him. Okay; I need to explain that a little further, because some will not get that right off the bat; I know, because I did not understand it either; at least not until I was shown something which is going to be a little difficult to explain. The vision which God gave me this morning involved stacks of transparent stories from the Bible; stories such as Abraham with Melchizedek, the children of Israel gathering manna, David at the threshingfloor of Araunah, the windows of heaven mentioned in Malachi 3:10, and Jesus speaking "Give us the day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors". Altogether in this stack there was a common thread which had to do with giving, and how we can never out give God; which is not really about money, but is more about substances for life; life that we are living now, as well as life eternal...