Give Us This Day: Spiritual Warriors Prayer, Part 4
This is week four in a seven-week study on the Lord's Prayer, or as Pastor Ricky Jacob likes to call it: the Spiritual Warriors Prayer. Need to start at the beginning? Read Part 1 here.
Listen to the devotion:
How humbling it is to receive from someone else. Most of you listening today would much rather be on the giving side of things. If you have been blessed with health, wealth, a loving family, etc., it is hard when one day you become down and out. To suffer through loss due to an addiction, or down sizing at your place of employment, or being fired, or a divorce certainly changes things. Often times one needs to ask for assistance. Yes, how humbling it is to receive from someone else.
There once was a warrior who was blessed with victory after victory, and as he went, piled up a vast amount of riches. He had a problem, though. His problem was physical in nature, he had leprosy. Upon hearing that there was a prophet of God that could heal him, he received permission from his king and went on his way.
He did not go empty handed. He assumed that he most certainly would have to pay for such a miracle. He took with him about 750 pounds of silver, 150 pounds of gold, and ten sets of clothing. [At today’s prices the gold alone would add up to about $3 million] The story ends with the warrior being healed of his leprosy.
What was the cost to him? Absolutely nothing. The prophet of God said to Naaman, “As surely as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will not accept a thing."
In the Spiritual Warrior’s Prayer, we are taught to pray: Give us this day our daily bread.
God certainly gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people, but we pray in this petition that God would lead us to realize this and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving. Daily bread includes everything that has to do with the support and needs of the body, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self-control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.
There is no way that you can give to God so that He would owe you or that He would be obligated to do your wishes. He gives to you solely by His grace. As a loving Heavenly Father, He gives you only good gifts, the greatest being faith in Jesus who redeemed you, purchased you; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death.
Naaman was a warrior with blood on his hands. Maybe today we would call him a terrorist. He had raided an Israel village and plundered it of its wealth. He also took a young girl away from her family, her friends, and her land. The young girl was then forced to serve this man’s wife. Would God ever have mercy on such a ruthless man?