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Lord's Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.

To Spend this Day in Thankful Reverence

Holy Father, Holy God, I come before you today in reverence and awe; I am filled with humility in the face of your greatness, your majesty, your holiness, and your power. And to acknowledge my sinfulness in the face of your pure and holy presence fills me with fear. Yet I pray boldly, for you have called me and adopted me as your rightful heir, through the sacrifice of your Son, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I give you thanks for your mercy with every ounce of my being, and pray that your Holy Spirit might be with me, that I might do your will in every thought and action this day; and that the work of my hands and the words of my tongue might seek your glory, and not my own.

And I promise, with your help and grace, to be fearless in the world; for if you are with me, who can be against me? Let me not hesitate to call upon you, for your power and love will see me through anything this world can bring against me. All thanks and praise be to you, almighty God.

In the name of Christ, I pray,

Mason Barge 3/16/14

Prayer to Resist Temptation

Holy God, You know the temptations that I am facing today. But your Word promises that I will not be tempted beyond what I can bear.

Help me, heavenly Father, to stand up against sin, to resist whatever temptation I may encounter this day, in whatever form it may come. Your Word promises that you will provide a way out of any temptation, and I pray to be able to find it and to have the wisdom to use it, and to walk away when temptation arises. All thanks be to you, O Lord, for you are a faithful deliverer; and I can count on your help in my time of need.

Meditation

[The wisdom to ask God to help me avoid sin.]

Benediction

Now all glory to you, mighty God, who is able to keep me from falling away and will bring me with great joy into your glorious presence without a single fault. All glory to you who alone are God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord. All glory, majesty, power, and authority are yours before all time, and in the present, and beyond all time,

by Mason Barge

Think of the day ahead in terms of God with you, and visualize health, strength, guidance, purity, calm confidence, and victory as the gifts of His presence.

The Gathering of the Manna, James Tissot ca. 1896

Do We Love God?

Exodus 16:9-21 (ESV)

Bread from Heaven

Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, ‘Come near before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.’” And as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. And the Lord said to Moses, “I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel. Say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’”

In the evening quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning dew lay around the camp. And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground.

An omer

When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer [two quarts], according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.’”

And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat.

And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.” But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them. Morning by morning they gathered it, each as much as he could eat; but when the sun grew hot, it melted.

Notes on the Scripture

God is teaching the Hebrews to trust him every day afresh. He is reforming their minds to think about their provisioning for their journey — their daily bread — in a way that is not natural to them (or anyone). And His method reflects a more fundamental change in their minds.

oday's ten-dollar word is "syncretism", which means adopting thoughts from different schools and melding them into a new one. The Hebrews' minds have been formed in a world where religion was polytheistic and syncretist. If a new god was adopted by a powerful minority in Egypt, Egyptian priests could simply slot the new god into their existing system, modifying their beliefs slightly in order to accommodate and include the new-god-worshipers into the mainstream.

But Yahweh has no truck with syncretism. The true God deals in one absolute, unyielding truth.

He is, however, sympathetic to human psychology. The Hebrews are not praying to Yahweh for sustenance; they are complaining. (Kvetching, as it were.) And yet, God hears them and answers them as if they had fallen on their faces in humility and faith.

Anyone with basic knowledge of the human mind realizes how hard fundamental change can be. People cling to what they learned as children, and the older we get, the harder it is to change. Thus He is gentle, gradual, patient.

The instructions that come from Moses and Aaron are not insights or decisions, not the product of experience and leadership; they are prophesy. God is training the Hebrews to hear prophesy and then witness it coming true. He is slowly reforming their fundamental view of the world.

It is an instructive lesson for every person, because in order to find God, it is something that each of us must undergo as an individual. Trust in God does not come naturally, for our minds learn first from our senses, and lead us to learn how to deal with the world. We do have superstitious instincts, but we cannot trust those, either; there are many things God has not promised, and the wild imaginings of the uninformed spirit fall easily into the hands of evil.

Daily Inspiration

“ God Is Inspirational ”

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