Heart Check for the Lord’s Table: Dependence

Posted on April 9, 2014 by petetackett

I will post some random thoughts this week to guide your thoughts and prayers as you prepare your heart for Holy Week and to come to the Lord’s Table. These thoughts are based loosely on the Model Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13.

Give us today our daily bread.

groceries The short trip to the Lord’s Table is really a big reminder that everything we have and need is provided by the hand of God. Yet we sin mightily in our fear that we will not have what we need, or we confuse wants with needs. We get so focused on the thing we need or think we need that we forget God provided it all and has made some promises to those who love, worship, and honor him with their lives and their stuff.

Consider Philippians 4:19, “And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”
Think about 2 Peter 1:3, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”

Yet, we still do the very thing Jesus cautioned us against in the Sermon on the Mount. We labor and toil and worry and in the process allow the very things HE provides to crowd HIM out of our mind and thoughts. In essence, the things He provides become the gods we worship.

He simply reminds us in the Model Prayer to trust Him for the things we need and not to worry about future needs. Just live life by faith one day at a time. “Lord, please give us our daily bread.” It is a simple prayer that says much about where we are on the “trust” meter.

The value of coming to the Lord’s Table is that it gives us a quiet place to re-align our priorities, to remove idols of the heart, and to learn once again to trust Him for what we need. After all, isn’t it ironic that in the busyness of life, we trust Him for our eternal salvation and destiny, but forget to trust him for our daily needs? Spend a little time today evaluating your own “trust” meter. Have you allowed other little gods to creep in and steal your faith in Him for the daily needs of your life? If so, as he reveals those gods to you, confess that to Him and forsake them. Ask for forgiveness and in the quiet preparation for the Lord’s Table, let HIM regain his place as the rightful Lord of your life!