daily bread

Proverbs 30:8-9
Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonour the name of my God.

The above passage from the book of Proverbs, is attributed to a guy called 'Agur' who makes a humble prayer to God in which he asks to be kept from falsehood and lies, and to be given neither poverty nor riches, but only his daily bread!

Agur, a wise man has come to the realisation that if he has riches to buy anything he wanted, then he would likely become arrogant and rely on 'things' rather than on God, and therefore his riches would become a curse!

Likewise Agur realises that if he has nothing, then in his poverty he might be tempted to steal, and thus he would dishonour God! By this Agur realises that it's not just wealth that's a curse, but poverty also!

And so Agur prays for just enough, he prays,

'give me only my daily bread'

Sounds familiar? yeah!

Agur' prayer is linked to the Lords Prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, recorded in Matt 6 and Luke 11

'give us this day our daily bread'

We all need God to protect us from poverty and riches, and so in humility and moderation Jesus taught to ask the Father to give us just enough to meet our needs and nothing more. If we did this, then perhaps we would really rely on God to meet our needs and not place our faith so much in our bank balances!

afterthought:

who prayed the prayer first, Agar or Jesus?

All scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit into the hearts and minds of humanity meaning that it is therefore the Word of God. Which when you reason this out, it means that it came from Jesus, the Son of God!

But, a lot of the time. most of us need to be told things twice!

Have a great week, and God bless,

Trev.