Don’t stockpile your prayers

In Jesus’ model prayer to “Our Father in Heaven” he says these words: “Give us today our daily bread.”

They are familiar words to many. Just look at them for a moment though. Have you considered the strong emphasis on today? “Give us today our daily bread” It’s not “Give us today what we need for the coming week or month.” It’s not asking in advance – so we’ve no need to come back to “Our Father in Heaven” tomorrow. No, it’s a daily request for our Father to meet our needs for today. We aren’t to stockpile our prayer requests. We are to pray daily, for our daily needs.

Right now it will be for our good if we put that into practice. It’s so easy to worry about tomorrow, next week, the next twelve weeks, the year and the future. But Jesus calls us to trust God with today. That doesn’t mean we are never to plan or make preparations. It doesn’t mean as Christians we’re not to long for the amazing future when we will be with Jesus and everything will be made right. But we need not worry about tomorrow. Jesus tells us plainly in Matthew 7:34“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” Let’s be honest, much of our worry and anxiety is about tomorrow not today, it’s about the future not the present. As the pastor Kevin DeYoung says “Anxiety is living out the future before it gets here.”

Can I encourage you to bring your daily needs to your Father in Heaven? To trust that his provision and grace will be sufficient for today. Let’s not play out scenarios in our minds about tomorrow, we can come back to our Father tomorrow with tomorrow’s concerns. Let’s live, as best we can, one day at a time.

And here’s the good news. Each day as we come to our Heavenly Father, his love and faithfulness are new and fresh. They are never changing. We haven’t got to seek his love today fearing that his love may have run out in the future, that tomorrow he won’t have mercy on us. As the writer of Lamentations says“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him.”

Trust your Heavenly Father with today.

And tomorrow, you can confidently do the same.