My wife is a great cook and her favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. She goes all out for Thanksgiving Dinner. The cooking starts on Wednesday. She is the first one up on Thursday and aromas from the kitchen fill our house. We wake up hungry! We help, and wait, and wait, and snitch a bite here and there, and wait some more. Finally, it’s time to eat! We enjoy it, but we can’t possibly eat it all. Then Friday comes. The food is still good. But you have had all that stuff once for lunch on Thursday, again after the ball game on Thursday night, some of it in the microwave for Friday lunch, and more of it for Friday’s supper. If friends were coming to eat, it would certainly be better on Thursday than Friday! Everyone understands: fresher is better!
Fresher Is Better: Lord’s Prayer
In the Lord’s Prayer, daily bread is rightly translated fresh bread. Scripture says, “He rained down manna for the people to eat, He gave them the grain of heaven. Men ate the bread of angels; He sent them all the food they could eat.” (Psalm 78:24-25) You know the story. Every day God sent enough for that day. I AM, the God of the present, supplied for the present. They could gather enough for a day. If they gathered more, it would rot. That’s the way God’s giving works: “His mercies are new every morning…” The God of the present deals in fresh! Fresher is better.
Jesus made fresh food for the multitudes in the New Testament. On one occasion, He gave it to the disciples to give to the people. See a pattern? He makes it fresh, gives it fresh, and says, “You give it away!” Here’s the problem: Many people seem to think God owns a day-old bread store. He doesn’t. He didn’t give day-old food in the wilderness or on the mountainside.
But many Christians try to live ‘back there’ or ‘back when’ and survive on what God fed them yesterday, last week, last year, or another time back in the past. That is not profitable for Christians, much less a world waiting to hear a fresh, relevant word from us. Are you a disciple? If so, Jesus has given you Fresh Bread (capitalized because He is Fresh Bread)? What are you giving to the multitudes? What we share of our spiritual lives needs to be fresh. If it isn’t, it’s kind of like Friday after Thanksgiving!
We need to be receiving from Him daily because the world needs an authentic, fresh invitation from us, “Come, taste and see that the LORD is good!”