Our Daily Stimulus

"So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him…" Colossians 2:6

Jesus taught us to pray "Give us this day our daily bread." In this simple phrase I hear Him teaching us to ask "Father, give us for our physical being that which will stimulate our bodies just enough for the challenges of this day of physical life. Like you gave the manna in the wilderness to your people, give us no more and no less than we need for this day. Give us just enough stimulus to live for You for this day.

Has God created a reliable delivery system for answering this prayer in the physical realm? Yes, He has and it is this reliable system that is used to answer this prayer every day. The fullness of what the earth provides to mankind each day is the daily source from which we receive the answer to our prayer for daily, stimulating bread. If you doubt this delivery system exists, just go to your local supermarket, stand in the produce and bakery departments and look around. Better still, go and visit a farm.

An even more important question is, has God created a reliable delivery system for answering this prayer in the spiritual realm? Yes, He has. Jesus is a perfectly reliable system and the daily spiritual bread for all who believe. Jesus is the very nature of God’s abundance in us that is the daily stimulus for those who willingly eat and drink His perfect life day by day. If you doubt this delivery system exists, just spend a few minutes in Jesus’ perfect presence in you and ask Him to show you around.

When we begin each day the choice of who or what will be our daily inner bread, our daily stimulus, for the day is the most important choice we will make. There is a menu of breads offered by the world and there is The Bread, Jesus. We must choose and the choice of one menu should exclude the other. The two daily bread menus do not mix.

To die to the world is to consider whatever is on the world’s menu as lifeless and inadequate to stimulate me to love through this day. If we want to be alive physically we eat what the earth provides. If we want to be alive spiritually we eat what God is providing in Jesus. To be alive to God is to eat the bread of life that Jesus is for us and in us. Eating from both the world’s menu and God’s menu is a sure way to be spiritually sick.

Imagine yourself living a single day stimulated only by the presence of Jesus, God’s daily bread. What kind of behavior would such a single, perfect food produce in you? It would be for the day the stimulus to live the life described in the Sermon on the Mount. It would produce for the day the stimulus to deliver the fruit described in John 15. The bread of Jesus’ perfect life is capable of producing and sustaining this kind of life and fruit one day at a time and forever.

Besides beginning your day by saying "Jesus, you are welcome here," be sure to choose to eat your daily bread from God. Just like you received Him by simple faith in God’s grace and generosity, eat by faith God’s grace and generosity in Jesus that abides in you right now. As you eat for this single day from the life of Jesus, the stimulus to live the Christian life today will be yours.

Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." Then they said to Him, "Lord, give us this bread always." And Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst." John 6:32-35