Today Our Daily Bread Matthew 6 ++

Scripture selections are taken from the Rock Church Daily Bread Reading schedule for each month. “Lena’s Journalin’” are Lena’s comments on the specific passages from her Daily Journal.

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Matthew 6:1-34
Jesus Teaches On The Mountain About Helping Others
1"Be sure you do not do good things in front of others just to be seen by them. If you do, you have no reward from your Father in heaven. 2When you give to the poor, do not be as those who pretend to be someone they are not. They blow a horn in the places of worship and in the streets so people may respect them. For sure, I tell you, they have all the reward they are going to get. 3When you give, do not let your left hand know what your right hand gives. 4Your giving should be in secret. Then your Father Who sees in secret will reward you.

Jesus Teaches About Prayer
5"When you pray, do not be as those who pretend to be someone they are not. They love to stand and pray in the places of worship or in the streets so people can see them. For sure, I tell you, they have all the reward they are going to get. 6When you pray, go into a room by yourself. After you have shut the door, pray to your Father Who is in secret. Then your Father Who sees in secret will reward you. 7When you pray, do not say the same thing over and over again making long prayers like the people who do not know God. They think they are heard because their prayers are long. 8Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.
9"Pray like this: 'Our Father in heaven, Your name is holy. 10May Your holy nation come. What You want done, may it be done on earth as it is in heaven. 11Give us the bread we need today. 12Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. 13'Do not let us be tempted, but keep us from sin. *Your nation is holy. You have power and shining-greatness forever. Let it be so.'

Jesus Teaches About Forgiveness
14"If you forgive people their sins, your Father in heaven will forgive your sins also. 15If you do not forgive people their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Jesus Teaches About Not Eating So You Can Pray Better
16"When you go without food so you can pray better, do not be as those who pretend to be someone they are not. They make themselves look sad so people will see they are going with out food. For sure, I tell you, they have all the reward they are going to get. 17When you go without food so you can pray better, put oil on your head and wash your face. 18Then nobody knows you are going without food. Then your Father Who sees in secret will reward you.

Jesus Teaches About Having Riches
19"Do not gather together for yourself riches of this earth. They will be eaten by bugs and become rusted. Men can break in and steal them. 20Gather together riches in heaven where they will not be eaten by bugs or become rusted. Men cannot break in and steal them. 21For wherever your riches are, your heart will be there also.

22The eye is the light of the body. If your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 23If your eye is bad, your whole body will be dark. If the light in you is dark, how dark it will be!
24No one can have two bosses. He will hate the one and love the other. Or he will listen to the one and work against the other. You cannot have both God and riches as your boss at the same time.

Jesus Teaches About Cares Of Life
25"I tell you this: Do not worry about your life. Do not worry about what you are going to eat and drink. Do not worry about what you are going to wear. Is not life more important than food? Is not the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds in the sky. They do not plant seeds. They do not gather grain. They do not put grain into a building to keep. Yet your Father in heaven feeds them! Are you not more important than the birds? 27Which of you can make himself a little taller by worrying? 28Why should you worry about clothes? Think how the flowers grow. They do not work or make cloth. 29But I tell you that Solomon in all his greatness was not dressed as well as one of these flowers. 30God clothes the grass of the field. It lives today and is burned in the stove tomorrow. How much more will He give you clothes? You have so little faith! 31Do not worry. Do not keep saying, 'What will we eat?' or, 'What will we drink?' or, 'What will we wear?' 32The people who do not know God are looking for all these things. Your Father in heaven knows you need all these things. 33First of all, look for the holy nation of God. Be right with Him. All these other things will be given to you also. 34Do not worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will have its own worries. The troubles we have in a day are enough for one day.

Copyright Statement: New Life BibleScripture quotations are from the New Life Bible, copyright © 1969 by Christian Literature International. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

~Lena’s Journalin’ Today~
In what Christianity has called “The Lord’s Prayer”, there is the phrase (KJV) “They kingdom come Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, I like how the rest of this chapter proceeds to tell us what that looks like in a practical sense.
*Forgiving people- all people, even those who we feel are not worthy, because they never ask!
*Fasting before God. Giving of one’s heart to God, not actions, but heart.
*Keeping our desires in tune with heaven’s desires. Working for God’s kingdom rather than our own.
*Being very, very interested about the things of God instead of every temporary thing the earth tries to lure us into thinking is important, but only lasts while we live, and after we die the people left behind have to sort them out and do something with them, because we will not take them with us, and in heaven they will have placed a 0 into the deposits of our heavenly accounts, when we get there, we could find we’ll have nothing there at all, we’ll just be happy to be there, but there’s so much more God wanted for us to store up there before we came.
*Life here is all about eternal life there.
*What are we looking at, having vision for here on earth? Heavenly things or earthly things? Our own plans or God’s plans?
*Who is our boss in life? Who tells us what to do, where to go, how hard to work, and for what purpose, how much to work for that purpose away from our families and takes us here and there? Is it God our Father, or is it money? We need to recognize there are only 2 bosses and we are under one of them. We may need to change “jobs”, really Masters.
*Trust is a big life issue. Who or what we trust is who we live here for, what we spend our time on, our money on. Do we take control over things ourselves and manipulate situations to make sure things are happening, oh “Abraham”, or do we give the things of our life over into the care of God’s hands, really trusting Him?
*When we worry, we show God we do not believe or trust Him. We can take care of it ourselves. Of course everybody, even worldly counselors will tell you that man was never meant to take on the cares of life himself, doing that actually makes people mentally and physically ill!
The biggest part of the efforts of our minds should be spent on studying His words and making the adjustments to do them to get to know Him and His will and plans more, and to place ourselves inside of His will and plans while we are here on earth. When we do this and replace a lot of the others things we do, we’ll find ourselves fulfilling these things.
I’ve heard people say they can’t, living out God’s requests of us are too much.
I believe that is true if we live the same way we were before and just add His stuff in. That would be way too much for any human being to take.
What about replacing some of what you’ve done for yourself and in its place do something with and for God and towards getting to know Him better?
Examples would be, TV watching, it takes time. Instead of watching it, we could read our daily scriptures. While waiting in waiting rooms, rather than reading magazines, we could bring our daily scriptures. Instead of listening to secular music while we drive down the road in our car, we could change to Christian radio or we could buy some worship CD’s and listen to those.
Rather than worrying, we could think about the goodness of God and rehearse the things we’d read that day in the Bible. Instead of lying in bed thinking of all the bad that has happened that day, we could pray and praise the Lord. It’s true, it is not possible to do both. Like the passage about serving two bosses, you’ll hate one and love the other if you try to do both. If you begin to serve God, you’ll begin to love Him and hate what used to take up your time and thoughts, which is a good thing. Love righteousness and hate wickedness. Your appetites for life will change.
Another example of replacements. Is are you a part of any clubs, or do you have your kids in sports activities etc? Are they things that are helping to lead you and your family into the deposits of eternal life, or do these activities just busy you and keep you from being able to bring your kids to a church service with you? Even if the club meetings aren’t on the same day, they took some of your time and the busyness took a lot of your energy and you spent it on that and don’t have the energy or time for the things of the kingdom of God that will make heavenly deposits for you and your family. It might be a good thing to consider replacing certain activities that end up draining you and giving you an excuse to not get to Know God more, and to be able to join and commit to a church family.
Ya know the part that says, “Thine is the kingdom, the power, the glory, amen?” Glory means weight. If we spend our time on getting to know God and the things of God, we are giving Him more weight, more value. When we give Him our cares and don’t worry His weight in matters increases. He carries burdens for us and our respect for His abilities and His care of us increases. We don’t take the weight of life on ourselves, we give it- glory- to Him.

Daily Repetative reading:
Proverbs 27:17-19
17 You use steel to sharpen steel, and one friend sharpens another. 18 If you care for your orchard, you'll enjoy its fruit; if you honor your boss, you'll be honored.
19 Just as water mirrors your face, so your face mirrors your heart.
Psalm 122:1
1 When they said, "Let's go to the house of God," my heart leaped for joy.