Manna Living Myth Busters

Give us this day our daily bread. Matthew 6:11


Two things I ask of you, LORD; do not refuse me before I die: 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 dishonor the name of my God. Proverbs 30:7-9

I’ve got a whole new fear of the Lord going on right now. For quite some time, I’ve had a healthy fear of Him as the one who brought me into this world and the one who can take me out. But now, He’s scaring me in new ways. God is doing something with me, to me, in me, and there’s no dismissing it as coincidental or casually observing it as “interesting” any more. No, now it is getting downright scary. In fact, I’m starting to pray that prayer, “No, Lord, please, I don’t wanna!” At the same time, it’s kind of exciting, because I know my Father isn’t going to lead me down a path that He doesn’t make straight.

In this present convergence, I am living in Brazil, where all things economic are more salient to me, and I am reading the books Answers to Prayer by George Mueller, and Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. Meanwhile, “coincidentally” an impulsive post I made on Facebook resulted in my getting through email the e-book Economic Conspiracy: Relationality, and learning about the nascent organization RelationalTithe.com. Then last night, again, just “randomly” clicking around on Facebook led me to a Francis Chan YouTube video, a two-minute contemplation on Proverbs 30:7-9. The video was titled “I Dare You to Pray This,” and I went to bed wondering if Chan himself is daring to pray for no more than his daily bread, like the author of that proverb.

This morning, I woke up to this in my reading of Mueller’s book: “Our position now regarding the Orphan work is, praying day by day, ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ For a considerable time we have had day by day to look to the Lord for the supply of our daily wants; but God has helped us thus far.”

Lastly, I checked emails and saw that Dave Doc Rogers responded to a thread of mine on Facebook saying, “I understand 'manna' living - just enough, fresh everyday; but I ask that God - our Father - give me all He can so I can do my part to fund or go to all of the world and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to every creature. Amen." I had to click through to see what thread that belonged to, because I couldn’t remember anything I had recently posted about daily bread or manna living. When I got there, I was shocked to see the link to that Chan video on my status! Somehow without realizing it, I had clicked on “share” and added that video to my wall. (Can someone please coin a phrase that means essentially “Freudian slip,” but with holy connotations!)

I was glad Dave Doc Rogers made that remark, because it has led to new understanding about “manna living” or "daily bread living." Asking only for one’s daily provisions by no means requires a person to live in poverty or on meager means. Nor does it limit us to what we can do for the glory of God. That is a myth that has grown up around “manna living” like a thistle bush to make it seem unsavory and impractical, particularly in modern financial times. It does mean that we solely depend on God to provide for all our needs as well as for the desires of our heart. These provisions can be meager or they can be mammoth, depending on His calling on our lives. There is no real relationship between the magnitude of our task and our access to tomorrow’s, next week’s or next year’s manna. Faith in such relationships, for example, believing that the 500K in my retirement fund will keep me from being a burden to my children in the future, is nothing more than misplaced hope.

Let me provide two true examples of how manna living should be confused with meager living. One comes from the life of Michael Cassidy, founder of African Enterprises, who shared it in his book African Harvest. Michael was a student at Fuller Theology School when God gave him a vision to return to his native Africa for the summer and conduct a pan-African evangelistic campaign. Michael was obedient to this leading, and booked tickets for the pan-African tour for himself and a partner in ministry. Just one problem, he had no money to pay for the tickets. That was back in the day when people used travel agents and you didn’t have to pay for tickets within 24 hours of making a reservation. As the semester was coming to a close, prospects for paying for the summer trip were nil, and the travel agent continued to pester Michael about when he was going to pay for those flights he had booked. Until the day before departure, Michael had no idea how God would provide, but he prepared for departure in faith. Then on that last day before the trip, the president of Fuller called him into his office and gave him enough money to pay for the trip! The president was unaware of Michael’s plans and said he was simply being obedient to God’s prompting. Amazing. And totally true. Not urban religion legend, but totally true.

The second example comes from the life and work of George Mueller, a Brit who started orphanages with the primary purpose of showing God’s people that He can be trusted to provide for our needs when we do His work. Manna-living myth-buster that he is, Mueller did big things. In fact, at the time he wrote, “For a considerable time we have had day by day to look to the Lord for the supply of our daily wants,” Mueller had been at this orphanage thing for about 50 years and had 2,100 people under his care.

There are many other examples, both Biblical and contemporary, of this living-by-faith-for-daily-bread—I even have some in my family. It’s not a question of verity. If we fail to believe that our God will supply all our needs according to His riches in glory through Christ Jesus on the single merit that it is the infallible word of God, all we need to do is look around to people who have lived and are living this way to see and experience the truth of that promise.

So what are we all waiting for??? Yea, I know. Me too. I’m not there in my faith yet. This is the faith-building work God is doing in me just now (and scaring the heck out of me with). The important thing at this stage is that I don’t resist the teaching. The important thing is that I don’t believe the lies that the evil one whispers when he says, “That’s not the way God operates anymore. Times have changed.” Yes, they have, but God calls us to live in ancient ways.

“This is what the LORD says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’” Jer. 6:16.

Sow and Reap, Sow and Reap

Be sure you know the condition of your flocks and give careful attention to your herds; for riches do not endure forever, and a crown is not secure for all generations. When the hay is removed and new growth appears and the grass from the hills is gathered in, the lambs will provide you with clothing, and the goats with the price of a field. You will have plenty of goats’ milk to feed you and your family and to nourish your servant girls.
Proverbs 27:23-27

“Riches do not endure forever.” Now there’s a sentiment we can relate to as we have recently watched our IRAs, 401Ks and other investments dwindle to almost half of what they were just two years ago. For those of us who have another decade or two or three until retirement, we’re smiling like the Cheshire Cat, because as long as we’re in the continual process of adding to our investments, we know – or at least we think we know – that these market lows will soon enough turn themselves around and we’ll be sitting pretty again. But what about those who were slated to retire this year and were counting on that 401K to fund a new RVing habit? What about those who are already retired and see that what they thought was going to last them through some 30 golden years, will be lucky to fund 20 bronze years?

These are unique problems to a modern market economy. Old Jewish men of the 6th century didn’t have this sort of problem, did they? And yet this scripture – it’s like it was written for today!

There’s a concept buried in this verse that challenges the way of American thinking. I’ll give you three guesses as to what it is: (OK, I’m tired of waiting, I’ll guess for you)

1. Give careful attention to your flocks and herds – no, not that. We budget, we reconcile our books monthly, we review our quarterly investment reports, make changes as needed. We’ve got that principle down, though we may not always practice it.

2. Diversify! We need goats, lambs, hay and grasses and each of those should be used in as many ways as possible: goats for milk and meat, lambs for wool and meet, and when we cash in on them, we should invest in real estate (“…the price of a field.”). Wrong again. We already know all about diversifying our portfolio, though we may not always practice it.

3. Hmm, let’s see – have servant girls? Lame!

Give up? The buried concept that challenges our American way is this: retirement is not advisable. It might be the American dream now, but it’s not one of the practices on which this nation was founded – or any other nation for that matter (although it might be a foundation of the State of Florida, thinking Ponce de Leon here… and old geezers in black socks and tennies). Smarter people than I could tell you when exactly the concept of retiring from work came in vogue, but I do know that it’s a relatively new idea. For most of humankind, elderly people just kept on doing whatever they could do until they kicked off. And that’s the way it still works in most of the world. Of course, they are not able to continue the level of productivity of their midlife years, and they may not even be engaged in activities that have a direct monetary payout, but they contribute by watching grand or great grandchildren, taking the flocks out to pasture, stirring the soup – whatever – they work! Only in Western Civilization do you find the elderly person whose purpose in life is to play golf, shop and see the world.

Now, if you want to know the truth, given my druthers, I would far prefer to play golf, shop and see the world from age 65 on, rather than continue to labor. And for many people, working past a certain age at the profession they have held throughout life is simply not an option. If they don’t chose to retire, they are forced to retire. Our society makes it fairly problematic not to retire – a strange and quick turn of events from the days of yore.

Let’s step outside our societal norm for a second and consider this: Is it God’s will that we retire? This is a huge question with lots to consider, prime among them: what is it we’ll be doing with all our spare time? Do you think it’s God’s will for us to RV around the country or watch three hours more of TV each day? Some folks retire from their day job to pursue a ministry – like going into missions. For that person, God probably sped retirement.

The not-so-obvious sage advice in these verses is to keep the income coming in – don’t be so naïve to think that what you have will provide for the number of years you have planned for it to last. This rarely seems to work out. Think of the elderly people you know – they seem to fall in two camps: either their money didn’t last them long enough and they are living in poverty or they die with a ton of money in the bank. Both are big rip-offs and there is much scripture to support that neither is God’s will for our finances (we’ll be looking at these in future posts). Perhaps God’s will is “sow and reap, sow and reap.” Of course, we’re always doing that anyway. But my question to you is this: If you sow 18 holes, followed by a massage and a few hours of prime-time TV, what do you reap?

Contemplate this: Maybe the only sure plan for not outliving my harvest is to keep sowing for as long as I’m physically able.