Receiving Daily Bread

Christian churches love to preach about the need for boldness – and they are not wrong for doing so – but boldness is not listed as evidence of God’s presence. Jesus does not tell his disciples to go out and be bold for him … Having delivered them from earn-your-way performance religion, he does not then require them to live by such rules. He advises them, instead, to join him in the celebration of the bread and the wine, to wait for power from his Father, and to live as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. Jesus wants men strong, wise, and gentle, apparently…
In the peaceable kingdom, performance is set aside for a willingness to receive, and because receiving goes against our native philosophy of life, many men miss the benefits God has reserved for them. “I’m not going to take nuthin’ from nobody” isn’t going to work at the point of your need, and it certainly isn’t something you hear coming from Jesus to describe life in his kingdom. That little illusive door through which one must pass, which requires receiving a gift instead of giving or earning one, is a stumbling block of enormous proportion to a self-made man or a self-centered church…
[In] our life together, we must exchange performance words such as win, earn, success, and loss for life-giving words such as receive, accept, love, and celebrate. The words by which our spiritual fathers invite us to participate in the life of Jesus at the table of his presence describe the prevailing way of life in his kingdom: “I also give to you that which I have received from the Lord.” A man is set free to live when he realizes he cannot, and is not required to, give something he has not received, that the source from which he can receive is unlimited. Jesus embeds in his teaching this concept of a continual flow of life from God to man when he taught his disciples to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” We celebrate the kingdom as the gift of his daily presence.
-Wes Yoder, Bond of Brothers: Connecting with Other Men Beyond Work, Weather & Sports