When we read the words “our daily bread,” many of us are reminded of how Jesus taught his disciples to pray.
“Give us this day, our daily bread” begins the third sentence of the English language translation of what is known as “The Lord’s Prayer” as it appears in the Gospel books of Matthew and Luke.
But Bill English, entrepreneur, CEO of Mindsharp, Inc., and Publisher of bibleandbusiness.com thinks of something else.
“I start at Proverbs Chapter 30, where the writer says ‘give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me my daily bread’ ” he told me during his recent appearance on Austin Hill In The Morning. “When you’re a business owner you’re trying to maximize profits, and yet we need sort of an internal governor that keeps us from desiring the riches. We don’t want poverty, but we don’t want to succumb to the pursuit of riches, either.”
Given the ability of modern-day Americans to amass personal wealth to levels never known before in the history of the world, I asked English if he believed that a reliance on “daily bread” implied that wealth, “nest eggs,” and financial “cushions” were necessarily wrong.
“Having riches is something God gives you, as an entrustment” he stated. ” I might be in possession of, say, $20 million. In an American sense that would be my money, but in a Christian sense that money belongs to God and I am a steward of that money for a time. Eventually those riches are going to leave my possession at some point in the future, whether through sale, liquidation, bankruptcy or death.”
English further noted:
“I better be ready to steward those resources with an open hand, hold them loosely, and be ready to give them away if that’s what God wants me to do.”
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