Lesson 4: Y – Yield

“Give us this day our daily bread.”

Yielding our most basic will or desire or need to Jesus, to answer as He wants to, is the greatest display of trust in Him we can ever experience. It is also the most difficult! It is difficult because we believe we can provide these things for ourselves.

There is an interesting verse in Proverbs 30:8 which says, in part, “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me.” And Job, probably the second richest man in the Bible, said, “I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my [necessary] food.”

Jesus also said this to His disciples when they were passing through Samaria on their way back to Galilee (John 4:1-44) - that He had food other than what they had purchased in town for their lunch – and Jesus was speaking of the fulfillment that comes when we are so busy doing God’s work that food takes second place in our priorities. And in Psalm 119:103 we read that His words are sweeter than honey when we “taste His word” (Psalm 34:8). (Jeremiah 15:16 is another wonderful Scripture on the joy of eating His Word).


Yielding our bodily needs to Jesus so that He is the Master of our body is the most difficult submission of ourselves we will ever face. We live in our body, and the demands it makes on us are hard to ignore. But Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:27 that we are to make our bodies our slave rather than us being a slave to the desires of our bodies.

When we read the whole chapter of 1 Corinthians 9, we find that this slavery of our body to Jesus’ will is more than just about food. It may very well be about whom we talk to about Jesus (friend or enemy), or where Jesus takes us to be His witness (in the place where we grew up where there are no opportunities for good jobs, or places where people hate us for what we believe). This writer spent the money to receive an education based on a promise of a great job, only to discover within a week of the money being paid, that the job was no longer a possibility. Questions rose about why God had allowed this money to be spent, if the job was no longer to be a reality. But God had a plan!

When we make our whole life – where we get our education, what we will eat or drink, with whom we will spend our life, where our money is spent, how much money our job will provide or where we will work; everything that might seem important to this life here on this earth – about Him, He promises to take care of us (Matthew 6:33).

*What keeps you from giving everything you are and have to Jesus today?