Matthew 17:24-27 (NIV): After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?”
“Yes, he does,” he replied.
When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes–from their own sons or from others?”
“From others,” Peter answered.
“Then the sons are exempt,” Jesus said to him. “But so that we may not offend them, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”
Jesus didn’t just talk a good game when he claimed that God, His Father, would meet every legitimate need; He lived it out. He never worried about what He was going to eat, or where He was going to stay, or what He was going to wear. Instead, He simply asked every day, and every day received precisely what He needed. And this is shown not just in the feeding of the 5,000, or in the power that He received to heal and to cast out demons, but even in something as prosaic as paying His temple tax. He needed, God supplied, end of story.
Jesus taught how to do this in His model prayer, and demonstrated it through His life, so that His followers can live it out in their own lives.
Father, thank You for Your promises of provision as well as for the demonstrations of its fulfillment in Jesus’ life, and in my own. Forgive us for trying to be so self-sufficient that we don’t need You to provide for us – that we are able to stand on our own two feet in ways that even Jesus, God in the flesh, would never dream of. Help us to relax into a total dependency on You, so that You are glorified by Your provision in our lives. Amen.