Daily Bread

I love Harvest celebrations.

It’s such a wonderful reminder to us, isn’t it, that God, as it says in Scripture, “supplies all our needs according to his riches in glory.”

It’s a Sunday when we join our voices with the psalmist and declare, “The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want.”

Or as Eugene Peterson translates it, “I don’t need a thing.”

It’s such a simple declaration, but a powerful one as we declare our trust in God that he will take care of us.

Sometimes the simplest thoughts, at the same time, can be the most profound.

Like where we find ourselves today in our series on the Lord’s Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread.”

It’s a good part of the prayer to land on for Harvest Sunday, isn’t it?

And again, on the surface it’s a very plain, very simple, petition in the prayer.

After two petitions that have some real spiritual and theological heft: thy kingdom come, thy will be done…we find ourselves at one that seems a little easier to understand.

In fact, it’s so simple to understand we might be tempted to pass over it without much thought.

But if we sit with it for a while and really think about what we’re praying when we say, “Give us our daily bread,” I think we find there is some profound depth in this part of the Lord’s Prayer.

Think about this for a moment: suddenly in this line of the prayer Jesus makes things very specific and practical.

Saying, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,”…those are petitions that take place on a much grander scale as we pray for God’s work to flourish and his shalom to be known around the world.

As I said last week, there’s a personal dimension to those petitions that we ignore at our peril, but still they are a bit more abstract and “out there.”

But when we say, “Give us this day our daily bread,”…for the first time in the prayer we’re truly asking something specifically for ourselves.

It’s a prayer…for material needs.

Jesus is inviting us to pray for normal and practical things.

Some of us only think we can pray for lofty and world-shaping concerns, but the very first personal petition Jesus gives us is for the most basic of needs.

I love what one of my favourite authors, Richard Foster, says about this:

(SLIDE)

“If [the petition for daily bread] had come from the lips of any other than Jesus himself, we would consider it an intrusion of materialism upon the refined realm of prayer. But here it is smack in the middle of the greatest of prayers: ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’”

Then he goes on to say this:

(SLIDE)

“When we think about it for a moment though, we realize that this prayer is completely consistent with Jesus’ pattern of living, for he occupied himself with the trivialities of humankind. He provided wine for those who were celebrating, food for those who were hungry, rest for those who were weary…So it is fully in order that he invites us to pray for daily bread.”—Richard Foster

Jesus occupied himself with the trivialities of humankind.

And he invites to pray for the trivialities of humankind.

Can you imagine what life would be like if Jesus had forbidden us from asking for the “little things?” If he had told us we could only come to God with issues of profound significance, of national or international magnitude?

But the very opposite is true.

Jesus invites—in fact, he commands us to pray to God for the provision of our daily needs.

The ones we might think of as “trivial.”

Because the amazing truth is that God doesn’t think our needs are trivial: in fact, the very opposite is true.

He tells us to bring them to him in prayer.

God values and understands our needs.

Foster sums it up this way:

(SLIDE)

“We pray for daily bread by taking to God those trifles that make up the bulk of our days. Are we unable to find a babysitter to care for the children while we are at work? Well then, we pray for daily babysitters. Do we need a little space to think things out? Then we pray for daily solitude and rest. Is it a warm sweater or gloves that we need because of the bitter cold? We ask for clothing, day by day. Are we struggling with a relationship at work or at home? We ask for patience and wisdom and compassion--daily, hourly. This is how we pray for daily bread.”—Richard Foster

Sit with this profound truth for a moment: the God of the universe, the one who created everything…is concerned about your daily needs.

He loves you, he loves me so much…that even the smallest, seemingly most insignificant parts of our lives are things he wants us to bring to him in trust and faith.

And I think our inability to grasp this sometimes leads to a lot of unnecessary worry and anxiety.

That’s what Jesus was talking about in the passage we heard from Matthew chapter 6.

(SLIDE)

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”—Matthew 6:25-27 (NIV)

In this passage Jesus is inviting us to a level of trust I think we desperately need today.

Because let’s face it…we are living in times when even the basic, daily needs of life are starting to cause a lot of fear and worry for a lot of people.

And let me make this clear: the Christian faith doesn’t ignore difficulty.

We don’t hide our heads in the sand and pretend things don’t affect us.

We don’t create an alternate reality where this isn’t any such thing as inflation or a cost of living crisis.

But as Christians what Jesus invites us to do is to approach these things from a different perspective: one of trust and confidence in God’s ability to see us through.

(2008 Recession: “You don’t fit any of our models.”)

That little church that Sharon and I pastored lived in that place of confident trust in God to provide for our needs.

It wasn’t easy. And I can speak personally to many times that my “confident trust in God” was tested.

But he always showed himself faithful.

In fact, this passage in Matthew 6 was one I turned to again and again during that time.

Because I’m very skilled at borrowing stress from the future.

I’m a master at it…my imagination runs wild and before you know it, I’m reacting to things that might happen as if they’ve already happened.

(FILM BRAIN STUDY)

So in a scientific sense, our brains often don’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s not.

And when we imagine what might happen in the future…when we let that film play in our brains…we create a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety.

A number of years ago there was a very popular teaching that made it’s way around churches in the States…don’t know if it was popular over here as well.

It was about fear.

And it used this acronym:

(SLIDE

False

Evidence

Appearing

Real

I used to mock that teaching.

Because I don’t think that’s always true.

If you’re sitting on a jet airplane, and you look out the window, and the engine is on fire…that ain’t false.

That’s real evidence appearing…real.

Sometimes fear is an appropriate response to very real things that are unfolding right in front of us. And when it comes, we take that to God in a specific way and we trust God in the midst of that fear.

But when it comes to our anxiety and worry about the future…I think that acronym works pretty well.

We look to a potential future…which until it actually happens is false…and we act as if it were real.

That gives the possibilities of tomorrow too much power in our lives.

But in the Lord’s Prayer…like our passage from Matthew…Jesus encourages us to focus on TODAY.

Today, Lord.

Today, we’re depending upon you to give us what we need.

Today I’m seeking your provision.

Today I’m trusting your faithfulness.

Today I’m declaring that what you give is enough.

Today I’m believing that tomorrow I will also have what I need, even if I don’t see and understand what it is.

Give us today our daily bread.

Now, it’s one thing to say we trust God to provide our needs when our fridges and freezers and cupboards are well-stocked, when our savings accounts look robust, when we’re flourishing in body, soul, mind and spirit.

But the testimony of Scripture…and the testimony of history…is that God’s people are called to trust him even when that isn’t the case.

Probably the biggest example of this comes from the story of the Exodus, when the Hebrew people are rescued from slavery in Egypt and begin what ends up being a long journey to the Promised Land.

And on that journey God provides for their needs in a miraculous way…by sending heavenly food called manna that sustains them.

In fact, when Jesus taught the phrase, “daily bread,” I have to think that for the Jewish people in his midst their thoughts immediately went to manna.

Because manna literally was “daily bread”…it appeared in the morning, the Hebrews were told to gather only as much as they needed for that day…any attempt to hoard it or store it resulted in a stinking, rotting mess.

God was showing them…don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow there will be fresh manna for you.

Daily bread.

But remember this: the provision of the manna comes in the midst of the wilderness.

The Israelites are in a desolate place. A scary place as they make their journey to the Promised Land.

And yet even there…God meets their needs.

Just as he meets ours in our own times of wilderness and desolation.

Those times when our familiar supports are stripped away, when any illusion of control we might have had disappears.

Even there, God invites us to pray: “Give us this day our daily bread.”

He says, “Even here…I am with you. Will you trust me to provide what you need?”

Let’s face it…the world is kind of a scary place right now.

And it would be so easy to give in to the fear.

But this part of the Lord’s Prayer invites us to something else.

It invites us to a different posture of prayer.

If we were to honestly listen to the way we pray, I think a lot of the time we’re praying from a position of anxiety for the future rather than a position of trust in the present.

Let me say that again.

A lot of the time we’re praying from a position of anxiety for the future rather than a position of trust in the present.

Now don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying it’s wrong or sinful to experience anxiety about the future.

But let me speak from personal experience and say…too many of us live there.

We get consumed by it.

And it eats at our souls.

And in the midst of it all, Jesus is saying, “Trust me.”

He invites to pray for our daily needs.

But think about this for a moment:

If Jesus invites us to pray for our daily needs…then logically…

…he’s also inviting us to pray daily for our needs.

“Give us this day our daily bread”…BY DEFINITION is a daily prayer.

And yet I’ll guarantee you…a lot of Christians say it only once a week.

In this petition, Jesus is encouraging us to be regular and consistent with our prayers.

Spiritually, we can’t live off of yesterday’s bread.

We need fresh bread, fresh grace, fresh strength…for each day.

Jesus instructs us to ask God to provide our needs for the day, and to ask God to do that on a daily basis.

Because what often happens in our walk of faith is this: we show up in church on Sunday, we sing the songs, we listen to the sermon, we pray the prayers…

…we declare our faith and trust in God…

…and then on Monday we forget all of that.

It’s like on Sunday we believe it’s all up to God, but on Monday we believe it’s all up to us.

Friends…it’s always up to God.

God desires to be active in our life in such a way that EVERY SINGLE DAY we experience his faithfulness, his provision…

…every single day we live in that place of trust and confidence that he knows our needs and is able to provide for them.

In just a moment we’re going to sing our final hymn, a hymn that has this refrain:

(SLIDE)

All good gifts around us are sent from heav’n above.

We thank you, God, we thank you, God, for all your love.

As I finish, let me encourage you to do something.

(MOTION) Don’t just sing those words today.

Take them with you into this week.

Into every single day.

Write them down.

Post them on your bathroom mirror…or put it in your Bible or on a bedside table.

Go back to them every day.

Be reminded that God gives us everything we need.

He is our Shepherd…we shall not want for anything.

Every good and perfect gift we experience is from his hand, and we can trust him to provide for our every need.

We thank you, God, we thank you for all your love.

Let us pray.