Daily Needs

Introduction

Notice we move from God’s wants to our needs

There is nothing in this model pray that shows us our wants

One of the interesting things about this is

directly after we worship the Father

God wants to meet our physical needs

This proves the passage in James about meeting people’s needs as well as faith

It also proves that faith doesn’t just come by believing but also by what we do

James 2:14–17 ESV

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

Before we get started on the Model Prayer

A quick note

Adrian Rogers would say that prayer begins and ends with God

not just the physical prayer we pray

meaning we start praying about God and how awesome He is

and then end by praising God

but also where the prayer begins

Let’s say you are praying for someone or something in your life

specifically it may be an illness

God will answer your prayers

but not if you aren’t doing anything to help yourself

Let me explain further

You can pray all you want about someone that is lost

but it would make sense that if you haven’t shared the gospel with them

that would be the answer that God would give to you

Lord I pray for my neighbor George,

I pray that he gets saved

but if you haven’t shared the gospel with your neighbor

I can imagine God saying

You want him to get saved, how about knocking on his door

Similar to things like sickness

I hear people say they are praying for God to heal them of some disease

but they aren’t going to see a doctor or take proper medicine

You don’t understand, God is going to heal me

Yes, He provided modern medicine as an opportunity to do that

That doesn’t mean that He won’t miraculously heal you in the process

but as James said, Faith without works is dead

Want to learn more about the discipline of prayer?

come back tonight as we look at what it means to pray

back to the model prayer

We’ve begun with praying all about God and His will, His wants

It seems a little odd praying to God for what He wants

until we truly understand and believe who God is

we want to jump into the wish list that we have

without giving God His reverence and respect that He deserve

God, however, wants us to come to Him with our needs

Matthew 6:11 ESV

Give us this day our daily bread,

Now Jesus is going to switch from praying for what God wants, His will,

to praying for what we need, sustenance , sins, and spiritual battle

This is known as a petition, or supplication, a request, an ask

Questions to answer

Do we really need to bother God with things we can provide ourselves?

Is it OK to come to God with simple and small things?

What does He mean by us and our, why is it in plural form?

Is it OK to pray for our physical needs?

What if God has already provided something we needed?

Doesn’t God want to give us the desires of our hearts rather than just what we need?

Do we just pray for today?

Isn’t it a little disrespectful to God to demand bread?

I mean this isn’t a third world country

This is well fed America

Let’s take a moment to answer some of these questions

Question - Do we really need to bother God with things we can provide ourselves?

When all our needs are met and all is going well

we tend to think we are carrying our own load

We earn our own money, pay our own bills

buy our own clothes and food

at least it seems that way

The truth of the matter is

none of it would be possible except for the provision of God

One day a group of scientists got together

and decided that man had come along way and no longer needed God.

So they picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him.

The scientist walked up to God and said

"God, we’ve decided that we no longer need you;

We’re to the point that we can clone people

and do many miraculous things,

so why don’t You just go and get lost."

God listened very patiently and kindly to the man.

After the scientist was done talking,

God said, "Very well, how about this?

Let’s say we have a man-making contest."

To which the scientist replied, "Okay, great!"

But, God added, "Now we’re going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam."

The scientists said, "Sure, no problem,"

and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.

God looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt."

There is not a thing that we do

that doesn’t come from God

We go to work, we make money

we pay bills, but if it weren’t for God providing us air

if it weren’t for Him creating a planet in the perfect position for us to survive

If it weren’t for God knitting us together in our mother’s womb

we wouldn’t have a job, money, bills, clothing

He is our sole provider of everything we have

So when the question is asked

Do we really need to bother God with things we can provide ourselves?

my answer is no, you can do that without God

so stop breathing

Think about this

God provided for mankind before mankind existed

Genesis 1:29 ESV

And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.

Did we have anything to do with the plants growing?

do we provide rain when it is necessary?

God provided for us the abundance of everything we needed to eat

since the beginning of the earth

and is still growing food and plants for us now

Paul leaves his protege Timothy in Ephesus to straighten things out in the church

One of those things is that people are creating rules and laws

and they are teaching them as fact

Paul calls them old wives tales

Here is Paul’s argument about the things that are being taught

1 Timothy 4:1 ESV

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons,

I want to be able to call someone out that way one day

1 Timothy 4:3–5 ESV

who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.

Question - Is it OK to come to God with simple and small things?

If every physical thing comes from God

and the Word of God says it is holy

we should receive it with thankful prayer

To not pray daily for the things that God provides

is a sin of being ungrateful to God

Give us

This is the first we-oriented petition

This turns the attention from God to the disciple

It moves from Your Name, Your Kingdom, and Your will to Give us

Question - Did you ever wonder why it is in plural form?

If Jesus is going to give us a model to pray

why wouldn’t it say give me this day my daily bread

Or why didn’t the whole prayer begin with My Father instead of Our Father

We have to remember that we are part of God’s worldwide family of believers

We have no right to ask for ourselves anything that would harm another member of the family

If we are truly praying in the will of God, the wants of God

The answer to our prayer will be a blessing to all of God’s people in one way or another

Question - Isn’t it a little disrespectful to God to demand bread?

It seems kind of pushy to demand of God though

I mean when we say “give us” it sounds like the gimme, gimme, gimme

In terms of the Jewish prayers, the morning prayer is for today’s bread, and the evening prayer for tomorrow’s bread. This is a prayer reflecting total God-dependence. When most pray it, they think, “Gimme, gimme, gimme.” But this petition actually means, “I rely on you for my daily needs.”26 Moreover, it reflects an attitude that takes one day at a time, reflecting the first-century day laborer who was paid one day at a time. The point is trusting God for each day’s need, reflecting faith as “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Heb 11:1). With God in charge, each day is taken care of

At the heart of the petition is the word Give

It means that when we ask for something

there is a recognized need

Romans 10:9 ESV

because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Confession really means that we agree with God

So when we agree with God that Jesus is Lord

meaning that we place ourselves under His authorty

and we believe that Jesus died and rose for us

we will be saved

Saved from what? I Didn’t know I needed saving?

Romans 3:23 ESV

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

So because we all fall short of God’s glory then

we need a way to get to God

Romans 3:10 ESV

as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;

So God created a way back to Him

Romans 5:8 ESV

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

and He gives us a choice

Romans 6:23 ESV

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Here’s the reasons we need to be saved

John 3:36 ESV

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

We are being saved from both our sin and God’s wrath

Without Jesus in our lives

We will face God’s wrath on our own terms

The Bible already said the wages of sin is death

and that word doesn’t just mean physical death

that’s death facing God’s wrath

So when we pray to God and agree with Him that Jesus is in control of our lives

we are recognizing a need for a Savior

the same as when we pray give us this day our daily bread

we recognize our physical need

Question - Is it OK to pray for our physical needs?

The answer is yes!

We would be ungrateful if we didn’t pray for our physical needs

But it’s not just asking for our needs

Question - What if God has already provided something we needed?

do we still need to pray about that?

Yes, We ask Him in recognition of His past and present provision

as well as for His future provision

Think about it this way

We can only pray confidently because God has promised abundantly

Question - Doesn’t God want to give us the desires of our hearts rather than just what we need?

Let’s look at what the Bible actually says about this

Psalm 37:3–4 ESV

Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

As long as we are delighting in the Lord

The He will give us the desires of our heart

it’s not just we can get whatever we want

and it’s also not whoever asks

This means that God is only bound to those who trust in Him

and delight in Him

This Day

This is part of the right now and in the future

This is the schedule of God’s provision

He gives us a day-to-day supply of needs

and we are to rely on Him one day at a time

Lamentations 3:22–24 ESV

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

This is not that we pray only when we need Him

We should recognize that

I need Thee every hour Most gracious Lord No tender voice like Thine Can peace afford

I need Thee, O I need Thee Every hour I need Thee O bless me now, my Savior I come to Thee

This means we don’t need to worry about tomorrow

My mother used to remind me about the verse

Jesus said later on in this chapter of Matthew

Matthew 6:34 ESV

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Our Daily Bread

This part of the prayer is our dependency on God

God knows our needs

But He wants us to know that we need Him to provide those for us

When we say grace at a dinner table

we might say the prayer by rote memory

God is great God is good now we thank Him for our food

by His hands we all are fed, give us Lord our daily bread

And that’s all well and good but

do we really believe that God provided the food that we are about to eat?

or are we simply praying because we were taught to?

or praying out of obedience?

or praying because we think we are supposed to?

without ever giving a thought to why we are praying in the first place?

This is when the faith of our parents becomes our own faith

Two Truths

Here are two truths we can take from this line of the model prayer

God Cares for Our Bodies

I have heard people say

we should worry about the soul and the spirit more than the body

There is evidence of this in 1 Timothy

and when people talk about monks

that separate themselves from society

in order to gain a greater spiritual consciousness

One of the tenants of the Jains that we as a church have adopted

is that they will literally starve themselves at some point in their life

when they feel they have reached to best part of their life

so that they can reach the end of the cycle of reincarnation

so they kill themselves thinking that they can reach kevalajñāna

or full enlightenment

Jesus, on the other hand

spent a lot of time healing people from their disease

and satisfying their physical hunger

no matter what condition of life they were in

This is not simply a soul salvation

it is a whole salvation of body, mind, and spirit

We Live One Day at a Time

As I quoted from the verse in Matthew earlier

and to quote a famous Korean chef

Don’t worry about it

Don’t worry about tomorrow

ask God for what we need today

Does that mean we shouldn’t plan for tomorrow?

Does that mean we shouldn’t save money for retirement

or a child’s education, or neglect insurance needs?

That’s not what this is saying

We shouldn’t be wrapped up in those things as if our life and future were dependent on them

we should be wrapped up in the confidence of God

because our life and future do depend on Him