Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

Main Points

God wants the real you, not the ideal you.

God provides for who you are, not who you pretend to be.

Come as You Are: Embracing Our True Selves Before a Good Father

OPENING

Imagine you’re in a job interview, and they ask the dreaded question: ‘What’s your biggest weakness?’ Do you tell them the truth? ‘Well, I’m kind of lazy, I procrastinate, and I hit snooze at least five times every morning?’ No! You give a polished answer: ‘Oh, I just care too much and work too hard.’

We’re trained to present the best version of ourselves—to make ourselves look more competent, more disciplined, more put-together. And if we’re honest, we do the same thing with God. We come to Him in prayer trying to sound more holy, more faithful, more deserving than we really are. But here’s the thing—God doesn’t want the version of you that you wish you were. He wants the real you, the one who has weaknesses, struggles, and needs. Because God provides for who you are, not who you pretend to be.

As I was preparing this week for this message, I stumbled across this little video where they discuss this upcoming quote. The context of this quote is someone reflecting on Freud, saying that therapy ends when dealing with our problems and we are longer dealing with us.

Mark foley

35 years ago I can honestly say that much emotional healing has taken place in my heart. Nevertheless, during times of stress with my old fears and neurotic compulsion swell up within me with all their savage intensity, I feel that nothing has changed I say to myself when will I ever be rid of this this once I could except the answer, never I felt a great weight taken off of my shoulders, for I was released from the impossible goal of trying to become someone other than myself.

Self-help can be an insidious mask of self hate for it makes you feel that there is something wrong with you until you are ““ healed.

When I heard this, I was so taken back because I was overwhelmed by the truth in the freedom from constantly trying to make myself right so that I can have a relationship with God. What this showed me, what this revealed to me is something that I’ve kind of known in my head, but never really lived out the concept that God wants the real me with all of my bumps, bruises, scars, and brokenness in my weaknesses, he doesn’t want the ideal me that’s plastered up and held together and manufactured, and then only when I can be honest enough with myself and with God can I believe you can I begin to live in the grace God has for me to go forward in the gospel in spite of my brokenness, that God is willing to use me in spite of my brokenness, and that God is wanting to give me what I need today in the midst of my brokenness.

Transition

And that’s exactly what Jesus is teaching us in the Lord’s Prayer. Up to this point, Jesus has been focusing our prayers on God—His holiness, His kingdom, and His will. But now, with the phrase ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ the focus shifts.

Richard Foster puts it this way:

The pattern for prayer that Jesus gives his disciples is short on our wants and big on God’s wants. Half of what Jesus tells us to do in prayer is worship God, keep him holy, and ask that his kingdom and his will take shape, not ours. God the father looms large. For us, it is enough that we get what we need for spiritual and physical sustenance, and that we ground our days in asking for and receiving forgiveness, as well as calling for freedom from evil that pulls us toward wrong. - Richard Foster

Jesus moves from what God wants to what we need. Our focus shifts to a genuine all out for provision, for help, for daily bread.

Daily bread can mean the literal food we need each day, but it can also be a prayer of asking God to give you exactly what you need to make it through the next 24 hours. Which means that we have to be honest and open about the real needs, the real things, and be honest about the fact that we can do nothing without the Lord providing.

The Lord’s Prayer isn’t about us bringing our polished, filtered, best selves to God—it’s about coming with open hands and an honest heart, saying, ‘Lord, I need You today.’ Not ‘I need You for next year,’ not ‘I need You to bless my five-year plan,’ but ‘I need You today.’ The next 24 hours, the next 30 minutes.

So bring the real stuff of today to God. The real you, the one that struggles even to pray, The real you the one who is angry. The real you the one who is struggling with Doubt and is struggling to believe. The real you who is anxious and worried. The real you who is full of guilt and shame, the real you who is exhausted, lonely, grief stricken, heartbroken, lost, confused.

God wants the real you, not the ideal you.

This is the daily bread Jesus is telling us to demand of God. The word that Jesus uses for Give is in the imperative tense. It is a demand. So it isn’t an asking it is a telling. So Jesus is telling us as disiples to demand the daily bread of God. To do this we have to bring forth the real us, and have a real trust that God still loves the real us and wants to bless the real us. not the ideal versions of us. That doesn’t fly with God.

It is very interesting to me that we have this kind of theology that tells us that God is sitting on the clouds with a long white beard and a gavel just waiting on us to slip up. That is not the God of the Bible.

“I have heard it said that we have the gospel wrong if when we mess up our first thought is oh no I hope dad doesn’t find out”

We do this because our human nature and experience has taught us that this is how people resond to mistakes and doing wrong therefore that is how God responds. It comes from our roots, our upbringings. So the learned behavior is for us to put on an ideal version of ourselves so that we don’t get hurt, we don’t disappoint, we don’t fall short.

When I was about 9, my younger brother would’ve been 6 or 7 we were playing in the backyard of my house, which was in the middle of no where. That warm summers day my Dad’s childhood friend’s son, Mikey over who was a few years older than me was over and we were playing. We couldn’t go inside, because my dad was working or on a call, I don’t remember, but we weren’t allowed inside.

Where we lived on the oppisite corner of the field was a Quaker church and a cemetary. So we decided to walk over there, not telling my Dad who was inside. When we got there there was a guy working on the grounds so we pestered him for a bit, like a 10 year old only could, the guy probably didn’t even notice we were there. That got boring after a little bit. Mickey then convinced us that we should walk to his dads house. It was about three miles walk. When I was a kid it felt like 10. It took some convincing, but the three of us took off, after Mickey told us, “this is the kind of stuff our dads would do all the time. It is like all the crazy stories they tell us about.” He may have even promised us some chips or snacks, which would’ve easliy convinced me.

The whole walk I feel a bit of unease, Now mind you we never told my dad that we even left the backyard. So our little legs walked the back country roads. Came across a painted turtle that my brother picked up and wanted to keep for a pet. We saw old angus cows in the pastures. Not a bad walk if I am being honest. However when we were about 2 blocks away from Mickey’s Dad’s house we heard my Dad.

He wasn’t too pleased with us. We get a pretty loud and through talking to that afternoon.

Maybe for you that is how you picture God when you mess up. What you think when you think of God is the most important thing you think. It affects everything, including your prayer life. If God is angry with you, disappointed, and just waiting to catch you red handed then why would you spend time with him? Why would you ask him for help in your daily life? So if you feel like God is always two blocks away and waiting to yell at you then you need to see that isn’t what Jesus taught us. Just look at what Jesus says a chapter later in Matthew.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. 9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Mt 7:7–12.

This is what Jesus is offering us—an invitation to trust, to ask boldly, to depend fully on our Father. Yet, for so many of us, this invitation goes unanswered. We hesitate to come to God with our real needs, our real struggles, our real selves, because we’ve bought into the lie that we have to earn His provision.

But Jesus is clear: If earthly fathers—flawed as they are—know how to give good gifts, how much more will your heavenly Father provide for you when you ask? The problem isn’t that God is unwilling to provide. The problem is that we struggle to trust Him enough to depend on Him.

And that struggle isn’t new. It’s the same tension people have faced for generations. Take George Mueller, for example—a man who wrestled with what it meant to truly trust God’s provision, not just in theory, but in reality.

Illustration:

George Mueller’s trust in prayer

George Mueller was a pastor in Bristol, England, in the early 1800s. He saw firsthand how difficult it was for people to trust God with their daily needs. One man in his congregation worked 14-16 hours a day six days a week, and had no time for prayer. When Mueller encouraged him to work less and trust God to provide, the man responded with a question many of us might ask: "If I work less, how will I provide for my family?" Mueller’s heart ached because he knew what Jesus taught—seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be given to you (Matthew 6:33). So he reminded the man

"My dear brother, it is not your work that supports your family, but the Lord. He who has provided for you in times of illness, when you could not work at all, will surely continue to provide if you trust Him and make space to seek Him."

Others in Mueller’s congregation faced similar fears. Some were older and worried about how they would survive without work. Businessmen struggled with guilt, knowing their work practices looked no different from those of the world, but they feared changing their ways would lead to financial loss.

Mueller realized he couldn’t just preach about trusting God—he needed to live it. He decided to open an orphanage, but instead of fundraising or asking for donations, he committed to relying entirely on prayer. If God was truly a provider, He would provide. And He did.

Mueller later wrote:

"Now, if I, a poor man, simply by prayer and faith, obtained, without asking any individual, the means for establishing and carrying on an orphan house, there would be something which, with the Lord’s blessing, might be instrumental in strengthening the faith of the children of God."

Mueller’s life became a testimony that God provides—not for the perfect, not for the self-sufficient, but for those who come to Him with real trust and real needs.

God wants the real you, not the ideal you.

Application

This kind of faith—this kind of prayer—isn’t something we wake up with overnight. George Mueller didn’t just decide one day to trust God for everything; he learned to trust by bringing his real needs to God daily. That’s how faith grows. It’s not just in the moments of crisis, not just in the life-altering decisions—it’s in the small, everyday dependence on God. And when we learn to bring Him the small things, we start to realize that in God’s kingdom, there are no small things.

Tyler Staton, in Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools, puts it this way:

“Jesus insists on ‘world hunger’ prayers and ‘parking space’ prayers alike. He won’t have it any other way. Right in the middle of a prayer as cosmic as ‘hallowed be your name,’ as apocalyptic as ‘your kingdom come,’ as contrite as ‘forgive us,’ and as spiritual as ‘deliver us from the evil one,’ Jesus includes the unavoidably practical, circumstantial, and immediate, ‘give us today our daily bread.’”

If we only bring the big things to God, we shrink down what a relationship with Him is supposed to be. Jesus came and died on the cross so that we could be fully reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:18). If that’s true, then every breath, every moment, every need is an invitation to trust Him.

When we pray for God to give us our daily bread, we acknowlege that we have needs, we have weaknesses, that we aren’t the God of the universe, and that we must trust in him to give us all we need. However if we create a facade and operate from behind a veil and only bring to God the needs that we pretend we need, if we assume that God is wanting us to be this person, to act like this. If we pretend that we are a person that we really aren’t then How will God provide what you need.

God provides for who you are, not who you pretend to be.

And that truth doesn’t just change how we pray—it should change how we live in community with one another. If God invites us to bring our real selves to Him, shouldn’t we also be real with the people He’s placed around us?

Too often, we walk into church feeling pressure to look like we have it all together, to act as if our faith is unwavering, our families are perfect, and our struggles are neatly under control. But what if church was the one place where we didn’t have to pretend?

So here’s my challenge for you: Next Sunday, instead of wearing a mask of perfection, take a step toward authenticity. Share honestly with someone in your small group or a close friend. If you’re battling anxiety, wrestling with doubt, or carrying a burden, ask for prayer. You might just find that in opening up, God meets you in a powerful way—not through pretending, but through the honesty of real faith.

CLOSING

So let’s strip away the pretense. Let’s stop bringing the version of ourselves we wish we were, and instead bring our real selves to God—every single day. Let’s depend on Him for our daily bread, trusting Him not just for the extraordinary, but for the everyday. Because when we do, we’ll begin to see that every moment is filled with the presence of God.

Amen.