4_The Prayer of Dependence
The Prayer of Dependence
The Lord’s Prayer: Path to Inner Peace
Part 4 of 8
Lance Witt
July 13-14, 2002
“Give us today our daily bread.” Matt. 6:11 (NIV)
1. Seek God as the ________________
The promise of a __________________
“If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask Him.” Matthew 7:11 (NLT)
“Since God did not spare even His own Son but gave Him up for us all, won't God, who gave us Christ, also give us everything else?” Romans 8:32 (NLT)
We are given to anxiousness, but God is _________________________.
Application
- Make a deliberate choice to pray before your meals this week.
- Make a list of God’s gifts to your family and have a time of grateful prayer.
- Declare your ___________________
The promise is ____________________
God wants us to ask daily, not so he can hear us beg, but because he knows we have ________________.
“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.” Matthew 6:34 (Msg)
God allows for long range planning but not long range _____________.
Application
- Write out your own Declaration of Daily Dependence
- Memorize Matthew 6:34 this week
3. Rely on God’s _____________
The promise of _________________
“God will supply all that you ever need from His glorious resources in Christ Jesus.”
Phil. 4:19 (Ph)
“… give me neither poverty nor riches! Give me just enough to satisfy my needs.”
Proverbs 30:8 (NLT)
The problem with contentment is that I always want ________________. Matt Atkins
Application
- Sit down with your children and talk about the difference between a need and a greed.
- Put Philippians 4:6 (NLT) into practice. “Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.”
! The Prayer of Dependence
The Lord’s Prayer: Path to Inner Peace
Part 4 of 8
Lance Witt
July 13-14, 2002
Earlier this year President Bush recommended that congress set aside 38 billion dollars for a new department called Homeland Security. You and I are living in a time when more and more money and technology and personnel and energy are being dedicated to try to make this place a more secure land in which to live.
But even if we are beginning to win the war on terrorism we are losing the war of terror in people’s hearts. And even though there are more security guards searching bodies for bombs and weapons there are more people in our country right now searching for internal peace and calm than ever before. And even though we’ve established another government department called Homeland Security for many people there is less internal security in our homeland than ever before.
Statistics reveal that this is so. In fact one out of every eight Americans between the ages of 18 and 54 suffer from some kind of anxiety disorder. That totals about nineteen million people. In fact anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in America even surpassing depression. And among senior adults 65 years of age and up, the number one health issue is anxiety.
To many people in our world the path to inner peace, the path to tranquillity of soul seems illusive. And no amount of mental detectors or X-ray machines or bomb sniffing dogs or body searches or armed guards seem to be able to bring peace in the spirit.
So the question is how do we find it? If we can’t throw enough personnel at it, if we can’t hire enough guards to achieve it, where does peace in our heart and in our soul come from?
The last few days I started reading the story of Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry the two young ladies who were captured in Afghanistan by the Taliban. In reading the story I found out that they were each captured independent of each other. As Heather talks in the book, she talks about being in this taxi and being surrounded and pushed into this taxi by taliban guards. And as they wound their way through the streets they went to a government building. As they pulled up the guard dragged her out of the car into this government building where she would be questioned. To her dismay she saw Dayna sitting in a little white car in front of the taxi. As the guards dragged her by the car she said somehow I had the strength and the peace to just look down through the window and say to Dayna, “It’s ok. God is with us.” How do you get that kind of peace in that situation?
If you’re new to Saddleback or perhaps you’re here just checking out this thing called Christianity I want to say to you that this is a struggle for all of us. There’s not a person in the room today who doesn’t at one time or the other face the struggle of anxiety. Being a follower of Jesus does not exempt you from life’s problems. That’s why this series is so important. The series that we’re in on the path to inner peace. What we’ve been doing is we’ve been going week by week through the model prayer of Jesus. As Christians that’s why prayer is so vital to us because we do understand and recognize that we do have struggles and we can’t overcome them simply by determination or sheer willpower. The very essence of prayer is the recognition that I need somebody outside of myself, I need somebody with a power that I don’t have to help me navigate life successfully.
That’s why these weeks are so important as we’ve been unpacking phrase by phrase the model prayer of Jesus.
If you were to go to the New Testament you would find a story where the disciples one day are watching Jesus pray. As they watch Him, as they listen to Him connect with His Father when Jesus gets up after He finishes praying, the disciples turn to Him and in Luke 11:1 they say “Lord, teach us to pray.” Lord, could You teach us how to do that? Could You teach us how to connect with the Father and to pray with power? We want to know how to do that.
Jesus’ response to the disciples on that day was what we now know as the Lord’s prayer or the model prayer. The last three weeks we’ve been into this. If you’ve been here you understand that the first part of the model prayer focuses on God. But now at this point in the prayer we make a transition. And the focus is now on us. But the order is important. Here’s why.
The starting place in prayer is always the acknowledgment of who God is. It is always the worship of who God is. That’s why the model prayer begins, “Our Father, who art in heaven, Your name be holy.” Because when I understand that He is all powerful and when I understand who He is then I’m prepared to pray for my needs. Because if there’s no powerful God in heaven who rules the world and if I don’t have a loving Father who is willing to meet my needs then why pray?
So we start with focus on God and then in this phrase that we’re going to talk about this morning Jesus encourages us to pray something like this “Give us today our daily bread.” In a day when our refrigerators are full and our pantry’s are stocked and some of you still have leftovers from Y2K why would we need to pray for more daily bread? Living in a generation where a lot of us need to stop eating so much bread why would we pray for more daily bread?
Here’s why. Because the issue is not really bread. In fact, in these six words Jesus gives us really three life lessons that will help us understand how to achieve inner peace in our lives.
1. The first thing we learn is to seek God as the answer to our needs.
I start to worry every time I look at someone else other than God, so the path to inner peace begins by seeking God as the answer to my needs. That means that there is a promise of a provider. The very first lesson we learn in this phrase of the model prayer is that you and I are to go to God in prayer to ask Him to meet our needs. Picture it like this.
It is like your kids coming to you as a parent asking you to meet their needs. One chapter later in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus would say this out of Matthew 7 “You parents if your children ask for a loaf of bread do you give them a stone instead? Of course not. Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Absolutely not. If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask Him.”
I understand that verse because I’m a dad. I have two kids. And I understand that as a father, God has built into me a desire and a fulfillment that comes in meeting the needs of my children. I care what their needs are. I’m interested in their needs. And I will do everything that I can and everything within my ability to meet their needs. That doesn’t mean I fulfill their every request. That doesn’t mean that they get everything they want. But what it does mean that part of what it means for me to be a father to my kids is I am absolutely committed to meeting their needs.
If that’s true of me an imperfect Father with incomplete knowledge and limited resources how much more true is it of our heavenly Father who is all powerful?
Notice the last three words in verse 11. He says our heaven Father gives good gifts to those who ask Him. The whole point of this phrase in the model prayer is we are to ask God to meet the needs in our lives.
As a pastor for more than 20 years I’ve observed some barriers that people have when it comes to praying and asking God to meet their needs.
One of those barriers is that some of us deep down are not really convinced that God could love us like that. You may have truly given your life to Christ. You may be truly forgiven of your sins. You may be on your way to heaven but you still live in bondage to your past and with an overwhelming sense of guilt and condemnation. But the good news of the Bible is in the book of Romans God says to us to those who are in Christ Jesus there’s no condemnation. And one of the things that Satan will use in our life to keep us anxious and worried and defeated is he keeps playing tapes of our past. So hundreds of people who will be in these services this weekend the single greatest first step that you can take for your spiritual growth is to actually believe that God loves you and He cares about your needs, that He’s interested in your life and that He is your Father and He delights in you.
Another barrier that some of us have is actually our view of God. Our view of God is that God is kind of distant and occupied with the bigger things in life and He doesn’t really care about the details of my life. Or maybe even more seriously. Some of us deep down are not really convinced that prayer really matters or changes things. We’re kind of self sufficient so we try to solve every one of life’s problems on our own and if it gets really bad enough and we can’t figure it out and things are desperate enough we turn to God in prayer. Rather than prayer being our first response, it’s our last resort.
But listen to these words out of the book of Romans 8, verse 32 where Paul says, “Since God did not spare even His own Son but gave Him up for us all won’t God who gave us Christ also give us everything else.”
Here’s an honest question. Are you willing to take God at His word? God says to you this morning, If I would send My only Son Jesus to planet earth and allow Him to be crucified on a cross and hang there for six hours and to pay the price so that you can be in My family. God says, Don’t you think that I’ll take care of your needs?
The question is do we really believe that. I think a lot of the anxiety we have in our lives comes the fact that we don’t really believe that.
Again, let me use my own kids as an example. I promise you tonight when my two kids go to bed they are not worried about whether or not tomorrow there’s going to be food in the refrigerator. They’re not worried about tomorrow morning when they wake up the lights are going to come on or whether or not they’re going to be able to take a hot shower or whether or not there will be clothes in their closet. Because they know us. They know their mother and they know me and they know that every day of their lives we have done the best we can to make sure that their needs are met and they have confidence in us because now with my son we have nineteen years of track record and with my daughter sixteen years track record taking care of their needs.
I want to say to you that the closer you get to Christ, the more you get to know Him, the more intimate your relationship is with Him, the greater your confidence will be that as a loving Father He’ll meet your needs. And the greater He will build track record with you that will show that He is always faithful.
Before we move on I want us to consider a couple very simple applications that any of us could do this week.
1. Make a deliberate choice to pray before your meals this week. Maybe you’re not in the habit of doing that but it’s a great way a couple of times a day (or maybe for some of us five or six times a day depending on how often you eat) to just stop for just moment and say, “God, thanks. I want to stop for just a moment and recognize that You’re the source of this and that even this meal is a gift from You.” Some of you are not in the habit of doing this. Let me encourage you to do it. It’s a great thing to just authentically say to God, Thanks. To be reminded that He is the one who supplies our need.
Some of us are in the habit of praying. But have you found that when you set down at mealtime you pray the same words every time and it really doesn’t mean much? It’s sort of your obligation and you just do it. I want to encourage you to find a way to do it differently. To genuinely take time to reflect. Whether you’re in a restaurant, with some friends, with your family, at home, take some time to say thanks. It doesn’t have to be big or showy or long or the right words. Just stop long enough to say thanks.
We are given to anxiousness but God is anxious to give. He delights in doing that. Stop to thank Him because He is faithful.
One other possible application. Set down with your family this weekend and just have a talk about God’s gracious provision in your life. You might even set down and make a list with your kids or with your spouse and say, “It’s good for us to be reminded that everything we have is a gift from God. The meal that we just ate, the clothes we wear, the car we drive, the relationships we have, the health we enjoy, the home we live in. It’s all a gift from God.” Then they just close with a little bit of grateful prayer. So the very first step in this phrase is simply to recognize that God is the one who supplies our needs.
2. Declare your daily dependence.
Again, one of the things that creates anxiety and worry in my life is when I start to depend on anything else for my needs other than Christ. Declare your daily dependence. Understand this: the promise here is provisional. It’s not a blank check. In fact God really wants you to understand this next point. The reason I know is two times in the space of six words God reminds us that this prayer is day by day. He says, “Give us today our daily bread.”
The verse in Matthew 6, circle the word “daily”. It’s the only time in the entire Bible that this particular Greek word is used. In fact, this particular word baffled scholars and translators for an umber of years because they couldn’t find any record of it in any of the ancient manuscripts, they couldn’t find it anywhere in classical secular Greek literature. It was nowhere to be found. Until, in the 1940s when they discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls where they discovered hundreds of fragments of the Bible, they also discovered many secular writings. And in those fragments was this word. And what they discovered was this word was a word for a daily shopping list of that which was perishable and would only be good for today. So what He is showing is we are praying give us our daily rations. Not enough for tomorrow, not enough for next week. But one day at a time.
Again, I think that’s hard for us to connect with in our world. Because we only have today’s food and tomorrow’s food and next week’s food setting in our freezer.
As I began to prepare for this message I began to think about how much this has changed even in the last ten years. We used to go in the grocery store, pick up the basket, walk up and down the aisles, pick up our individual items, put them in the basket, check out, put them in the trunk, go home and put them in our cupboard. But then came Costco. It’s not the size of grocery store. It’s the size of a small town. Employees there don’t use box cutters. They drive forklifts. You pick up a basket the size of a small Volkswagen. And if you push it up and down the aisles you don’t pick up individual items. You pick up cases of food. Then you go to the checkout stand which will then require you to make a payment the size of a good car payment in order to just get out of there. Then you haul it home and think, “Where are we going to put this stuff?”
Do we really need to buy toilet paper 48 rolls at a time? The other day we were going to be having another wave of company come to stay at our house for a few days so my wife went to Costco and bought another 48 rolls. When she brought it home I took it out to the garage and I counted. We had almost a hundred rolls of toilet paper in our house. So if there’s ever a diarrhea epidemic you may be in trouble but my family is set! (I think in 20 years of preaching that’s the first time I said the word “diarrhea” in a sermon. It wasn’t until I started hanging around Doug Fields that I learned those kind of words.)
There really is a point to this. In 21st century Orange County daily bread is not much of a felt need. It still comes from God and it can be taken away and we shouldn’t take it for granted but there are other needs that we have that are more day to day.
For some of you here this weekend you have an emotional need that really is a day to day issue of whether or not you’re going to trust God. Some of you are in a marriage relationship and for you right now the issue is not whether you will have food tomorrow. The issue is can I trust God to keep my marriage together today. For some it’s an issue of finances or it could be an addiction. It’s probably not food that’s the day to day issue in your life. But our need for God is still just as great.
It reminds me of a prayer I read a while back. “Dear Lord, so far today I’m doing all right. I’ve not gossiped, lost my temper, been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish or self indulgent. I’ve not lied, complained, cursed, or eaten any chocolate. I’ve not given into temptation and used my credit card once today. But I’ll be getting out of bed in a minute and I think I’m going to need Your help.”
There are issues in your life where day to day you have to trust God. This is very important point: God wants you to ask daily not so He can hear you beg but because we have short memories. God wants us to be reminded that He is the one who supplies our needs. In the Old Testament, when the people of Israel were wandering through the wilderness, on their way to the land that was promised to them by God, God fed them every single day – two to three million people strong – for forty years with something that the Bible calls manna. The word “manna” is a Hebrew word and literally translated it means “What is it?” So everyday, they would get up out of bed, walk outside and on the ground they would gather up What is it? to eat every day. Every day manna, every lunch – manna, very evening – manna.
A song several years ago about what it must have been like for the Israelites to eat manna every day, how they must have got tired of it and tried to fix it. Like they probably had manna burgers or manicotti or manna bread.
They got tired of it but every day – day in, day out like clockwork God was faithful to provide. God did it that way so that every 24 hours they would have to trust God to meet their needs. What is your manna? What is it that every 24 hours it drives you to say “God, I trust You. I declare my dependence on You.”
The first life lesson we learn is I’m to seek God as the one who answers the needs of my life. Then we daily declare our dependence upon Him. Then finally
3. We rely on God’s resources.
Worry and anxiety will grip my life when I began to rely on anything other than God. This is the promise of provision. It’s a promise of God’s provision. In fact, look at the verse, Philippians 4:19 “God will supply all that you ever need from His glorious resources in Christ Jesus.” Circle “glorious resources”. God will meet your needs. He has an abundant supply of resources.
This is a little bit different from where we started because we started talking about God being interested in us, that God is a loving Father who is interested in my life, who cares about the needs in my life. But this point is helping us understand that we’re taking it a step further. That not only does God care and not only is He willing but He has the wherewithall, He has the resources, He has the wealth. He has the funds, the money to meet my every need.
Philippians 4:19 notice that Paul says God will supply all that you ever need. God has promised to provide everything that I need, not everything that I desire. In fact, no loving parent ever gives his child everything he desires. It’s not in their best interest. It wouldn’t be healthy for them. You as a parent know better than they do what they need.
And the same is true of God. Sometimes as a loving parent He will say no. Sometimes as a loving parent He won’t give us everything we ask. But He will give us what we need.
Listen to these words from a prayer at the end of Proverbs in chapter 30. “Give me neither poverty nor riches. Give me just enough to satisfy my needs.” The verse goes on to say, “For if I grow rich I may deny You and say ‘Who is the Lord?’ And if I’m poor I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name.” The writer of this prayer was saying, I understand myself. Lord, I know if I have too much my temptation is to not trust You. I want it to be enough in my life just to be content that You meet my need.”
Can you be content with that? It’s hard in the culture in which we live and the county in which we live to be content with that. I love what Matt Atkins says, “The problem with contentment is that I always want more of it.” That’s a great statement. We are a want more generation.
This week I read the story of a couple who were getting a divorce. They were both in their 70s. They were quite wealthy. The man was a CEO of a large communications company and his net worth was five billion dollars. He was saying I’m in my 70s, I don’t want to disrupt my business, I don’t want our name dragged through the papers, I don’t want to go through all the legal hassles so he thought he would just try to make generous gesture to his wife so he said to her, “I’ll just give you billion dollars to make you go away.” She flatly refused. She said “I won’t settle for anything less that 2.5 billion.” What can you buy for 2.5 billion that you can’t buy for a billion? Maybe an aircraft carrier. It just verifies the words of Proverbs 27:20 “People will never stop dying and being destroyed and they will never stop wanting more than they have.”
In many ways this simple phrase in the modal prayer of Jesus is the antidote for materialism. It’s the cure for the anxiety of trying to keep up with everybody else around you. It’s the medicine I need to keep me from lusting after the things of this world that really aren’t about my needs. They’re really just about my wants.
This whole prayer is about us saying to God, I recognize You as the source of providing for my needs. And I’m here to declare my dependence upon You because You are a loving Father and You’ll give me what I need today and You’ll meet my need. But Lord help me to be content with what You give me. Help me to be content that You meet my needs.
Listen to this timeless advise again from the Bible in 1 Timothy 6. Paul says “A devout life really does bring wealth but it’s the rich simplicity of being yourself before God. We entered the world penniless and we will leave it penniless if we have bread on the table and shoes on our feet that’s enough.”
Could you take a moment to do just a little self inventory. Is that enough? He says if you can say in this life I know God. I am His child. I have a relationship with Him and I’ve got shoes on my feet and bread on my table and a roof over my head you are rich. And He says that is enough.
Again let me give you a couple simple applications. If you are a parent maybe you would consider just setting down with your kids who live in such a prosperous part of the world and just talk with them about the difference between a need and a greed. About what really is a need and what isn’t.
Then maybe put Philippians 4:6 into practice, “Don’t worry about anything. [That’s a choice.] Instead pray about everything. Just through the day have an ongoing conversation with God about the needs that you face in your life. Tell God what you need. And, by the way, don’t forget to thank Him for all He has done.”
As we close I want to make one thing clear. Even though most of the people in this room this morning could say the Lord’s prayer word for word without any notes, that prayer is not meant for everyone. In fact, some of us who are here this weekend your greatest need in life is not to pray for daily bread. Your greatest need is to meet the bread of life. If you’ve never personally crossed the line of faith and made a commitment to Jesus Christ, your greatest need today is not your physical need. And far more exciting and far more satisfying than having God answer your prayers and meet the daily needs of your life is having God meet the deepest need of your life which is a spiritual need. The Bible says your body, your life on this earth will be short. In fact the Bible describes it like this “Life is like a vapor. It is here for a moment and then it is gone but your spirit will live eternally. You will live forever. And Jesus says, ‘I am the bread of life. No one who comes to Me will ever be hungry again and those who believe in Me will never thirst.’”
The very first step in dealing with anxiety, the very first step to inner peace in your life is to enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. If you’ve never done that would you be willing to do that today? Just simply say, “God, I need You. And I believe that Jesus died for my sins and today I want to ask Him to come into my life, take me just like I am.” The Bible says that when you do that – and the Bible calls that being born again – God welcomes you into His family and you become a child of God forever and nothing can ever change that.
Now you can begin to pray the model prayer because the very first words of the model prayer are “Our Father.” You can’t honestly begin to call God your father until first you have entered into a personal relationship with Him. If you’ve never done that I want to ask you today to do that. I’m going to lead us in a prayer. You don’t have to pray out loud. You don’t have to say anything out loud. But in your heart and mind if you’ll pray a simple prayer along with me you can make that commitment today.
Prayer:
Dear Lord, thank You that You are the source of all life. And thank You that You love me and You sent Your Son Jesus to die for me. And right now I accept Your gift of salvation. I ask for Your forgiveness of my sins and I ask You to come into my life and to give me eternal life. Thank You that You keep Your promises and that You now live in my life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.