VBS Sunday - Daily Bread

“When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. “Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

One Day at a Time

Two weeks ago, at Annual Conference, we celebrated God’s goodness with an evening on the Riverfront in Owensboro. They had a park built up along the river that we could walk. There were some musicians out playing bluegrass music in a pavilion. The city put in a bunch of porch swings to sit in and enjoy the beautiful summer evening. To top it off, rather than sending us to one of the many restaurants in town for dinner, they brought dinner to us, in the form of food trucks. Yes, they had barbeque, fried chicken, tacos, icees for everyone that evening. We had to stand or sit in line for a bit to get our food, but it was good when we got it.

I sometimes struggle when it comes to making dinner decisions. I’m not very picky when it comes to food, so going to places with big menus and lots of options make it difficult for me to decide. Does anyone else find it hard to decide what you want to eat?

That’s one of the good things about food trucks. Most of them only serve a handful of things. They might just do burgers and hot dogs. Maybe they specialize in french fries. Or, they might just do one thing, like the truck that made icees. They may have a daily special that they make until they run out, and then they are done. It makes it easier for me to order from them.

Something else that is awesome about running a food truck instead of a restaurant is that you can change up what you do from day to day. One day, your food truck could make burgers and hot dogs. If you sold all your food after the first day, you could come back the next day and change it up and just do tacos on day two. If everyone bought all your tacos, you could come back the third day and just serve icees all day long... all from the same truck. All you would need to do is change your sign out front to a new daily special.

Following Jesus, and living life with God is kind of like having a food truck near you every day. Some things are the same every day, like needing food and drink. The way those things look though could change from day to day. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit keeps us focused and following Jesus, no matter where we are or how our day is going.

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Praise

One of the things that we need to do every day is to praise God. We had several songs this morning that helped us to praise God. Sometimes we do that by singing with a lot of expression. Sometimes we clap our hands together to show God how we feel about all the ways He loves us. I have a friend who has decided that every day is a gift and he wants to celebrate it by taking a picture of the sunset every day with his phone and sharing it with friends. I wonder if it is a little bit like standing back and clapping for God and saying, “Way to go God! You are awesome! You made another beautiful day and I’m thankful I got to see it.”

How do you give God praise?

Jesus taught His disciples to spend time with God every day. He said, when you do, don’t make it all about you. Don’t use God as a way to show off how good you are. Give that time and energy to tell God how good He is. It shouldn’t matter if people notice you or not.

He taught his disciples to begin that time letting God know what God meant to them. Jesus called God His Heavenly Father, the one who leads, guides, teaches, and provides for us everything we need. Jesus taught that God is holy and perfect. God loves us better than anyone we will ever meet. In fact, Jesus showed us that God loves us so well, that He wanted God to be the Heavenly Father for everyone. Can you imagine that? If everyone in the world was part of God’s family together, we would all be brothers and sisters, and we would all be trusting God to take care of us every day. Jesus showed us that God wants everyone to follow Him and be part of His family.

There are so many people in the world. It might seem hard to imagine us all following Jesus together. We might have some challenges holding us back from that.

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Prayer

One of the ways we draw closer to God and overcome some of those challenges is through prayer. Praising God is a part of prayer. When we pray we can start by telling God how good He is to us and thanking Him for some of the things we really appreciate. We also have things we need each day as well, and we learned a lot of stories this month about how God provided for people in the Bible.

Moses and the Israelites needed food when they were in the wilderness and didn’t have any stores or homes with food in them. So Moses prayed to God and God provided manna and quail for them to eat every day. Manna was their daily bread, and it came straight from heaven every night. They could pick it up on the ground each morning. They couldn’t save it for later and if they tried to keep it too long it would grow moldy and gross. Just like a food truck, God provided for their needs one day at a time.

The story of Daniel tells us about a group of friends who were captured by another country. They were so well behaved though that the king decided He liked them and offered to feed them from his very own kitchen - like the best restaurant in the whole country. Daniel and his friends were not sure that God wanted them to eat all that food though, so they just asked if they could have a plate of vegetables sent to them instead. They were not interested in filling their bellies with all kinds of junk food. They just wanted to keep their eating simple and focus on following God.

It was a good thing too, because eventually the king stopped liking them and had them put in some very bad situations - thrown into a fiery furnace and into a den of lions. In those moments, they weren’t worried about what to order for dinner. They were praying they would not become dinner themselves. It was then that they were really praying to God for help, and He was faithful and delivered them from their enemies.

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Forgiveness

Life would be much easier if we didn’t have enemies, wouldn’t it?

I remember summertime in the town I grew up in. There were festivals at the park and sometimes food trucks would show up. People would have music playing and there would be games and yard sales all around. We spent almost every day playing at the park, and lots of other kids were there with us since school was out. It was a lot of fun.

I noticed that we could all play together for 1 hour with no problems. Sometimes we could all get along for even 2 hours. However, almost without fail, if we tried to play in the park for 3 hours or more, something would happen that would ruin the fun. Sometimes it was an accident. Someone would trip and fall and twist their ankle. The tears would fall and we would have to stop and get help from a parent. Other times it was not an accident. People got pushed playing basketball or tag and knees might get scraped and we would have to stop and find a Band-Aid somewhere.

The worst times were not even about physical injuries though. Sometimes we got tired and hot and then just started being mean to one another. Calling names or making fun of each other, hurting each other’s feelings... when it was all over we sometimes felt like we didn’t want to be friends anymore. We would stomp all the way home, telling the others we would never come back.

That would be a sad end of a story. As an adult, I see that same story played out over and over again. Jesus gave us a way to start the story over again though with something called forgiveness.

Forgiveness is when two or more people say they are sorry and that they want to try again and do better. It means we care more about the person than we care about what they did to us, and it might be the most Christian thing we can ever do. Jesus led the way by asking God to forgive us for leaving Him out of our lives sometimes, or for sinning and doing things that go against what God wants for us. We sin against each other when we do or say things that hurt others. So we start forgiveness by asking God and others to forgive us for the things we have done wrong, and we fill our lives with forgiveness when we forgive other people who have hurt us as well. Jesus taught that we won’t experience forgiveness ourselves if we refuse to forgive others. We need both.

When we ask God to forgive us and forgive others, we re-enter our relationship with God... we become family again.

As we grow to trust that God will take care of our needs each day since we are part of His family, we will grow closer to God and to each other.

Finally, as we grow in receiving God’s love, we can give back by giving God praise. We can do that by telling God how good He is, singing to Him, or even just sitting back and clapping our hands at the beautiful sunset each day that God makes for us.

Every day is a gift, and gifts from God are meant to be shared. One of the best ways we give God praise and thanks is by sharing the things He gives us with everyone around us. God didn’t hold back his love for us when He sent Jesus to us, to live and die for us. We should not hold back our love from God or each other as we pray each day for our daily bread that helps us bring our world into His family.

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