Daily Bread and a Full Refrigerator
What Does It Mean When We Pray, "Give Us Today Our Daily Bread."?
Dan Franklin
Oct 1, 2023 42m
As we continue our series about the Lord's Prayer, we will examine the question, "What does it mean when we pray, give us today our daily bread?". By looking at three ways that God call us to approach him in prayer when we are praying for our needs, we will find that we are to turn to him daily and trust he will provide. Video recorded at Upland, California.
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give us today our daily bread prayer daily bread the lord's prayer confidence god provides contentment consistently prayTranscriptionmessageRegarding Grammar:
This is a transcription of the sermon. People speak differently than they write, and there are common colloquialisms in this transcript that sound good when spoken, and look like bad grammar when written.
This is a transcription of the sermon. People speak differently than they write, and there are common colloquialisms in this transcript that sound good when spoken, and look like bad grammar when written.
Intro: [00:00:00] Hey there. Thanks so much for checking out one of our messages here at Life Bible Fellowship Church. And we know there are two great ways you can connect with us. You can visit our website at LBF.church to learn more about all of our ministries and what we believe. And also, you can subscribe to us on YouTube to make sure that you don't miss one of our future videos.
Andy Watson: [00:00:19] We are going to do our scripture reading this morning. We're going to read the Lord's Prayer in unison. So let's go ahead and start that. "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11Give us today our daily bread. 12And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one." You can be seated.
Ryan: [00:01:02] A couple of years ago, I was trying to do things out of maybe my own skill, my own abilities, and I just found myself just frustrated, and not able to process things correctly. And I think what I've realized is, is that you can't do it all on your own. You have to go to God. You have to give it to God. You have to constantly be seeking him in all you do, and to start your day. You need to get fed in the beginning of that day to get us through, just like real food. And I've been doing that a lot more lately, and I've found it as a huge difference, just inside my feeling I can tell he's there with me and that. You know, it doesn't mean things have been perfect at all, but it's given me that comfort that he's there with me, and feeding me, and giving me what I need to get through the day.
Ryan: [00:02:06] Give us this day our daily bread, to me, means spending time in the beginning of the day. At the beginning of the day, diving into a devotional, and really spending time after that praying, praying in-depth, and asking him to be with me in all that I do. It's asking him to be with me in the simple things, in the hard things, and in the everyday moments. I think to me, a long time ago he was more of like a, God was more of like a genie, just stuff you asked for. But now it's more of that connectedness, that union together with him, it's completed my life to where it's a relationship, it's a lifeline.
Dan Franklin: [00:03:06] Well, during this season of time, we're looking to lean in as a church family to the subject of prayer. And it's not something that's new to us, it's something that we've practiced, we've talked about, we've preached about, but we've just really felt like God is leading us to lean into this. But one of the reasons is simply because all of us know we're supposed to pray, and none of us feel like we're good at it. None of us feel like we're where we're supposed to be, and we're right, we're not where we're supposed to be, but this is such a key way that we connect our hearts with God. We've been saying throughout this series, we pray to experience union with God. And so we're going through this series, we're saying the Lord's Prayer each week of the series as we move through it line by line. We've also been doing all sorts of things to look to point our attention toward God in prayer.
Dan Franklin: [00:04:00] In fact, one of the things that we did last month is we sent out a survey that about 800 of you took just because those of us who are leaders here wanted to get a better sense of what's really going on in people's prayer lives and where are we at, and where are the roadblocks, and where are things going well, and where are things not going well. And there was a statement that showed up over and over again in those prayer surveys that many of you took, and it's also been, I would say, the most frequent comment that I've heard from just members of our church family, as we've talked during this season of time that we're focused on prayer. And the comment is this, I want my prayer life to be more than just asking God for stuff. You even heard Ryan kind of talk about that in the video, about the whole idea that he said, in the past, I kind of viewed God as a genie. I'm just going to him, I like to think of going to him sort of with my Amazon wish list, like, here's all the things I want. And our relationship is I ask you for stuff, and sometimes you say yes and sometimes you say no, and I try to be satisfied with that. Many of us are saying, and it's a good thing to say, we're saying, I want my prayer life to be more than just asking God for stuff because we pray to experience union with him.
Dan Franklin: [00:05:12] And so the first week when we went through our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, we got to say that part of prayer is us simply reflecting on who it is that we're speaking to. That he's as close as a Father, and he's as great as our Father in heaven, who is holy and who can do all things.
Dan Franklin: [00:05:35] And then last week we talked about how part of prayer is us yielding our agenda to God's agenda. Your kingdom come, your will be done. But at the end of the day, so, prayer is more than just asking God for stuff. But do you know what prayer frequently involves? Asking God for stuff. This is a natural part of prayer, in fact, this is a frequent part of the Lord's Prayer. This prayer that Jesus gave us not as a mantra, but as a model, as a way that we can pray, pray like this, there are a lot of requests in this prayer, there's a lot of asking God for stuff. So we end up in this place where we know prayer is supposed to be more than that, but we also know that that's going to be a part of our prayers, so we want to do that well. How can we do this well? How can we do this the right way? Because part of our prayers are going to be asking God for stuff.
Dan Franklin: [00:06:31] And so that's the question that's going to be before us today. How do we approach God when we're praying for our needs? And to answer that question, we're going to focus on the third line of the Lord's Prayer, "Give us today our daily bread." In some ways, even the stuff that came before us was requests, we're asking God to hallow his name, we're asking God to make his kingdom come and his will be done, but the last three beats of the Lord's Prayer really focus in on requests. Next week, we'll talk about the request for forgiveness. The last week we'll talk about the prayer for deliverance. Here we talk about the simple prayer, six words in the NIV, "Give us today our daily bread." And in these six words what we're going to see, it's going to be simple, but we're going to see three ways that God is calling us to approach him in prayer when we're praying about our needs.
Dan Franklin: [00:07:32] So we'll keep this prayer up there pretty much the whole time, "Give us today our daily bread." But the first way that we're going to see in this prayer that we approach God when we have needs, is that we pray with confidence. I've just highlighted those first two words, give us. We're coming to God and we're saying, God, give us. And in some ways, even saying it, it sounds like, is this a request or is this a demand? It almost sounds like a little kid just saying, give me. God, give us. It's not a demand, the whole tone of the Lord's Prayer is very respectful toward God. It's not a demand, but there is a level of boldness of coming to God, or coming to anyone and saying, give me something. We, most of us, don't do this with just anyone. Like, say you're out and about and you want a stick of gum, most of us would not even go up to a stranger and ask for a stick of gum. And it's not because we think they don't have one, and it's not because we think, well if they give one to me, that's going to really put them in the poor house to spare a stick of gum. We just wouldn't do it, because what we would expect is if we went up to somebody we didn't know and asked for a stick of gum, that they would look at us and be like, who are you? Like, why are you even talking to me? We don't know each other, and you're not only talking to me, you're asking me to do something for you. We would not have the confidence to go up and ask them, even for something simple. But you would ask your mom for a stick of gum, and I bet she'd have one. You'd ask your spouse, you'd ask your friends, and you wouldn't have any problem with that. In fact, some of you, when you're out with friends eating, you don't have any problem asking for some of their fries, even though you said you didn't want any. Asking for some of their dessert, even though you said you weren't hungry anymore. We do this with people we know and with people who we know care about us, we have a level of confidence that we're going to be received. And the confidence is not in ourselves, the confidence is in our relationship, that we know this is the kind of person who will receive me and who will be disposed to giving me things that I ask for.
Dan Franklin: [00:09:51] This is the kind of confidence that leads us to go to God and say, give us. It's the kind of confidence that the author of Hebrews is talking about in Hebrews chapter 4 verse 16, when he says, "Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence." We can do better than that, with? Confidence. Yeah, there we go, with confidence, with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in our time of need. And by the way, we're going to get more into this later, but even this right here, this verse is sort of a signal that our greatest needs are not physical, because we're going to the throne of grace to find mercy and grace to help us in our time of need. But he says, go to the throne with confidence, go to God as if you belong there, as if it's totally natural that you are talking to the God of the universe about what you need. Go with confidence, and that confidence is not based on the fact that you have done good things, that confidence is based on the fact that those of us who are believers in Jesus have been adopted into God's family because our sins are covered through the cross of Jesus Christ. We come as sons and daughters before our Father, and we're bringing him our requests.
Dan Franklin: [00:11:09] And so I got to pause and say this. If any of you are here and you're not a believer in Jesus, and maybe you're even a little bit excited about the prayer series, you're like, this is good, I want to figure out if there's some words I need to say or some prayers that if I say them, God's going to be more likely to listen to me. It's not about the words, and it's not about the sequence, it's about the relationship. And so the best thing, if you're saying, I want God to hear my prayers, then answer God's invitation to become his child. Place your faith in Jesus, so that you're in the family, and even if your words are clunky and not in the right order, God is going to listen to you because you're his child. We go with confidence because God is our father.
Dan Franklin: [00:11:57] And quick pause, some of you are like Dan, you might go with confidence, but I don't, like, I don't feel confident because maybe this week I screwed up in some major ways. Maybe there was just a fight that I had with my spouse, maybe there are some ways where I'm coming, and I'm supposed to come with confidence when I haven't even prayed all week up to this point. And the answer is, yes, come with confidence, because your confidence is not based on how well you perform this week, it's based on how well Jesus performed 2000 years ago, and he performed pretty well. We stand on that confidence; we pray with confidence.
Dan Franklin: [00:12:36] But there's another element to this confidence that I want to make sure we don't miss, because you can be confident in somebody's relationship with you and still not be confident when you ask them for something. So a quick illustration, let's say I have three sons, let's say they all collaborated together and said, we're going to make a request from Dad. And so the three of them come to me and they say, Dad, here's what we'd like you to do for us. We would like you to buy, for each of us, a brand-new car. We don't want to share cars, and so we think that you should do this for us. Now, this would be a weird request, especially since my youngest is 11, but they absolutely should feel confident that they can come to me with anything. I'm their dad, they're my sons, I love them, and they can come to me with any request, absolutely, they should be confident in this. If they come to me with this request, are they going to be confident that they're getting the cars? No, they're not, because even if I could do that, I probably wouldn't. But the bottom line is I can't, I do not have the resources for this. I would be like, you guys see how we're living, like, we're not in the poorhouse, but there's no way I can afford a new car for each one of you. It wouldn't be a matter that they can't have the confidence to come to me, it would be that they wouldn't have confidence I could deliver on that. Thankfully, we never have that problem with God. You can go confident, not only that, he will listen to your prayers, but confident that he can do all things.
Dan Franklin: [00:14:15] I love what the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians in Second Corinthians chapter 9 verse 8, "And God is able." God is able to do what? "To bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work." God is able. And the context of this verse, if you're familiar with Second Corinthians 9, is that Paul is telling the Corinthian believers, to give generously to your brothers and sisters in Christ that are struggling financially right now. And some of the Corinthians might have heard this and might have thought, all right, but if I give my money to them, maybe I'll end up in the poor house. If I help them get their daily bread, maybe I won't have enough for my daily bread. And Paul anticipates this, and he says, no, no, no, don't worry about it, God is able, "He's able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work." God is able. The whole world is his, and the cattle on a thousand hills. We go to God confidently because we know he can do all things, and we go to God confidently because we know that he listens to our prayers because he is our Father in heaven. When we go to God about what we need, we go confidently. That's number one.
Dan Franklin: [00:15:46] Number two is that when we go to God to pray about our needs, we go with contentment, we pray with contentment. Give us today. What? Our daily bread. And there's something that's really profound about the modesty of the request, we're not praying for pie or steak or fries, all those things are good, and those are good gifts that God gives us, we don't need to feel guilty about the fact that we eat those. But it's a modest prayer, it's, give us today our daily bread. God, give me today just what I need, and I'm going to be content with just what I need in order to survive.
Dan Franklin: [00:16:34] Paul talks about this whole idea of contentment in First Timothy chapter 6, I'll put some of the verses up here because this goes right along with this. He says first of all, "Godliness with contentment is great gain. 7For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. 8But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that." God, this is what we're asking you for, we're not asking you for luxuries, we're not asking you for all the different things that we long for in our hearts, we're asking you just to give us our daily bread. Just to give us food and clothing, just to meet our daily needs.
Dan Franklin: [00:17:14] Throughout this series, we've talked a little bit about this book by Pete Greig called How to Pray, with one of the greatest subtitles of all time, the subtitle is A Simple Guide for Normal People. The pastors all read this last year, and the elders all read this, and we felt like this was a really simple, helpful book as we look to grow in our prayer lives. And I want to read to you just a portion of what Pete Greig wrote about this section that we're talking about right now, about the Daily Bread. He says, "There is a strong sense in this phrase of asking for today's needs rather than tomorrow's wants. It's not that there's anything wrong with requesting a nicer car, deliverance from mosquitoes, or three urns of fresh milk." I don't know how he knew about the mosquitoes going on, but this has been a weird year with mosquitoes. He goes on, and he says, "It's just that we have no right to expect or insist on an unending stream of luxuries, daily bread means daily bread, Nutella is not guaranteed." I don't know why anybody would ever pray for Nutella, come on, stop pretending to be chocolate, we all know. Sorry, the last part of the quote, he says, "God invites us to ask him for the basics but has never promised to make us all millionaires." We go to God content with simply our daily bread. Which doesn't mean we can't pray for other stuff, we can, but we don't act as if God is on the hook for those other things that we happen to want. Look at the beginning of this verse again from First Timothy 6, "Godliness with contentment is great gain." The kind of person who is content and godly is experiencing greater prosperity than any prosperity preacher can promise you. "Godliness plus contentment is great gain." And the fact is, in the US we have very little context for our needs versus our wants. We have a skewed view of what is our basic needs in the United States.
Dan Franklin: [00:19:32] In fact, I'll give you an example. Just over the last couple of months at the Franklin household, we had spotty internet service. It eventually got fixed, but I mean, it was probably like two months that it was not good. It would work for a little while, and then it would stop working, and we'd have to unplug the router and plug it back in. And we were on the phone with the internet company, and there were hotspots being used and data being used, and everybody was trying to figure things out. It was frustrating dealing with that for a while, it was frustrating dealing with spotty internet service. Now, here's why I want you to think about just for a minute, some of us are old enough to remember life before the internet, I want you just to pause and think about how amazing the internet is. I mean, we're all used to it, this is amazing that you can get on the Internet. I remember the first time we sent emails, and it was like, so they're going to get it right now. Like not a letter that you put in the mail in 2 to 3 days later, at best, they're going to get it. Right now they've got this, I pressed send and it was sent, and they've got it right now, that is amazing. The fact that we can have video calls with people on the other side of the country, or even the other side of the world, man, this is stuff I saw on The Jetsons as a kid. I was like, one day, God, maybe I'll get to do that, and we're doing it all the time now, it's amazing. It's amazing that we can stream sporting events and watch TV shows and have all of this amazing content. It is amazing what we have on the Internet, it is absolutely amazing and a great blessing from God. And for two months when we had spotty, not no internet service, but spotty internet service, and all five of us were sort of like, this isn't livable. I mean, we're not savages. How are we...We need this fixed now. It was such a skewed view, and we had to keep catching ourselves on it because it's such a skewed view of what our needs are. Internet is not a need, it's a great blessing that God has given us so that we can do all these amazing things. But man in the US, there are so many things that we think are just our basic needs. Godliness and contentment is great gain.
Dan Franklin: [00:21:52] And just ask for a second, who's the person you'd rather spend time with? The kind of person that when the internet goes down, turns to everybody around them and says, hey guys, I know the internet is down right now, but can you believe we have the internet? Can you believe we can do FaceTime calls and stream stuff watch YouTube and watch sporting events that we didn't even know about all of a sudden? This is amazing, what a great thing to get. Pretty soon it'll be up, but isn't it amazing that we have the internet? Or would you rather be with the person who's throwing down their phone in fury when the internet's not working? Godliness with contentment is great gain. We pray to God for our daily bread, and we pray to him for what we need, and we're satisfied with what he gives us.
Dan Franklin: [00:22:41] There is a problem with praying for our daily bread though, and that's that most of us don't think we need God's help with our daily bread. Because in our fridge we not only have our bread for today, we have our bread for tomorrow and for Tuesday, and for some of you, like three weeks from now, we've already got this. And so we don't even think to ask God for it, we've got this one covered. Have you ever had a situation where somebody came to you and said, hey, how can I be praying for you this week? And you were just like, I got nothing. You like, you didn't have a prayer request for them. You're just like, I'm good, like, I'm healthy, I've got a good job, things are going okay, things are pretty harmonious at home, I don't really have any prayer requests. That should scare us, any time we don't have anything to ask somebody else to pray for us about, that's an indication that we think we've got it all under control. Tomorrow you could lose your job, I hope you don't, but you could. Tomorrow you could end up in a situation where you get incapacitated, and you are incapable of doing the same career that you've done your whole life. Tomorrow your home could burn down, or all of our homes could burn down. We could end up in a war, we could end up with a natural disaster, and suddenly all of us could be on subsistence living. We all could have it taken away in a moment, and we're not promised that it won't be taken away. We all live day by day at the mercy of God's provision, and any time we get to the point that we're saying, God, I've got this, we're showing a level of pride and arrogance that is not wise.
Dan Franklin: [00:24:33] In fact, I think one of the biggest ways that arrogance comes across in our lives is prayerlessness. I don't need to pray for that, I've got it myself. By the way, this is a quick cheat code, if somebody comes to you and says, I want to pray for you, how can I pray for you this week? And you got nothing, tell them to pray that you will love God more and love the world less. There's your cheat code, use that, that's what we want, that's what we need, we are desperately dependent upon God for all our needs, whether we recognize it or not. I'm just going to share that God has really provided for us as the Franklin family right now, but I still pray every day for God to provide us with what we need, and to provide us with the contentment to be satisfied with what we have.
Dan Franklin: [00:25:24] So we pray with confidence, we know God is hearing us, we know he cares about us, and we know he can do everything. We pray with contentment, being satisfied with what God has given us. And finally, third, we pray with consistency. Give us today our daily bread, which means that this is a prayer that's meant to be prayed every single day. Because today I'm praying for today's bread, and tomorrow will soon be today, and so I'll be back then to ask again for my daily bread. It's a prayer that's meant to be prayed consistently every day, give us today our daily bread.
Dan Franklin: [00:26:10] And some of you will have picked up on this much earlier in the sermon. But when Jesus talks about this prayer, give us today our daily bread, he almost certainly has in mind an Old Testament story. And it's the story of God providing manna, providing bread, for the people of Israel after they had been brought safely out of their slavery in Egypt. So I want to show you a couple of things in this passage, this is going to be some verses from Exodus 16, we're going to start in verse 14 and read through verse 20. But here's the story, it says, "When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. 15When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, “What is it?” Quick note, this is a fun Bible trivia thing, the Hebrew word manna means, what is it? And so they named the food after the fact that they didn't know what it is. So it just always makes me smile to think like, pastor, what is it? They say, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat." Moses continues speaking in verse 16, he says, "This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Everyone is to gather as much as they need. Take an omer a for each person you have in your tent.' The Israelites did as they were told, some gathered much, some gathered little." The story goes on in verse 18 it says, "And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed." So a big family got more bread to cover every member of the family, and a smaller family got a small amount of bread because that's all they needed to cover everybody else in their family. Everybody took just as much as they needed. And then something goes wrong in verses 19 and 20, verse 19, "Then Moses said to them, “No one is to keep any of it until morning.” 20However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them."
Dan Franklin: [00:28:24] By the way, a bunch of you men are part of the men's Wednesday night Bible study that's going through Exodus right now, that statement, Moses was angry with them, get used to that, that happens a lot in Exodus. Moses says, don't keep any until the morning. Tomorrow morning, there's going to be a fresh shipment of manna on the ground, that will be your daily bread for tomorrow. Today only take your bread for today, and don't save any until the morning. But presumably, some of the Israelites said, hey, maybe God won't give us bread tomorrow, so I'm going to save some of this just in case God doesn't come through. And God didn't let them play that game, he made it rotten right away, which seems kind of harsh, it's kind of a weird ending to this story. But here's what's going on, on the one hand, this story is pointing toward the amazing, miraculous reality of how God can provide. That they say we're going to starve, we need bread, and God just puts bread on the ground for all of them. It's about God's amazing ability to provide. But it's also about the fact that we need God every day, we don't just go to God and get what we need from him and not need him anymore, we need him just as much today as we did yesterday. Today he will give us our daily bread, tomorrow he will give us our daily bread.
Dan Franklin: [00:29:59] In fact, I can't say this with 100% confidence, but I'd say this with like 95% confidence, in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned, which is another strange story because they wanted to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And for most of us, it seems like that would be good for them to have the knowledge of good and evil. It seems like what's going on, though, is that they did have a path to knowing good and evil before that, and the path to knowing good and evil was that they were walking in close fellowship with God. And day by day God would say, yes, that's good, no, that's evil. And then eating from the tree was their declaration of independence, we want to know good and evil, and we don't want to have to keep coming back to God to know good and evil. The Israelites are like, we want the bread, but we don't want to keep relying on God for the bread. And some of us today, even if we're going to broaden this out to the spiritual things that we ask for, because Jesus said, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. So our spiritual needs were more desperate for those than we are even for bread. That means when we pray to God for wisdom, we are praying for our wisdom for today. God doesn't just give us a shipment of wisdom and then say, now you don't need to come back and keep asking. Tomorrow I will be back to ask for a fresh batch of wisdom for this day. Tomorrow I will be back to ask for a fresh batch of strength for this day. Because God, what I kind of want you to do is just to give me the strength now that I will never say yes to sin again. But instead, the way this is going to work is that I'm going to come to you today and ask you to give me the strength for today, and tomorrow I'll be back once again, just as desperate as ever to ask you to give me the strength for that day. Does anybody here feel like you occasionally need patience from God? You need patience because other people exist. And so you've got to go to God today and ask him for patience because you're going to see other humans, and tomorrow you're going to need a fresh batch of patience because there's going to be more humans. We need God every day. And again, some of us might be thinking, well, why doesn't he just give it to us all at once? Why doesn't he just give us the whole thing at once? It's not because God is being stingy, it's because all of these things, in a way, are a parable to the greater reality, which is that the deepest thing that we need, our most desperate need, is not stuff from God; our most desperate need is God. Jesus said, "I am the bread of life." He is the one who ultimately satisfies our needs. So the fact that God puts us in a position where we have to keep coming back to him for the same things, reminds us that we were never meant to be independent from him.
Dan Franklin: [00:33:09] On Monday nights, a whole bunch of the women in this church are studying through John 15, which is where Jesus says, "I am the vine, you are the branches. A branch can't bear fruit if it's not attached to the vine, so abide in me and you will bear much fruit, but apart from me you can do..." Some things? No, "Apart from me you can do nothing." We ultimately don't just need stuff from God, we need God, and we're coming to him day by day saying God, as much as I need bread, and as much as I need your wisdom for how to handle this tricky situation, and as much as I need your strength for this temptation that I'm going to face, God, my ultimate need is that I need you. And when we pray, we commune with God and we experience fellowship with God, and we stay attached to the vine because apart from him, we can do nothing.
Dan Franklin: [00:34:05] So this week when you pray, because remember, that Jesus started all this by saying when you pray. When you pray, go to him confidently, whether you feel like you should or not, because your confidence is not based on how you behave this week, but on Jesus' sacrifice for you. And when you pray this week, pray with contentment. Take some time to thank God for all of the amazing ways that he has provided and reaffirm to him that you will be content with the food and clothing that he provides. And when you pray this week, pray with consistency, every day, go back to God just as joyfully desperate as you were the day before, as you asked for him to care for your daily needs.
Dan Franklin: [00:34:54] And here's what I want to do now, throughout this series have been trying to not just talk about prayer, but actually practice prayer. So in a couple of minutes, I'm going to lead us through a time of personal prayer where I'm just going to prompt us three times and then allow quiet time for us all just to have silent prayer afterward. And I'll explain it in a moment, but before that, I want to invite the prayer ministry team to go ahead and come up now, come to either side of the stage. That's good, I like it, as we already talked about, come confidently, come like you belong up here.
Dan Franklin: [00:35:30] Our prayer ministry team is here for you because some of you afterward, you've got some element of provision that is weighing you down, and you need to see God come through and answer a prayer. And some of you might want to come forward afterward because you're just feeling like, you know, God hasn't been moving in my heart, and my prayer life has just sort of been like, God is my genie, and so I want to pray for God to do a new work in me. The prayer ministry team exists not simply to hear your request and pray for it, but the prayer ministry team exists because God is at work in our lives. And so if you're coming forward where you're basically saying is, God is at work right now, God is molding me and he's doing something in me, and I want somebody to partner with me in that prayer. So, just as a fair warning, if you come up to one of the prayer ministry team members afterward and you tell them what's on your heart, they're probably going to gently prod you to pray, not just to have them pray, but to pray, and they are going to partner with you in that prayer.
Dan Franklin: [00:36:34] But what we're going to do now is that I'm just going to prompt us through a personal time of praying. This prayer we've been talking about, "Give us today our daily bread." So there's going to be three things that I'll do, and I'll do them with time in between. I'll prompt us into prayer with a statement, then I'll leave some quiet time for us to pray. Then I'll do that a second time and leave us some quiet time to pray. And then I'll do it a third time, and leave us some quiet time to pray, and then I'll close the time. Fair warning for some of you, the quiet time is going to make you really uncomfortable because we're not used to silence in our culture, use it as a time to commune with God. For some of you, the quiet time is not going to be nearly enough, that's good, spend more time with the Lord afterward. But let's just bow our heads and let's use this as a time to commune with God in prayer.
Dan Franklin: [00:37:27] So, Father, we come to you now, and we start this time of prayer by just acknowledging that you are our great provider. Father, now, as we pray to you, we pray for you to meet the financial and physical needs that are on our hearts. And we pray also that you give us contentment, that we can be satisfied with what you've given us. And Father, finally we come to you now and we're all at different places with our needs, but we pray, Father, for you to give us today all that we need for today. Father, today we pray to you, the Great Provider, the Great Father, to give us today our daily bread. And Father, we pray that you give us confidence that you are hearing us right now, that you love us, and that you are able to do all things. And Father, we pray with contentment, knowing that what you give us is best because you give generously, and you withhold wisely. And Father, we pray with consistency, and we pray that you give us the faith to keep coming back to you and enjoying the fellowship of bringing all of our needs and desires and ourselves to you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Dan Franklin: [00:41:41] And I'm going to invite you just to stand, as I'm just going to read a brief passage as a benediction for us to close our service. And I want to say also for some of you, after this part, your time in the worship center isn't going to be quite done because you've got a burden or you've got a praise, or you have something going on in your life and you're going to join in with the prayer ministry team in moving on what God is doing right now, instead of hoping to follow up on it on some later time. But as our benediction for today, let me just read this great passage, Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 and 7, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Amen? Amen. God bless you the rest of this Sunday and thank you so much for being here.
Recorded in Upland, California.
Andy Watson: [00:00:19] We are going to do our scripture reading this morning. We're going to read the Lord's Prayer in unison. So let's go ahead and start that. "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11Give us today our daily bread. 12And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one." You can be seated.
Ryan: [00:01:02] A couple of years ago, I was trying to do things out of maybe my own skill, my own abilities, and I just found myself just frustrated, and not able to process things correctly. And I think what I've realized is, is that you can't do it all on your own. You have to go to God. You have to give it to God. You have to constantly be seeking him in all you do, and to start your day. You need to get fed in the beginning of that day to get us through, just like real food. And I've been doing that a lot more lately, and I've found it as a huge difference, just inside my feeling I can tell he's there with me and that. You know, it doesn't mean things have been perfect at all, but it's given me that comfort that he's there with me, and feeding me, and giving me what I need to get through the day.
Ryan: [00:02:06] Give us this day our daily bread, to me, means spending time in the beginning of the day. At the beginning of the day, diving into a devotional, and really spending time after that praying, praying in-depth, and asking him to be with me in all that I do. It's asking him to be with me in the simple things, in the hard things, and in the everyday moments. I think to me, a long time ago he was more of like a, God was more of like a genie, just stuff you asked for. But now it's more of that connectedness, that union together with him, it's completed my life to where it's a relationship, it's a lifeline.
Dan Franklin: [00:03:06] Well, during this season of time, we're looking to lean in as a church family to the subject of prayer. And it's not something that's new to us, it's something that we've practiced, we've talked about, we've preached about, but we've just really felt like God is leading us to lean into this. But one of the reasons is simply because all of us know we're supposed to pray, and none of us feel like we're good at it. None of us feel like we're where we're supposed to be, and we're right, we're not where we're supposed to be, but this is such a key way that we connect our hearts with God. We've been saying throughout this series, we pray to experience union with God. And so we're going through this series, we're saying the Lord's Prayer each week of the series as we move through it line by line. We've also been doing all sorts of things to look to point our attention toward God in prayer.
Dan Franklin: [00:04:00] In fact, one of the things that we did last month is we sent out a survey that about 800 of you took just because those of us who are leaders here wanted to get a better sense of what's really going on in people's prayer lives and where are we at, and where are the roadblocks, and where are things going well, and where are things not going well. And there was a statement that showed up over and over again in those prayer surveys that many of you took, and it's also been, I would say, the most frequent comment that I've heard from just members of our church family, as we've talked during this season of time that we're focused on prayer. And the comment is this, I want my prayer life to be more than just asking God for stuff. You even heard Ryan kind of talk about that in the video, about the whole idea that he said, in the past, I kind of viewed God as a genie. I'm just going to him, I like to think of going to him sort of with my Amazon wish list, like, here's all the things I want. And our relationship is I ask you for stuff, and sometimes you say yes and sometimes you say no, and I try to be satisfied with that. Many of us are saying, and it's a good thing to say, we're saying, I want my prayer life to be more than just asking God for stuff because we pray to experience union with him.
Dan Franklin: [00:05:12] And so the first week when we went through our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, we got to say that part of prayer is us simply reflecting on who it is that we're speaking to. That he's as close as a Father, and he's as great as our Father in heaven, who is holy and who can do all things.
Dan Franklin: [00:05:35] And then last week we talked about how part of prayer is us yielding our agenda to God's agenda. Your kingdom come, your will be done. But at the end of the day, so, prayer is more than just asking God for stuff. But do you know what prayer frequently involves? Asking God for stuff. This is a natural part of prayer, in fact, this is a frequent part of the Lord's Prayer. This prayer that Jesus gave us not as a mantra, but as a model, as a way that we can pray, pray like this, there are a lot of requests in this prayer, there's a lot of asking God for stuff. So we end up in this place where we know prayer is supposed to be more than that, but we also know that that's going to be a part of our prayers, so we want to do that well. How can we do this well? How can we do this the right way? Because part of our prayers are going to be asking God for stuff.
Dan Franklin: [00:06:31] And so that's the question that's going to be before us today. How do we approach God when we're praying for our needs? And to answer that question, we're going to focus on the third line of the Lord's Prayer, "Give us today our daily bread." In some ways, even the stuff that came before us was requests, we're asking God to hallow his name, we're asking God to make his kingdom come and his will be done, but the last three beats of the Lord's Prayer really focus in on requests. Next week, we'll talk about the request for forgiveness. The last week we'll talk about the prayer for deliverance. Here we talk about the simple prayer, six words in the NIV, "Give us today our daily bread." And in these six words what we're going to see, it's going to be simple, but we're going to see three ways that God is calling us to approach him in prayer when we're praying about our needs.
Dan Franklin: [00:07:32] So we'll keep this prayer up there pretty much the whole time, "Give us today our daily bread." But the first way that we're going to see in this prayer that we approach God when we have needs, is that we pray with confidence. I've just highlighted those first two words, give us. We're coming to God and we're saying, God, give us. And in some ways, even saying it, it sounds like, is this a request or is this a demand? It almost sounds like a little kid just saying, give me. God, give us. It's not a demand, the whole tone of the Lord's Prayer is very respectful toward God. It's not a demand, but there is a level of boldness of coming to God, or coming to anyone and saying, give me something. We, most of us, don't do this with just anyone. Like, say you're out and about and you want a stick of gum, most of us would not even go up to a stranger and ask for a stick of gum. And it's not because we think they don't have one, and it's not because we think, well if they give one to me, that's going to really put them in the poor house to spare a stick of gum. We just wouldn't do it, because what we would expect is if we went up to somebody we didn't know and asked for a stick of gum, that they would look at us and be like, who are you? Like, why are you even talking to me? We don't know each other, and you're not only talking to me, you're asking me to do something for you. We would not have the confidence to go up and ask them, even for something simple. But you would ask your mom for a stick of gum, and I bet she'd have one. You'd ask your spouse, you'd ask your friends, and you wouldn't have any problem with that. In fact, some of you, when you're out with friends eating, you don't have any problem asking for some of their fries, even though you said you didn't want any. Asking for some of their dessert, even though you said you weren't hungry anymore. We do this with people we know and with people who we know care about us, we have a level of confidence that we're going to be received. And the confidence is not in ourselves, the confidence is in our relationship, that we know this is the kind of person who will receive me and who will be disposed to giving me things that I ask for.
Dan Franklin: [00:09:51] This is the kind of confidence that leads us to go to God and say, give us. It's the kind of confidence that the author of Hebrews is talking about in Hebrews chapter 4 verse 16, when he says, "Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence." We can do better than that, with? Confidence. Yeah, there we go, with confidence, with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in our time of need. And by the way, we're going to get more into this later, but even this right here, this verse is sort of a signal that our greatest needs are not physical, because we're going to the throne of grace to find mercy and grace to help us in our time of need. But he says, go to the throne with confidence, go to God as if you belong there, as if it's totally natural that you are talking to the God of the universe about what you need. Go with confidence, and that confidence is not based on the fact that you have done good things, that confidence is based on the fact that those of us who are believers in Jesus have been adopted into God's family because our sins are covered through the cross of Jesus Christ. We come as sons and daughters before our Father, and we're bringing him our requests.
Dan Franklin: [00:11:09] And so I got to pause and say this. If any of you are here and you're not a believer in Jesus, and maybe you're even a little bit excited about the prayer series, you're like, this is good, I want to figure out if there's some words I need to say or some prayers that if I say them, God's going to be more likely to listen to me. It's not about the words, and it's not about the sequence, it's about the relationship. And so the best thing, if you're saying, I want God to hear my prayers, then answer God's invitation to become his child. Place your faith in Jesus, so that you're in the family, and even if your words are clunky and not in the right order, God is going to listen to you because you're his child. We go with confidence because God is our father.
Dan Franklin: [00:11:57] And quick pause, some of you are like Dan, you might go with confidence, but I don't, like, I don't feel confident because maybe this week I screwed up in some major ways. Maybe there was just a fight that I had with my spouse, maybe there are some ways where I'm coming, and I'm supposed to come with confidence when I haven't even prayed all week up to this point. And the answer is, yes, come with confidence, because your confidence is not based on how well you perform this week, it's based on how well Jesus performed 2000 years ago, and he performed pretty well. We stand on that confidence; we pray with confidence.
Dan Franklin: [00:12:36] But there's another element to this confidence that I want to make sure we don't miss, because you can be confident in somebody's relationship with you and still not be confident when you ask them for something. So a quick illustration, let's say I have three sons, let's say they all collaborated together and said, we're going to make a request from Dad. And so the three of them come to me and they say, Dad, here's what we'd like you to do for us. We would like you to buy, for each of us, a brand-new car. We don't want to share cars, and so we think that you should do this for us. Now, this would be a weird request, especially since my youngest is 11, but they absolutely should feel confident that they can come to me with anything. I'm their dad, they're my sons, I love them, and they can come to me with any request, absolutely, they should be confident in this. If they come to me with this request, are they going to be confident that they're getting the cars? No, they're not, because even if I could do that, I probably wouldn't. But the bottom line is I can't, I do not have the resources for this. I would be like, you guys see how we're living, like, we're not in the poorhouse, but there's no way I can afford a new car for each one of you. It wouldn't be a matter that they can't have the confidence to come to me, it would be that they wouldn't have confidence I could deliver on that. Thankfully, we never have that problem with God. You can go confident, not only that, he will listen to your prayers, but confident that he can do all things.
Dan Franklin: [00:14:15] I love what the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians in Second Corinthians chapter 9 verse 8, "And God is able." God is able to do what? "To bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work." God is able. And the context of this verse, if you're familiar with Second Corinthians 9, is that Paul is telling the Corinthian believers, to give generously to your brothers and sisters in Christ that are struggling financially right now. And some of the Corinthians might have heard this and might have thought, all right, but if I give my money to them, maybe I'll end up in the poor house. If I help them get their daily bread, maybe I won't have enough for my daily bread. And Paul anticipates this, and he says, no, no, no, don't worry about it, God is able, "He's able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work." God is able. The whole world is his, and the cattle on a thousand hills. We go to God confidently because we know he can do all things, and we go to God confidently because we know that he listens to our prayers because he is our Father in heaven. When we go to God about what we need, we go confidently. That's number one.
Dan Franklin: [00:15:46] Number two is that when we go to God to pray about our needs, we go with contentment, we pray with contentment. Give us today. What? Our daily bread. And there's something that's really profound about the modesty of the request, we're not praying for pie or steak or fries, all those things are good, and those are good gifts that God gives us, we don't need to feel guilty about the fact that we eat those. But it's a modest prayer, it's, give us today our daily bread. God, give me today just what I need, and I'm going to be content with just what I need in order to survive.
Dan Franklin: [00:16:34] Paul talks about this whole idea of contentment in First Timothy chapter 6, I'll put some of the verses up here because this goes right along with this. He says first of all, "Godliness with contentment is great gain. 7For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. 8But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that." God, this is what we're asking you for, we're not asking you for luxuries, we're not asking you for all the different things that we long for in our hearts, we're asking you just to give us our daily bread. Just to give us food and clothing, just to meet our daily needs.
Dan Franklin: [00:17:14] Throughout this series, we've talked a little bit about this book by Pete Greig called How to Pray, with one of the greatest subtitles of all time, the subtitle is A Simple Guide for Normal People. The pastors all read this last year, and the elders all read this, and we felt like this was a really simple, helpful book as we look to grow in our prayer lives. And I want to read to you just a portion of what Pete Greig wrote about this section that we're talking about right now, about the Daily Bread. He says, "There is a strong sense in this phrase of asking for today's needs rather than tomorrow's wants. It's not that there's anything wrong with requesting a nicer car, deliverance from mosquitoes, or three urns of fresh milk." I don't know how he knew about the mosquitoes going on, but this has been a weird year with mosquitoes. He goes on, and he says, "It's just that we have no right to expect or insist on an unending stream of luxuries, daily bread means daily bread, Nutella is not guaranteed." I don't know why anybody would ever pray for Nutella, come on, stop pretending to be chocolate, we all know. Sorry, the last part of the quote, he says, "God invites us to ask him for the basics but has never promised to make us all millionaires." We go to God content with simply our daily bread. Which doesn't mean we can't pray for other stuff, we can, but we don't act as if God is on the hook for those other things that we happen to want. Look at the beginning of this verse again from First Timothy 6, "Godliness with contentment is great gain." The kind of person who is content and godly is experiencing greater prosperity than any prosperity preacher can promise you. "Godliness plus contentment is great gain." And the fact is, in the US we have very little context for our needs versus our wants. We have a skewed view of what is our basic needs in the United States.
Dan Franklin: [00:19:32] In fact, I'll give you an example. Just over the last couple of months at the Franklin household, we had spotty internet service. It eventually got fixed, but I mean, it was probably like two months that it was not good. It would work for a little while, and then it would stop working, and we'd have to unplug the router and plug it back in. And we were on the phone with the internet company, and there were hotspots being used and data being used, and everybody was trying to figure things out. It was frustrating dealing with that for a while, it was frustrating dealing with spotty internet service. Now, here's why I want you to think about just for a minute, some of us are old enough to remember life before the internet, I want you just to pause and think about how amazing the internet is. I mean, we're all used to it, this is amazing that you can get on the Internet. I remember the first time we sent emails, and it was like, so they're going to get it right now. Like not a letter that you put in the mail in 2 to 3 days later, at best, they're going to get it. Right now they've got this, I pressed send and it was sent, and they've got it right now, that is amazing. The fact that we can have video calls with people on the other side of the country, or even the other side of the world, man, this is stuff I saw on The Jetsons as a kid. I was like, one day, God, maybe I'll get to do that, and we're doing it all the time now, it's amazing. It's amazing that we can stream sporting events and watch TV shows and have all of this amazing content. It is amazing what we have on the Internet, it is absolutely amazing and a great blessing from God. And for two months when we had spotty, not no internet service, but spotty internet service, and all five of us were sort of like, this isn't livable. I mean, we're not savages. How are we...We need this fixed now. It was such a skewed view, and we had to keep catching ourselves on it because it's such a skewed view of what our needs are. Internet is not a need, it's a great blessing that God has given us so that we can do all these amazing things. But man in the US, there are so many things that we think are just our basic needs. Godliness and contentment is great gain.
Dan Franklin: [00:21:52] And just ask for a second, who's the person you'd rather spend time with? The kind of person that when the internet goes down, turns to everybody around them and says, hey guys, I know the internet is down right now, but can you believe we have the internet? Can you believe we can do FaceTime calls and stream stuff watch YouTube and watch sporting events that we didn't even know about all of a sudden? This is amazing, what a great thing to get. Pretty soon it'll be up, but isn't it amazing that we have the internet? Or would you rather be with the person who's throwing down their phone in fury when the internet's not working? Godliness with contentment is great gain. We pray to God for our daily bread, and we pray to him for what we need, and we're satisfied with what he gives us.
Dan Franklin: [00:22:41] There is a problem with praying for our daily bread though, and that's that most of us don't think we need God's help with our daily bread. Because in our fridge we not only have our bread for today, we have our bread for tomorrow and for Tuesday, and for some of you, like three weeks from now, we've already got this. And so we don't even think to ask God for it, we've got this one covered. Have you ever had a situation where somebody came to you and said, hey, how can I be praying for you this week? And you were just like, I got nothing. You like, you didn't have a prayer request for them. You're just like, I'm good, like, I'm healthy, I've got a good job, things are going okay, things are pretty harmonious at home, I don't really have any prayer requests. That should scare us, any time we don't have anything to ask somebody else to pray for us about, that's an indication that we think we've got it all under control. Tomorrow you could lose your job, I hope you don't, but you could. Tomorrow you could end up in a situation where you get incapacitated, and you are incapable of doing the same career that you've done your whole life. Tomorrow your home could burn down, or all of our homes could burn down. We could end up in a war, we could end up with a natural disaster, and suddenly all of us could be on subsistence living. We all could have it taken away in a moment, and we're not promised that it won't be taken away. We all live day by day at the mercy of God's provision, and any time we get to the point that we're saying, God, I've got this, we're showing a level of pride and arrogance that is not wise.
Dan Franklin: [00:24:33] In fact, I think one of the biggest ways that arrogance comes across in our lives is prayerlessness. I don't need to pray for that, I've got it myself. By the way, this is a quick cheat code, if somebody comes to you and says, I want to pray for you, how can I pray for you this week? And you got nothing, tell them to pray that you will love God more and love the world less. There's your cheat code, use that, that's what we want, that's what we need, we are desperately dependent upon God for all our needs, whether we recognize it or not. I'm just going to share that God has really provided for us as the Franklin family right now, but I still pray every day for God to provide us with what we need, and to provide us with the contentment to be satisfied with what we have.
Dan Franklin: [00:25:24] So we pray with confidence, we know God is hearing us, we know he cares about us, and we know he can do everything. We pray with contentment, being satisfied with what God has given us. And finally, third, we pray with consistency. Give us today our daily bread, which means that this is a prayer that's meant to be prayed every single day. Because today I'm praying for today's bread, and tomorrow will soon be today, and so I'll be back then to ask again for my daily bread. It's a prayer that's meant to be prayed consistently every day, give us today our daily bread.
Dan Franklin: [00:26:10] And some of you will have picked up on this much earlier in the sermon. But when Jesus talks about this prayer, give us today our daily bread, he almost certainly has in mind an Old Testament story. And it's the story of God providing manna, providing bread, for the people of Israel after they had been brought safely out of their slavery in Egypt. So I want to show you a couple of things in this passage, this is going to be some verses from Exodus 16, we're going to start in verse 14 and read through verse 20. But here's the story, it says, "When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. 15When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, “What is it?” Quick note, this is a fun Bible trivia thing, the Hebrew word manna means, what is it? And so they named the food after the fact that they didn't know what it is. So it just always makes me smile to think like, pastor, what is it? They say, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat." Moses continues speaking in verse 16, he says, "This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Everyone is to gather as much as they need. Take an omer a for each person you have in your tent.' The Israelites did as they were told, some gathered much, some gathered little." The story goes on in verse 18 it says, "And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed." So a big family got more bread to cover every member of the family, and a smaller family got a small amount of bread because that's all they needed to cover everybody else in their family. Everybody took just as much as they needed. And then something goes wrong in verses 19 and 20, verse 19, "Then Moses said to them, “No one is to keep any of it until morning.” 20However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them."
Dan Franklin: [00:28:24] By the way, a bunch of you men are part of the men's Wednesday night Bible study that's going through Exodus right now, that statement, Moses was angry with them, get used to that, that happens a lot in Exodus. Moses says, don't keep any until the morning. Tomorrow morning, there's going to be a fresh shipment of manna on the ground, that will be your daily bread for tomorrow. Today only take your bread for today, and don't save any until the morning. But presumably, some of the Israelites said, hey, maybe God won't give us bread tomorrow, so I'm going to save some of this just in case God doesn't come through. And God didn't let them play that game, he made it rotten right away, which seems kind of harsh, it's kind of a weird ending to this story. But here's what's going on, on the one hand, this story is pointing toward the amazing, miraculous reality of how God can provide. That they say we're going to starve, we need bread, and God just puts bread on the ground for all of them. It's about God's amazing ability to provide. But it's also about the fact that we need God every day, we don't just go to God and get what we need from him and not need him anymore, we need him just as much today as we did yesterday. Today he will give us our daily bread, tomorrow he will give us our daily bread.
Dan Franklin: [00:29:59] In fact, I can't say this with 100% confidence, but I'd say this with like 95% confidence, in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned, which is another strange story because they wanted to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And for most of us, it seems like that would be good for them to have the knowledge of good and evil. It seems like what's going on, though, is that they did have a path to knowing good and evil before that, and the path to knowing good and evil was that they were walking in close fellowship with God. And day by day God would say, yes, that's good, no, that's evil. And then eating from the tree was their declaration of independence, we want to know good and evil, and we don't want to have to keep coming back to God to know good and evil. The Israelites are like, we want the bread, but we don't want to keep relying on God for the bread. And some of us today, even if we're going to broaden this out to the spiritual things that we ask for, because Jesus said, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. So our spiritual needs were more desperate for those than we are even for bread. That means when we pray to God for wisdom, we are praying for our wisdom for today. God doesn't just give us a shipment of wisdom and then say, now you don't need to come back and keep asking. Tomorrow I will be back to ask for a fresh batch of wisdom for this day. Tomorrow I will be back to ask for a fresh batch of strength for this day. Because God, what I kind of want you to do is just to give me the strength now that I will never say yes to sin again. But instead, the way this is going to work is that I'm going to come to you today and ask you to give me the strength for today, and tomorrow I'll be back once again, just as desperate as ever to ask you to give me the strength for that day. Does anybody here feel like you occasionally need patience from God? You need patience because other people exist. And so you've got to go to God today and ask him for patience because you're going to see other humans, and tomorrow you're going to need a fresh batch of patience because there's going to be more humans. We need God every day. And again, some of us might be thinking, well, why doesn't he just give it to us all at once? Why doesn't he just give us the whole thing at once? It's not because God is being stingy, it's because all of these things, in a way, are a parable to the greater reality, which is that the deepest thing that we need, our most desperate need, is not stuff from God; our most desperate need is God. Jesus said, "I am the bread of life." He is the one who ultimately satisfies our needs. So the fact that God puts us in a position where we have to keep coming back to him for the same things, reminds us that we were never meant to be independent from him.
Dan Franklin: [00:33:09] On Monday nights, a whole bunch of the women in this church are studying through John 15, which is where Jesus says, "I am the vine, you are the branches. A branch can't bear fruit if it's not attached to the vine, so abide in me and you will bear much fruit, but apart from me you can do..." Some things? No, "Apart from me you can do nothing." We ultimately don't just need stuff from God, we need God, and we're coming to him day by day saying God, as much as I need bread, and as much as I need your wisdom for how to handle this tricky situation, and as much as I need your strength for this temptation that I'm going to face, God, my ultimate need is that I need you. And when we pray, we commune with God and we experience fellowship with God, and we stay attached to the vine because apart from him, we can do nothing.
Dan Franklin: [00:34:05] So this week when you pray, because remember, that Jesus started all this by saying when you pray. When you pray, go to him confidently, whether you feel like you should or not, because your confidence is not based on how you behave this week, but on Jesus' sacrifice for you. And when you pray this week, pray with contentment. Take some time to thank God for all of the amazing ways that he has provided and reaffirm to him that you will be content with the food and clothing that he provides. And when you pray this week, pray with consistency, every day, go back to God just as joyfully desperate as you were the day before, as you asked for him to care for your daily needs.
Dan Franklin: [00:34:54] And here's what I want to do now, throughout this series have been trying to not just talk about prayer, but actually practice prayer. So in a couple of minutes, I'm going to lead us through a time of personal prayer where I'm just going to prompt us three times and then allow quiet time for us all just to have silent prayer afterward. And I'll explain it in a moment, but before that, I want to invite the prayer ministry team to go ahead and come up now, come to either side of the stage. That's good, I like it, as we already talked about, come confidently, come like you belong up here.
Dan Franklin: [00:35:30] Our prayer ministry team is here for you because some of you afterward, you've got some element of provision that is weighing you down, and you need to see God come through and answer a prayer. And some of you might want to come forward afterward because you're just feeling like, you know, God hasn't been moving in my heart, and my prayer life has just sort of been like, God is my genie, and so I want to pray for God to do a new work in me. The prayer ministry team exists not simply to hear your request and pray for it, but the prayer ministry team exists because God is at work in our lives. And so if you're coming forward where you're basically saying is, God is at work right now, God is molding me and he's doing something in me, and I want somebody to partner with me in that prayer. So, just as a fair warning, if you come up to one of the prayer ministry team members afterward and you tell them what's on your heart, they're probably going to gently prod you to pray, not just to have them pray, but to pray, and they are going to partner with you in that prayer.
Dan Franklin: [00:36:34] But what we're going to do now is that I'm just going to prompt us through a personal time of praying. This prayer we've been talking about, "Give us today our daily bread." So there's going to be three things that I'll do, and I'll do them with time in between. I'll prompt us into prayer with a statement, then I'll leave some quiet time for us to pray. Then I'll do that a second time and leave us some quiet time to pray. And then I'll do it a third time, and leave us some quiet time to pray, and then I'll close the time. Fair warning for some of you, the quiet time is going to make you really uncomfortable because we're not used to silence in our culture, use it as a time to commune with God. For some of you, the quiet time is not going to be nearly enough, that's good, spend more time with the Lord afterward. But let's just bow our heads and let's use this as a time to commune with God in prayer.
Dan Franklin: [00:37:27] So, Father, we come to you now, and we start this time of prayer by just acknowledging that you are our great provider. Father, now, as we pray to you, we pray for you to meet the financial and physical needs that are on our hearts. And we pray also that you give us contentment, that we can be satisfied with what you've given us. And Father, finally we come to you now and we're all at different places with our needs, but we pray, Father, for you to give us today all that we need for today. Father, today we pray to you, the Great Provider, the Great Father, to give us today our daily bread. And Father, we pray that you give us confidence that you are hearing us right now, that you love us, and that you are able to do all things. And Father, we pray with contentment, knowing that what you give us is best because you give generously, and you withhold wisely. And Father, we pray with consistency, and we pray that you give us the faith to keep coming back to you and enjoying the fellowship of bringing all of our needs and desires and ourselves to you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Dan Franklin: [00:41:41] And I'm going to invite you just to stand, as I'm just going to read a brief passage as a benediction for us to close our service. And I want to say also for some of you, after this part, your time in the worship center isn't going to be quite done because you've got a burden or you've got a praise, or you have something going on in your life and you're going to join in with the prayer ministry team in moving on what God is doing right now, instead of hoping to follow up on it on some later time. But as our benediction for today, let me just read this great passage, Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 and 7, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Amen? Amen. God bless you the rest of this Sunday and thank you so much for being here.
Recorded in Upland, California.
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