Praying For Provision 02/14/21

Well, good morning and welcome to a new Grace Baptist Church and so good that you can be here today and I hope everyone's having a great day. Hope you had a great week and we want to remind you on this Sunday morning since this is Happy Valentine's Day. So we want to wish everyone a Happy Valentine's Day and hope you have a great day. Well today we're going to continue in our series Power praying and we are studying The Lord's Prayer and the title of today's sermon is praying for provision and asking God for our basic needs and we're only going to look at one verse today and we going to look at Matthew chapter 6 and verse 11. So let's just go ahead as we usually do and let's just go ahead and read The Lord's Prayer is in verses 9 through 13 of Matthew chapter 6. So the Lord says in this manner therefore 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 forgive our debtors and do not lead us into temptation but Deliver Us from the evil one for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Well, we have been going through this kind of phrase by phrase and if you'll remember and verse 9, we talked about our Father in heaven, we talked about the fatherhood of God and how we can honor him and how low His Name by referencing him and then last week we talked about his kingdom and we are to pray for his kingdom to come and not only that we are to pray that his will would be done on Earth just as it is in heaven, which is perfectly and today we come to verse Kevin and I in this verse here, he says give us this day our daily bread. And I remember the Lord's Prayer wasn't given that we would just memorize it and repeat it by rote. But that we would have an outline to God our own prayer life and we've been talking more about that on Wednesday night in a practical way. Sometimes we can pray with very little structure and we kind of prey all around things without ever getting to the core of the matter. So what Jesus is doing here is he has given us a model if you will to follow and he's offering us a way to be effective in our prayer life. So we begin with praise and we talked about the God is our father and Halloween his name and then we go to priorities and a course of our top priorities is that his kingdom would come and that his will would be done on Earth and then we approach god with our Request and that's where we start today Matthew 6:11. The Lord says give us this day our daily bread. So this is where we can start to ask God to provide for our daily needs its kind of been said that if you look at the Lord's Prayer, it starts with a p and ends with a peak it starts with the heavenly father and Halloween his name, but then it ends with praise for his kingdom and glory and power but between those two piece that's the valley in which we all live in. So in this brief petition here, I think we have answers to some of life's most challenging needs and if we can understand this prayer we understand why prayer to God can make such a difference in our lives. So I have four points today. And what I want to do is I want to list the advantages of praying for our daily needs. But not only that I want to list them in a way to show you four dangers that we can fall into if we do not pray daily for our needs. And so the first one is simply this and and this is one is praying for daily needs will deter Pride. So praying for our daily needs will deter Pride. So when Jesus instructed us to pray for our daily bread, he's reminding us that all of us no matter where we are in life. No matter how big your bank account is or how small it is all of us in life are totally dependent upon God. For the daily supply of all of our needs now. So when he says here in verse 11, give us this day our daily bread many times. We read that we think what he's just talk about something to eat. Well, of course I see he's talking about that but it's much more than that when he uses this phrase Daily Bread is talkin about all of our needs is talking about food is talking about shelter is talking about our relationships is talking about your vocation is talking about your spiritual life. All the needs that we have in our life is wrapped up in this phrase. Give us today our daily bread. You see we are all totally dependent upon God for the daily supply of all of our needs and I look what Psalm 100 4 verses 27 to 29 says it says Deez all wait for you that you may give them their food in due season what you give them they gather You open your hand. They are filled with good you hide your face. They are troubled you take away their breath. They died and returned to their dust. So think about this if for one minute God would close his hand and would not provide for us every single person on the face of the Earth would be in trouble. You see he's the one who feeds the mouths of all mankind. He's the one ultimately responsible for all of our daily provision. I just think about this everyday God's means more than probably what's in our national treasury just to feed the hungry birds around the world. So we shouldn't be surprised when we read in the word of God that he is interested in our needs as well and he wants to provide for us and that's why we pray for him to provide Our Daily Bread. The Bible tells us that man does not live by bread alone. But by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God now usually when we teach this passage here, the emphasis is on the importance of spiritual things over material things well-bred is material God's words are spiritual. So the words take present but I think there's more to that teach in the bread itself would have no value to US unless it was given to us by our creator. You see the reason bread nurse is the human body and the reason that grains can grow from the earth is because God made it that way. I mean, he spoke the very grains into existence. He made them with all just the right properties. So that when we would eat them in our body and it is all due to the word that precedes from his mouth behind all the plants that can be turned into energy for our bodies. There's God not sure a baker or cook or whatever can put the ingredients together. But if God had not put the taste and the energy into the seed and the ground it would be a no use to us. So even the bread we eat is a gift from God. So the next time you sit down at a meal and you look around your table. You try to trace everything back to the store where did store get it where you say the you know, the Miller's or the packagers or whatever. Where did they get it? And where did the farmers and grower Growers get it? Well, everything goes back to God's provision for he's The Giver of all good things. If you just look at life itself and trace it all the way back. It's not going to end up at a monkey is not going to end up at some Pawn scum or something like that. It ends up with God and the reason most of us forget that is because most of us have we've never gone to single day of life without food. I mean we can just pretty much eat food whenever we want it but there's many people in the world today with whom finding food is the major activity of their day. So God is giving us bread. And that makes him a providing God. So his petition here. Give us this day our daily bread. Encourages our dependence upon him and it deters any Pride that maybe in our life, you know, a lot of people say why I'm a self-made millionaire I've done this and I've got this education. I've got these talents and I've got this degree and I've got this and that and I pull my own self up by my own bootstraps. We're friends that's not true at every single thing that we have God has provided for us and we may be millionaires, but he can take it away the next day it is all because of him. And so when we pray for daily needs what that does is that deters pride in our life and it shows us how much in need we are of God and how he provides for us daily. So when we bow down to pray before each meal we don't do it and if some perfunctory or laborious way, but with sincere gratitude in our hearts toward the Savior, who is our Provider so number one praying for daily needs will deter materialism, but then there's something else praying for daily needs. Will deter materialism first of all, what deters Pride but now it also deters materialism. You say what what do you mean by that? Well, Jesus never said give us this day our daily steak or Lobster he hit he didn't ask for Delicacies or to indulge himself instead. He just asked for Daily Bread. So the Lord's Prayer makes clear that we don't approach God to demand everything that we want. You know, sometimes you'll hear people say, you know, Lord, I want all these things and it's your responsibility to provide them for me and it you know, but we need to think of what Paul said to Timothy remember what he said in first Timothy chapter 6 and verse 6 and I have it on the screen here. Paul said now godliness with contentment is great gain in other words if we have what I need and at the same time we know God we have everything, you know, he's never promised us to give us more than we need godliness with contentment content with what you have. That is great gain. And so this helps us to deter materialism in our life because you know, you can turn on the TV to internet and whatever you own every day. You deserve this. You should have this you deserve this and it's like everyone deserves a week vacation in Cancun or someone or somewhere like that. And if you look at our nation, we are severely in debt over just billions of dollars of credit card debt and people spending money. They don't have to buy things. They don't need to impress people. They don't like and you see God has at told us that we are to be content with what we have. So if we just pray for our daily need Lord, give me today what you were. have me what you would want me to have if we would just pray like that that would deter materialism in our hearts and in our life you see the Lord taught us that we are responsible to ask God for our needs to be met and I think about it what are our needs well we need something to put on her body we need something to put in our body and we need something to put over our body and other words we need clothes we need food and we need shelter and God promises that he will take care of that for us if we trust him and ask him you know as you get older life becomes more daily when you're young you have this long division I can't wait till I get my license so I can't wait till I can play ball over here I can't wait till I can go to off the college or we have a longer view but as you get older life becomes More daily we learned just to take one day at a time and God has promised us daily bread. He hasn't promised that we can just come to him and name it and claim it instead. He said he will give us our needs not our every won't I was reading the book some some years ago and it was on this evangelist. He had a Ministry and he was on national TV and he said that success and money and worldly pleasures kind of went to his head and he fell into sin and he started swindling money out of his own Ministry. Well this man he ended up in prison for a while. Just describe the course. And while he was in prison, he said he was reminded why he was there and why most men are there and he said one day he looked around and some of his fellow inmates were X bankers and lawyers and next doctor's he said there were many drug dealers there too, but he said not because they were addicted to drugs but because they were Addicted to Money you see this preacher later on in his ministry before he went to prison. He had started preaching a Prosperity Gospel. In other words telling people that God wants everyone to be wealthy and Rich and instead of praying for God's will to be done. He encourage Christians to claim their wealth to name it and claim it and to tell God exactly what they wanted even wrote in his book that he went so far to tell people that if you want a Mercedes you specify the color and you specify the options to God that you want on that car. Well the Teacher had a few years to study the Bible to really study the Bible while he was in jail. And he said he learned one thing and that was that the prosperity Theology and gospel doesn't line up with scripture and When God says he will provide our daily bread that does not mean he'll give us everything we want just because we name it and claim it. I listen carefully if the blessing of God can be measured in cars and homes in money in the bank. Then we would have to say that some of these drug kingpins and the mafia and the movie stars and the sports stars are specially blessed by God, but Jesus never talk that riches are a sign of God's blessing by the fat. Jesus said that is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of God and if worldly welts equates to God's favor, What do we tell the millions of people who live in poverty or the millions who barely make it paycheck to paycheck? What do we tell Christians who go through hard times that God has abandoned them. If you're not rich, if you're not wealthy than that must mean that God has abandoned you. Is that what we tell people? Well, of course not but these prosperity gospels. They will say well now if you pray that God would make you wealthy and make you rich and you don't get it. Well the reason is because you have you just don't have enough Faith that's their excuse every single time with friends is not the amount of Faith you have it's not the length of the Brett the depth of your faith. It is the object of your faith that counts as long as it in Jesus Christ. That's what counts know where in scripture are we promised and easy life, but we are promised that God will be with us even in the hard times. Well, the preacher got out of jail and he wrote a book and he admitted all his mistakes and he encouraged Christians to really take a Biblical view of wealth. And he wrote hundreds of letters and thousands to his followers and he apologized for teaching heresy. And so we can't take our Lord's instruction to ask for Daily Bread as an invitation to ask the name it and claim it you see God in his sovereignty blessed is some people with Incredible wealth, but friends that's not a sign of spirituality if we all stop and consider what God has done for us. Each one of us would have thought we would have to admit that. He has blessed us beyond what we deserve what if we were rich or not and if he gives us material blessing and and money and wealth within he gives us responsibility to use that blessing for his purposes and all these financial resources, and we should be recycling them to others and back to him. You see all of our needs are simple. And limited and God has not promised to do more than to meet our needs. So you see here when we pray for our daily needs what we're doing is when we pray that way we will deter pride in our life. I'm doing this. This is all about me know, it's all about God it's because his hand is open if he closes it you're in trouble and then it also the turf materialism and we're not going to fall for this name it and claim it Prosperity Gospel. We know that the Lord said that in this world you shall have tribulation but be of good cheer I have overcome the world. It is all about Christ and we pray that he would give us exactly what we need for today and nothing more. Well number three. Now we've already said that praying for daily needs will deter pride and it will deter materialism number 3 praying for daily needs will deter worried. Now think about that. Jesus said we should pray every day for our bread. So that takes away worry about tomorrow. You see most of us pray for God to give us this month or next month or will pray at a month at a time or when October gets here. We're already worried about Christmas how we going to buy all these gifts and how we going to do all this and meet all these demands but God has simply promised to take care of us day by day. So we are not to worry about tomorrow 9 o many of you are familiar with this verse here versus Matthew 6 31 through 33. Look at what the Bible says. This is Jesus speaking. He says therefore do not worry saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear for after all these things that Gentile seat for your heavenly father knows that you need all these things. You see what you drink what you wear. He knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness in other words, you make sure your relationship to God its first priority and if you'll do that all these things shall be added to you you see when the children of Israel when they were in the wilderness. God sent them bread and it was called Mana every morning to drop out of the sky and these people work together to collect all this Mana this bread and it was always enough for one day. But the Lord told him not to hoard it not to try to store it up because it would spoil if it was camped overnight. In other words. It was a daily activity know why would the Lord give them bread just every day. Why didn't he give it to him? I'm off at a time. But yet they had to go out and get it every single day what he did that to teach the people to trust him each and every day each and every morning. I'm sure something people worried about God provided today, but when you know, how about tomorrow I want if it rains or like that, I mean with the rain her stuff you think you'll provide every single day yet. They had to trust him that God would keep his word and he kept his word year after year after year every single day. He provided the Mana you say we don't know what will happen next week. But we can trust God to take care of our needs today. Our Fate doesn't have to be huge matter fact. The Bible says we have faith the size of a mustard seed you can move mountains don't have to be huge but we do need to learn to trust him one day at a time. And so when we pray we need to pray for him to meet our needs for that day. And when we do that that means that we have to talk to God every single day in prayer because he promised to meet our needs give us this day our daily bread. He's promised to do that daily. So we are forced to remain in regular communication with him if we only talked to God once a week, we'll drift away from it more once a month or once every two or three months. We will Drift Away. But what this means is that every morning we talked to him and trust that he's going to come through for us that day. And I know you know, I like long range planning and I like to make plans for the future but we need to pray everyday asking God to meet our daily needs. So if you're experiencing trouble in your life today where there's CNR stress or sickness or whatever I can tell you with assurance that you're only going to get through this day one day at a time. You have to go before the Lord each day and say Lord that this this is my knee today, whatever it is. I don't know about tomorrow. I know that you do but I need you today help me today. You see worrying about the future does nothing but cause stress but praying for God to get you through each and every day that will help you to build trust in. And it will deter any worried that you may have in your life. And you do this one day at a time. So think about this when we just pray this simple prayer. Lord give us today our daily bread when we pray that we we will deter Pride because we know that God is The Giver of all good things. It will also determine terrellism. We won't be wanting and asking for everything and anything but will be asking what God wants us to have that day and it also will will deter worried because we will see God working on our behalf and we're in constant communication with him every single day. Well, we have one more and then we'll close praying for daily needs will deter. selfishness now I think it's important that Jesus did not say give me this day my daily bread well how did he said he said give us this day our daily bread he didn't say me and my he used us and our you see there's kind of a corporate nurse if you will to prayer I'm not merely concerned about my own needs but I'm also concerned about the needs of others you see this prayer is an answer to Pride materialism and worried but it also reject the selfishness that's so prevalent in our society and you know even our prayers can slide into selfishness Many times I know that I've just prayed for things that I want. I didn't even think about anyone else just things that I thought that I needed and many times you can look at your earliest and you'll realize that the only needs on there are yours. So we have to learn to pray for God to meet the needs of others as he meets our that's why he said give us this day our daily bread. You see the way to keep praying from becoming selfish. Is to not start praying at verse 11, you see many Christians start their prayers by telling God what they want but we've already learned that we are to pray the following a certain pattern or what is that pattern? Well, we praise God we we we praise him for his fatherhood and we Halo his name and then we pray for the priorities of God that we talked about last week that his kingdom would come and our own hearts in the hearts of those around us. And even in the hearts of our own Nation, we pray that his kingdom would come but we also pray that his will would be done in our life our family's life and our nation's life. So think about this we're praising him for who he is our father. We Halloween his name and then we we think him and we praise him for his kingdom and we asked that his will be done. So the first 15 or 20 minutes that we are free. We're talkin. It's all about God and nothing about us but many times we start our prayers not at verse 9, but we start at verse 11 and telling God what we want. So he encourages us to pray in in the sequence praise to God promises to God and his kingdom and then Provisions from God in other words, we worship Him First pray that his kingdom will come into His wheel will be accomplished and then we start with our own needs in verse 11, but the start at verse 11 is to pray selfishly. Now, the reason Christ instructed the disciples to pray about petitions, I believe after praying about God's will be done on Earth as it is in heaven is so that our petitions Would be shaped by an honest desire for God's best to take place. In other words are petitions are shape. By wanting God's will to be done and if we sincerely want God's will to be done. Then when we get to our own petitions. We will be able to pray those petitions that are in the wheel of God. We're not just going to ask for anything and everything. So an example would be a few pray for your children to be healthy and spiritual what don't pray for that just so you can be seen as a good parent. I pray that God would use them out in the world as a as a tool for his kingdom or you may say well Lord. I want a big fine home. That's okay to have a big fine home, but don't just pray for that just because of your comfort but I asked God that it would be used to you know, express love to others may you may have the gift of having people over and and, you know, just like to have people and love people are you can use that house to have people over to her house and and have Bible studies at your house use it. For that purpose for God's kingdom. You see when our petitions arise from his will we can be assured as 1st John 5 tells us that he hears them and we know that if he hears them we know that we will have the answers to our prayers. So think about this one little verse that we looked at today. Give us this day our daily bread and think of the great theological teaching that is in this one verse. If we pray this way for our daily needs it will deter pride in her life will realize that God is The Giver of all things and that his hand is opened to us. It will deter materialism in our life. We're not going to be thinking about we want this and that the other and be rich and wealthy and we're not going to listen to a Prosperity Gospel know we know what the Biblical teaching is. Some people may have wealth others may not some people may have hard knocks and hard times. Everyone is going to go through that and it will prevent indeterminate realism from our life. When we say give us this day our daily bread. It will help deter worry in our life because we know that God has promised to take care of us one day at a time and that's how weird to live life and it will also deter selfishness when we go to the Lord in prayer. We're not going to start with my gimme list know we going to think of others Give us this day our daily bread in friends. When when we do that then we'll know what all at what it's all about praying for the provision of God. Well, let's pray father. We do. Thank you and praise you love you today for your word and Lord. We just thank you how much we can get out of this just one little verse of the Lord's prayer. Lord is not a single one of us this listening to this. Everyday, we are tempted in the area of Pride materialism. Worried and selfishness not a day goes by that we're not tempted in either one or either all those areas every single day Lord help us to understand that you're The Giver of all good things that what we have comes directly from your hand that will help the turtle pride in our life. We don't want to take credit for what you have done. We know that you hold our very breath in your hand and Lord help it to deter materialism as well Lord help us to be content with what we have in the Lord for those of us who like and who worry so much about tomorrow help us to see Lord that you promise to take care of us one day at a time. And when we worry about tomorrow, all we're doing is we're Dragon tomorrow's clouds over today, sunshine. And Lord help us not to pray selfish prayers, but to think of others and to pray for others Lord as you would have give us this day our daily bread or we just thank you, and we love you, and we love you because you first loved us in Christ's name. I pray amen. Well, I'm so glad that you were able to join us today, and I hope you can join us Wednesday night. Genie will send out the link and we'll have our Zoom meeting and we going to continue on how to develop a powerful prayer Life as we look at this example here in the Lord's Prayer, but we also take other scripture in the Bible about prayer and then Wednesday night. We going to start talkin about we going to try to unpack what it means to start out our prayers by praising God and Halloween his name and we will do that starting this Wednesday night. Well, it's good to see everyone today. I hope you have a great rest of the weekend and I hope to see everyone again.