Asking for My Daily Needs

Tim Keller in his book on prayer called Prayer: Experiencing Intimacy and Awe with God writes this as his summary on prayer. To pray is to accept that we are and always will be wholly dependent on God for everything. This is the essence of prayer, isn't it? This is the essence of prayer. Our dependency on God is the foundation of why we pray.

Otherwise, why bother? This idea is now reinforced as we get to the fourth section of the model prayer we've been working on, the Lord's Prayer as we've been studying. And this morning, we come to that part in the Lord's Prayer where we are told to pray, God, give us this day our daily bread. Now this section of the Lord's Prayer teaches us that we are to ask this after we have, what, praised God, we have addressed Him as our Father in heaven, we have prayed for His kingdom to come and for His will to be done. And now we are brought to this point where we are to pray for our daily bread.

Let's read this prayer again as we are reminded of it and as we memorise it from Matthew 6. And we begin at verse 9. Jesus said, pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

So far the reading. Why does God ask us to pray for our daily bread? Why does Jesus put it in that sort of way when we are brought to this point of petition? Well, the first thing is that we are to understand from reading this what our basic relationship is when we make this request of God. The first two words we get at this petition, this fourth part of the prayer is the words give us.

The request: give us. It's very simple and it is conveyed in only two words, but they are the very basic nature of Christianity. We who are needy children, this is how this positions us, we who are needy children ask God, our heavenly Father, to give us what we lack. We ask because we don't have. Now this is Christianity in a nutshell, isn't it?

Wholly dependent on God for everything. It is absolutely the core aspect of our identity, of our faith because we only become Christians and we are only saved by asking. We ask God to give us salvation. We ask God to forgive us. And it is unlike any other religion in the world. Christians don't come to God and say, deliver unto me because I have earned it.

We don't say, God, now bless me because I have done this. No. The Bible says the saved person, the Christian is one who has come to God as a beggar and pleads, God, please do for me what I cannot do for myself. I so desperately need to be forgiven by You. And so Lord, please look at the finished work of Jesus on my behalf and accept me in Your grace.

That is Christianity. And the God who we serve amazingly doesn't lord this over us. This is what we see here. He doesn't lord it over us. Instead, He invites us to come again.

He doesn't say, okay, you've had your bit. That's it now. You sort out the rest. He invites us to come again. He knows our neediness and He warmly invites us to come.

And we see this all throughout Scripture. We actually started this morning by reading part of it. But we see it all throughout. We don't have the time to give you, you know, a really exhaustive summary of it, but God keeps inviting His people to come to Him. We read this morning in Psalm 81 verse 10 He says, I am the Lord your God, He says to His people, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.

Open up your mouth wide so that I may fill it. I get that image of little birds chirping for Mom to come and give the worm. Open them, they are so wide so that they can just get to that worm. God says, be ready to receive. Ask and I will give it to you.

Let me fill those hungry mouths. Famously, we also know that Jesus invited us in this way, Matthew 7:7. Ask and it will be given to you, He said. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened.

Again and again and again, our God invites us to ask, to draw near, to require of Him. And so asking is the basic level of Christianity. It is the basis of Christianity and the commands of Scripture to do this are pervasive. It is all based on our basic relationship with God which Jesus describes in Matthew 7:9 when He asks this question, what man is there among you who when his son asks for bread will give him a stone? God, your Father in heaven, will give to you just as a good father will give to a child who asks.

It's a basic premise of our relationship with God, that He is our Father and that we are His children and that He provides for His kids. Now Jesus commands us to pray by beginning and we already reflected on that, our Father in heaven. It's that is how we approach this God. And now when we come to the fourth part of the model prayer, the Lord's Prayer, which is petition now. We've gone through adoration.

We've moved through submission and we come to petition. We need to remember that a good father gives. It is what they do. A good father gives. And so when we say, God, give us, we are asking God who is already positively inclined towards us to provide for what we absolutely need, absolutely need and cannot do for ourselves.

So we need to remember firstly, when we come to petition, when we come to asking God this, what our basic relationship is with God, who He is and who we are in relation to Him. The second thing is the place of our request. So the previous point was that moment of give us, we need, give us. The second one is unlike our prayer lives which often begin by asking something of God, Jesus is actually revealing a particular order in the Lord's Prayer. He shows that petition only comes after a few things, doesn't He?

First, adoration of who God is, then my submission to God's will and God's kingdom. The structure of the first half, the entire first half of the Lord's Prayer is built around Thy name, Thy kingdom, Thy will. And then the second half, it becomes our bread, our forgiveness. Protect us from the evil one. That is the perspective that Christ is giving us.

In other words, a healthy prayer life begins with a focus on God, which brings our desires then when we come to this point firmly in line. It gives perspective to our needs. It gives confidence to our requests. Perhaps you're familiar with the term ethnocentricity. I think in our day and age that's used fairly often, ethnocentricity.

This is the phenomenon where a particular custom or nation will teach that everything in the world and in history revolves around them. If you've ever had a Greek friend, they'll say it all begins with the Greeks. Democracy, all the good things have begun with the Greeks. One of the examples is, and this is probably the ethnocentricity of our British sort of upbringing or culture. One of the examples of this is the old world maps, if you've ever looked at them from the sixteen hundreds, seventeen hundreds, eighteen hundreds, when nations like Britain and Holland and Spain were exploring the world and almost all of their maps place their country in the centre of the world and show how the rest of the world revolves or is placed around it.

They are ethnocentric, putting themselves at the centre of the world. Now, we tend to be like that as individuals which is called egocentric, meaning I-centred. And the Bible goes to great lengths to show that in our natural sinful state, we have the big I on the throne of our lives. And we tend to think that everything revolves around us. So when we have a problem, we often feel apart from God and the renewing power of the Spirit, we often feel that the world should stop right now and everyone should focus on my need.

Now it's crystal clear from the Bible, however, that God does love and that He does look after us, but the place of our request in Jesus' model helps to remind many of us who need it that the world does not revolve around us. There is a bigger picture. It is the kingdom of God. It is the will of God. And Christian, this is the sign of a maturing faith.

A deep spirituality will move from praying for its own individual needs and will move to praying for bigger prayers, what people often call kingdom prayers. They will be saturated with requests and petitions for others and on their behalf. They will be absorbed and enamoured with the glory and the honour of God for His name to be made great. And by that, I never mean to say that God does not fling open the gates of His throne room and He invites us cordially and warmly to kneel with our requests at His feet on a daily basis.

We should do this all the time. This is what Christ has instructed us: daily for our bread. But the more we grow as Christians, I think this is where this prayer is directing us as well. The more we grow as Christians, the more our hearts and our minds are brought into a wider perspective of God's word and God's magnificence. And then we just can't pray as urgently anymore for our ingrown toenails or our summer outfits that aren't fitting very well.

And can I please, please, let's just lose five kilograms? The late J. I. Packer in his book Praying the Lord's Prayer writes, petitions looking to God as the sole and omnicompetent source of supply of all human needs, even down to the most mundane, these petitions are expressing truth. And as the denying of our own self sufficiency humbles us in that moment, denying this our own self sufficiency, so the acknowledging of our dependence honours God.

And so we don't feel guilty therefore in bringing our needs to God even if they aren't very noble requests, even if we do pray about our ingrown toenail because acknowledging our dependence on God anyway honours Him. It still realigns us and recalibrates us. Asking for our very basic needs even. You know, sometimes people say, no, that's not a worthy thing to be praying for. That's sort of below God's standards.

That is actually dishonourable to God. To come and acknowledge your dependence on Him glorifies God and makes Him far greater in your life. If you think you can sort out that little problem that's not worth praying about, you're raising yourself. So we don't feel guilty about bringing our needs to God. But there is a place and there is a perspective.

There is an ordering about God's will, God's glory and our requests. So there is a place for our requests. Then we come very briefly to the time. There is a time for our request. This is all based on that one phrase really, give us this day our daily bread.

This day, Jesus said. Just a few points on this before we move on. Firstly, there's a suggestion here, isn't there, that this is a morning prayer. Why would Jesus be praying for our daily bread, our daily bread this day when you've already eaten breakfast, lunch, and tea and you're lying in bed? Jesus is sort of hinting at this idea.

This is a prayer done before we enter into the day, before we scrounge around for that piece of toast for breakfast, for our daily bread. Now I don't want to be too dogmatic about when we should pray. I don't think necessarily Jesus is making any hard and fast rules here but there is something I think to be said about entering into this day with prayer. Having laid all our needs before God, you begin that day with a heavenly perspective. We start telling our hearts and our minds we have a Father in heaven.

We know that our lives, our day should be constructed around His glory and we should be aware that His kingdom and His plans may really interfere with our plans for that day. We align ourselves to His guiding and His leading for that day and then we pray for our daily bread. Having laid out all our needs therefore before God, we begin that day with a perspective that can really change how we view the rest of our day. And if you've truly and deeply spent time with God in prayer, even just a few minutes at the start of the day, things in that day will be different. You are different that day.

That's the first thing. The timing of prayer outlined in the Lord's Prayer, the assumption made by Jesus here. Now secondly, about the time of our request, we are told to pray regularly, aren't we? To pray for this day is to imply that we are praying every day. Not simply when we need it, not simply when we are experiencing difficulties, but in advance.

To pray for this day suggests that we pray early every day for the rest of the day so that we may experience God and see Him at work in that day. So we notice the time of the day, how regular, give us this day, daily bread. And then our last point, the fourth point. In this phrase we see the objects of our requests. It's very significant I think that we take note of the grammatical person that is being used here by Jesus.

This is not a first person singular, is it? It is not give me my daily bread. It is plural. Have you ever wondered why it's plural? Give us this day our daily bread.

Now there's something to this. Jesus could have easily, I think, He could have taught His disciples to pray for me, for my. But Jesus is teaching us that even as we come to the place in prayer where we ask for our own needs, we are not to be selfish in praying for them, for these needs. As we pray for our own needs, we include the needs of others in these prayers as well. Isn't that interesting?

It was interesting to read that Martin Luther on his commentary on the Lord's Prayer sees a social dimension for this request for our daily bread. He said that in order for all to get their daily bread, there must be a thriving economy. There must be good employment and there has to be a fair society for everyone to get their daily bread. Therefore, pray, give us, all the people of our land, give us daily bread is to pray against exploitation and business. It is to pray against exploitation and trade and in labour which deprives people of their daily bread.

And so even in the Lord's Prayer, we're encouraged to pray for the poor, to pray for the sick, to pray for those who are in need. It is to pray for the welfare of myself but also for everyone around me. Isn't that interesting? Now this is where the other important part of prayer comes in which is called intercession. To intercede is to stand in for someone, to act on their behalf.

This is and always has been a huge part of Christian prayer, praying for the needs of others. And again, this influences and recalibrates our hearts because if we start praying for the glory of God and then we start praying for our daily needs and the needs of my coworker and my friend at school, you start seeing this, don't we? If I pray for God and for my neighbours, then my prayer life is actually reduced, so to speak, about concerning me by two thirds. I'm praying about God, I'm praying for my neighbours, and then I'm praying for me. How much of our prayer life is organised in that sort of ratio?

I divide my requests between God receiving glory, my neighbour's welfare, and then finally I get a mention. Now can you see how this model prayer reorganises my thought life and my priorities? Lord, I pray for my daily bread and for those who also need it. Now, of course, we don't need to wonder or think very hard, do we, about how this looks like or sounded like in practice because the very same Lord, our Lord, who told us the Lord's Prayer, gave us a perfect example of intercession. In John 17, what many people call the high priestly prayer of Jesus, the night before He goes to the cross, He prayed this incredible prayer.

And what is so significant and so moving about it is the question, what did He pray for? This is a man who was twelve hours away from going to the cross. And if it was me, I would know what I would do. I would have prayed for myself. But our Saviour, our Lord, doesn't.

He prays for us. The entire chapter is a prayer directed at the preservation, the protection, the hope, the encouragement of His disciples. This is what Jesus prays. Verse 9, I pray for them, He says. I pray and I ask on their behalf.

He asks, Father, protect them by the power of Your name. Verse 15, protect them from the evil one. Verse 17, sanctify them. Make them holy by the truth. Verse 22, make them one.

Unite them, keep them together. This is ultimately what gives us our confidence to pray. This gives us the confidence to go to our God to ask and that is that Jesus prayed for His disciples, the ones who believed in His name. We are so needy. We are so needy and we needed Him to intercede for us.

He needed to pray for us because without Him, we would have nothing. We know that Jesus had to go to the cross. He had to and He would the very next day. So that what He asked for the Father, the Father could become true. The Father would not, could not protect us from His righteous wrath if Christ did not go to the cross.

The Father would not protect us from the evil one who had his way with us. We would not be sanctified without the precious Lamb being sacrificed on our behalf and sprinkling us clean. John Calvin, in his commentary on the Lord's Prayer tells us just how confident we can be to pray for our daily needs, for this prayer when we understand absolutely the lengths that our Lord went to for our eternal safety. This is what He writes. I hope you can read this.

Calvin says, we do not ask that our daily bread may be given to us before we ask that we may be reconciled to God. As if the perishing food of the belly were to be considered more valuable than the eternal salvation of the soul. But we do ask for our daily bread so that we may ascend as it were by steps from earth into heaven. Since God condescends to nourish our bodies, there can be no doubt whatsoever that He is far more careful of our spiritual life. This kind and gentle manner of treating us raises our confidence higher.

Christian, you have access to the throne room of the King who is your Father because our older brother Jesus, the Prince and the heir to the throne, paid with His life for us. Our greatest need was not an ingrown toenail or even tomorrow's toast for breakfast. Our greatest need is for our salvation to be spared from an eternity in hell. That is our need. But Jesus Christ has paid that price.

He has won that victory. And so the question is, if our God was willing to do that for us, then will He not, of course, give me my toast tomorrow? Will He, of course, not help me in my struggling marriage? Will He, of course, not protect my kids? That is our God.

That is what we have received. Christian, that is what we have. Let me pray. God, we pray boldly this morning and we pray honestly, and we pray often because our God is for us, not against us. You are the God who has shown Himself to be our Father.

And so we outrageously can ask for our daily needs in a daily way putting all our hope and our confidence in You. And Father, where we are prone to take those things again, to heap up those burdens and the anxiety of seeing things through and fixing these situations, as we take them back on ourselves, God, we rob ourselves of peace and we rob You of the glory. And God, is not us anymore. That is not our desire anymore. God, hallowed be Your name.

And so this morning, for our wandering children, we pray for them. For a society that feels so lost, we pray for it. For the sin that still clings, for the dirt that still entangles our lives, we pray for strength. Give us the right perspective, oh God.

Mature us, oh Spirit, that we can be in love and that we can treasure Your glory and that everything else will fall into right perspective in view of that. Hear our prayer, we ask because Jesus has enabled us to pray. Amen.