Our Daily Bread
You don't have to spend much time with Nora Clifton before you hear a certain story. The story goes something like this. Nora was the oldest child, and her mother was widowed as a young wife. So Nora had the burden and joy of caring for her younger siblings, even as a child herself. One night, after all the children were fed dinner, Nora noticed that there was no food. Nora mentioned this to her mother. Nora's mother said she had prayed about the issue, and she knew that the Lord would provide. And since she knew that the Lord would provide, she had to go to bed and get some sleep before work the next morning. Nora spent the night worrying. She spent the night angry at her mother for being so impractical as to simply pray for food for the family, and leave it at that. After Nora's mom had gotten to work that morning, there was a knock at the door of their home. Nora opened the door. Someone had donated enough food to help them get by for the next few days. Nora describes this moment as pivotal in her ability to trust God. I understand this moment as one model of doing what Jesus commanded when he said, "Give us this day our daily bread".
Many times, I think, it is hard to really relate to praying for our daily bread. Some of us may struggle financially more than others. Some of us may have lived through the depression, or been broke enough to not be able to afford food for a few days. Very few of us, though, really know what true poverty is. Even the poorest of American children are better off than most. For a few years, I participated in the 30 hour famine with World Vision. The 30 hour famine is where you fast for 30 hours, and then send the money that you raised in pledges and would have used on food to a hunger relief agency. In the process of that fast, you do some study. One thing you learn is that between 30,000 and 35,000 people starve to death each and every day. For us, daily bread may be something we almost take for granted. For many others, they are praying for daily bread because they need bread and decent drinking water to survive, and they do not find either very easily.
Now, I did a lot of study on this message this week. You would think that doing sermons on 5 or 6 words would make the sermons much simpler and much easier to handle. Much easier to focus. This is not so with the Lord's Prayer. Because the prayer is so short in the Lord's Prayer, each word and each phrase is layered with meaning.
What I feel led to talk to you about this morning is about depending upon God. Depending upon the Lord. Specifically I want to talk to you about acknowledging the reality of our dependence upon God for all that we have, building our lives on an attitude of dependence upon God, and what choosing to be used by God to meet the needs of others. It is as basic as abc, acknowledge, build, choose. But it is not easy at all. Prayer is always work, isn't it?
- We need to acknowledge our dependence upon God
The first word of this section of the Lord's Prayer is "Give". Give us this day our daily bread. When we pray this, we acknowledge that all that we have is a gift from God. The food we eat. The air we breathe. The laughter we share. The shelter we have. Our friends. Our family. We own nothing. It is all just a gift.
A lot of times we forget this. We think we deserve the home we have. We think we have earned the car we drive. We think that we have gotten that nest egg because we have worked hard for it and been smart to save it. We believe that we have pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps. That we have reason to puff our chest out and be proud of all that we have done. We use words like me and mine a lot.
The truth is that the clothes you are wearing—Gift. The ability to get to this place each Sunday—Gift. That watch around your wrist—Gift. That lunch you are going to be eating in 45 minutes—gift.
Furthermore, it is not just the things that we have that are gifts. The relationships we are blessed with are also gifts as well. That husband that you have is a gift, even if he doesn't seem very gift like at time. That wife that you have—she is a gift as well. That friend sitting beside you….have you ever thought about how miraculous it is that God gave you the friends that you have? Friends are a gift from God too. As are enemies actually at times. Those children that you have, they are a gift too. When you look at them, and are proud of how they turned out, and who they turned out to be. Remember that you didn't earn or merit having the kids that you did. They are a gift from God. And each moment you live, and each day you have with them is a gift as well.
Take a minute to take that in. You may think that you own something. That is a lie of our culture and the kingdom of this world. Everything that you have, really, is a gift from God. You do not really own anything. Everything you have title to, that is in your possession, are gifts, and if truth be told, all of the things you have and relationships you have been given are really on loan from God.
GIVE us this day our daily bread. In spite of all that God invites us to come to Him with our wants and our needs. He invites us to ask him to provide for us. He invites us to come to Him and lay our needs before Him, and ask him for help, for support. He asks us to come before him, and ask him to give us what we want and what we need to live, to be happy, to be healthy.
Jesus tells us later God tells us to come to him and ask. He invites us to come to him to seek. He invites us to come to him and knock at the door of hope and opportunity and love, and expect that the door will be opened.
He invites us to ask for our daily bread. Our daily bread speaks about BREAD it does not say ask for our daily CAKE. God asks us not to take from him, and then be on our way. He asks us to enter into a place of acknowledging our daily dependence on Him for our most basic needs. It is ok to pray for cake I suppose, especially if it is your birthday. But God commands us here to even pray for our most basic needs and necessities. He wants us to notice that we need him for everything. That is part of what prayer should teach us.
This brings me to our second point.
- Build your life based upon a dependence upon God.
In between my junior and senior year in college, I found myself in an interesting position. I had a double major in college—behavioral science and Christian Education. The Christian Education part of my degree required me to have some sort of practicum in Educational Ministry, which is a fancy word for a mini-internship. There were not a lot of options for me in the town I was going to school in, especially because I did not have a car to get me into bigger towns like Hutchinson or Great Bend. So I figured out I needed to do some sort of summer thing. There were a few camps that were options to go to. And then, there was the possibility of doing a mission experience as my internship. And that is what I decided to do.
Deciding to do the mission experience was scary. It was scary because I had to raise all of my financial support in order to do the mission trip, and then, if there was a little bit left over, I could use that money as money for education in the fall. It was scary choice for two reasons. First, there was a lot of money to raise. And the mission required that you send out so many letters to so many people in order to raise support. What if people rejected me? What if people got offended with me asking them to support my mission trip? It was a very scary proposition.
The second part of concern for me was my financial well-being for the next school year. The way my school worked is that you got your financial aid package around the time of finals, and then you had the summer to work out financial stuff for the next year. Would I get the academic scholarship I needed? What about the football scholarship part of my financial aid? I had worked for quite a while to build up a little bit of scholarship here, a little bit of scholarship there, a little bit of work study, as well as working in the cafeteria as well.
But I had always felt led to do Native American missions. I had grown up around different Native American cultures, and I had studied a lot about the needs and hardships in Native American cultural settings. And when this opportunity to spend a summer as a missionary to a village of 60 in the Alaska Bush that one could only boat or fly into, I knew I had to go. I knew God was leading me to go. So I went.
So how did I deal with the worries and concerns I had? This may sound simplistic, but I chose to trust God. I chose to depend on him to take care of what I could not figure out, and go where I felt he led me. Strange thing happened when I did that. I was able to raise all of my support that paid the mission organization for my expenses, as well as some money for school the next year. Some opportunities came about to make some extra funds rather quickly during the fall after my return (I memorized the Westminster Shorter Catechism and wrote a paper about it). The following Spring I was able to cut back to part-time in school, and work more hours. Because I was going to school part time, I was also allowed to move off of campus—another savings of thousands of dollars. Turned out, I sent back my student loan for second semester, and it was my least expensive year in college.
And I have not even told you about being on the mission site. About how the missionary just prayed with me, said to make friends and develop your ministry how you see fit, and left me in the village in this cabin with a pump for water, a camp stove, and an outhouse, and no bathtub or shower. Me, with no technical skills, and who was just out of college. Amazing thing was, God did some pretty cool things with the ministry in Stony River Village that summer. I was able to touch some lives, and my life was completely transformed. And, it affirmed my call to ministry in a huge way.
Without getting into any more of the gory details, this is what I learned. I learned I had to depend upon God daily. I had to depend upon God for my financial support. I had to depend upon God to build up the ministry. I had to depend upon God to move across cultures and quickly adapt to a strange, new place. I had to depend upon God to get me through the next school year when I got back. And I learned that when I put myself in place where I must depend upon God, that is where he really works. That is where he shows up in power. When I have to live a life where I am daily depending upon God to guide my words, my thoughts, my relationships, and my financial well-being….I really start to see God at work.
I urge you to think about not only acknowledging your dependence on God, but step out in faith in a way in which you base your life on depending upon God. Daily. This is what God is encouraging us to do when he urges us to pray for "our daily bread". Some of you have already been put in this situation financially and emotionally due to circumstances beyond your control. I urge you to keep praying. Keep hoping. But some of you, well some of you need to take a step of faith. You need depend upon God daily.
You need to pray in a way that says God I need you. Lord, I am lost without you. Heavenly Father, if you do not help me out here I don't know how I am going to make it much longer. I need your help to provide for me.
When Jesus says to pray for our daily bread, he is referring to an event in Israel's history. He is making an allusion to the Exodus. As Israel was moving from being slaves in Egypt toward entering the promised land, they went into desert places without any food. Sometimes without water. And so, when the Hebrews were in the desert God provided this miracle called manna. It was this special, strange kind of bread that appeared on the desert floor in the morning. Manna means something like, "what is it?" It was this bread that allowed the Hebrews to survive. But there were rules with the bread. You could only collect so much. And, the bread would go bad after a day or two. So, you had to depend on this bread every day to be out on the desert floor when you woke up in the morning. If you didn't, you'd die.
So when Jesus talks about our daily bread, he is talking about having the courage to live in that kind of dependence upon him. God's word tells us to live in a way in which we need to live in that day by day, moment by moment needing of him to help us make it. For many of us, that means listening to God's prompting to live a more risky faith.
For some of you, that means you need to think about giving more. Each month, our church falls a little bit more behind financially. You can see the evidence of that in your bulletins with the financial report the deacons asked be included in our bulletins once a month or so. Maybe God wants you to take a step of faith to be more committed to giving to your church.
For others of you, that means having more courage in letting go of that thing that has you trapped in your life. That addiction you try and try to overcome, but have yet to be able to snap. That unhealthy relationship that makes you angry, disappointed, and bitter with yourself. That trap you get in where you let that person push you where you do not want to go, and you say things that you regret.
Still, for others, that may mean having the courage to speak out more about your faith. Maybe you have been a closet Christian for years, and yet you know that person across the street or at work, school, or the senior center that needs to hear the good news or Jesus or needs a good church home. Have the courage to depend on God for the words you speak and just walk across the room and share the truth of Jesus' good news with a neighbor or a friend. It is, after all, the most loving thing you can do for someone, telling them about how to spend eternity with Jesus.
You know those areas where you have refused to depend upon God. Or where you are feeling led to trust God more and yet are scared to do it. It may be something totally different from what I have shared. But, I urge you, have the courage to step out in faith, and take the risk to depend upon God, and watch and see how he provides.
- Choose to be used by God to meet the needs of others
We all have certain struggles following God in certain things that Scripture tells us to do. Some of us struggle to forgive. Some of us struggle to trust. Some of us struggle to have the courage to stand up for what we believe.
I know that some of you struggle with the idea of helping those that are in need. You wonder if people's poverty is something that just happened to them, or something that they deserved because of their actions in the past, or even in the present. But here is the truth of the matter. Jesus commands us to help those who are in need. The whole bible commands us to help those who have less than we do.
The Lord's Prayer says, "give us this day our daily bread". Notice the plural nouns…us…our. When we ask for God to provide "our daily bread" we are not just asking God to provide for me. We are asking God to provide for the needs of all of our brothers and sisters in Christ. We are asking God to provide for the basic needs of everyone on earth.
We do good at this. We bring in food for the food bank. We work with meals on wheels to help provide for people who have a hard time getting out of their homes. We reach out to one another when we know that we have a need. We even have a ministry project in Fowler this fall which will require us to take the step of faith to meet real life needs of people in our community.
Yet, we can do better. As our church grows, I would like to see us make a stronger commitment toward a goal of giving 10 percent of our church income to some sort of missions. If we are going to ask members of our church to work toward tithing, then we need to tithe as a church as well. I don't care how we get to that 10 percent, but as we grow we need to work toward meeting that goal.
Also, would like to see our church involved in more random acts of kindness for lack of a better word. Maybe you hear somebody talk about something they need or want, and it is within your power to give it to them. Perhaps you can find a way to anonymously get them that gift.
Or maybe you share your home with someone between places to stay. Or you know of someone at work that is struggling that month, and you sneak some groceries in the back of their car when they don't notice.
One way to experience the presence of God is to depend on him to meet your needs. An even more powerful way to experience God's power in your life is to meet the needs of others while depending upon God to meet your needs as well.
I guess what it all comes down to is this. Do you have the courage to trust God. Not just at those moments where you have nowhere else to go. Do you have the courage to live a life trusting God day to day, trusting him with your life, your reputation, your pride, your money? That is the challenge that is put before us when we are encouraged to pray for our daily bread. Are you up to the challenge of prayer and life Jesus has set before us? I hope so.
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