Give Us This Day: How His Provision Brings Joy in Our Prayer
Pray Then Like This Series
“Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11).
This is our seventh week looking at the Lord's Prayer (not to mention the deeper discussions we have on Wednesday nights on this beautiful pattern God gave us).
Think about when you pray. Let me ask you some questions:
How often do you pray? Hourly, daily, weekly, yearly, ever? Be honest.
When do you pray? Is your prayer time a set appointment in the morning, during lunch, or in the evening? Or is it a catch-as-catch-can, flare prayer as you go about your day? It must be said that there are occasions for both. If you read Nehemiah, you see a lengthy prayer in Nehemiah 1:4-11 as he laments and calls out to God in the wake of hearing about Jerusalem's destruction while they were in exile. Yet, in the very next chapter, you see the king approaching him, asking why he was so saddened in his service. Nehemiah told him the reason. When the king asked, “What are you requesting?” Nehemiah “prayed to the God of heaven" (Nehemiah 2:4).
Why do you pray? It's here we get to the foundation of the sermon. Do you pray because you love Him and want to spend time with Him and sit at His feet as a disciple of Jesus--or do you pray because you want Him to give you something?
Tim Keller says in his book on Prayer,
“We come with our needs expectant of positive response, but we do so changed by our satisfaction in him and our trust of him. We do not come arrogantly and anxiously telling him what has to happen. Many things we would have otherwise agonized over, we can now ask for without desperation.”