LESSON SERIES

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The Lords Prayer
 
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We see in Exodus the three request - daily provision (manna and quail); forgiveness (as they continued to mistrust God and take matters into their own hands) and deliver us (from the hands of Pharaoh, from this desert)

In the second half of Lords prayer in Luke 11, we ask not for "me" but for "us". How much of our prayers for daily provision, forgiveness and deliverance extends beyond our home, our church family but out into the world.

Philippians 2:1-4
1 If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion,
2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.
3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.
4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.


The above passage sums up the heart we are to have as we pray.

We pray the rest of the prayer with the knowledge, conviction and faith that God, the one to whom we pray, is Sovereign, Good, Powerful and Merciful.

Matthew 6:9-12
9 This, then, is how you should pray: "'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.


I. Pray for Daily Provision - Give Us

"Give us this Day our daily bread" - This is the part of the prayer that tends to get to rather quickly. We are tempted to come to God with our urgent list of need. We will go thru the first part rather quickly, God you are wonderful, your awesome, your in heaven, now lets get to some things that I want

There is a great Godly wisdom in focusing our thoughts and hearts on who we are praying and his will before we start focusing on what we think are our daily needs. The Prayer goes like this, Now God that I recognize you as my Holy Father and now that I understand and am in tune with your will, not my will and my wants-now I ask the first petition for our own needs is, "Give us today our daily bread."

This means to trust in God's goodness and faithfulness to His promise to provide what we need. You can't help but to think of Exodus 16:4. God's people had to depend on God for their daily survival, their needs One of the problems we face with this text is the word "daily"

Exodus 16:4
Then the LORD said to Moses, "I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions.

DAILY is such a common word in our vocabulary. But the interesting thing is that when Matthew wrote the Lord's Prayer in his Gospel, the word that was used for DAILY was far from a common word.

In all Greek literature, the word that is translated as DAILY appears nowhere else except here in the Lord's Prayer. We're talking about 1000s of books, millions of scraps of paper that have survived in museums and archives, and not one of them uses this word that Matthew uses for daily.

There are many translations of this word here for daily. Commentators and Preachers have explained Daily in a few ways. The first which many of us in our English language view daily as time.

On time
1. Give us the bread of Today
2. Give Us today our Bread for Tomorrow

On Amount
3. Give US today just enough bread to keep us alive and no more
4. Give us Today the bread that we need

Each of these options is found in the early centuries of the Christian church. There was one old Syriac second Century translation means, Give us today the bread that doesn't run out". This option contains both time and amount..

Just a little further down in our text, Jesus teaches the disciples to not worry about your life, to have the faith that He will meet their basic needs and in verse 34 "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

THE POINTS: The importance of this when it comes to our prayer life is that we are to learn to trust and depend on God to meet our needs whether it is time or amount or time and amount. We are to pray and trust that our Father will meet our needs and not give way to either fear or worry

In the middle of the 18th century, Jewish daily prayers there were a petition for God's blessing on the agricultural year. They realized that their life depended on their Father from heaven providing for the daily need of physical bread, food to live. They had to rely on God to send the rain and give great weather. They understood daily dependence on God.

Bread was key to their survival. The bread is a gift from God It wasn't just giving me but give us. Community. They depended on God to meet their needs, family, their neighbors needs,

For Us Today, This is likely one of the hardest pills to swallow. We want to depend our ourselves to give us our daily bread. In a culture that is inundated with storing up, planning ahead and keeping as much for you as possible, the need to depend on God for our daily allotted food is almost unheard of, even less the needs of our neighbors.

It's strange, but we long to break free from the necessity of praying this prayer. We would like to store up enough money so that we don't have to worry -- or pray --about where our next meal will come from. We would like to be "comfortably" well off, if not rich. We don't want to have to pray for our next meal.

We live in a world today where we live in fear of not having. To be honest, we all would struggle with being like the Israelites. Instead of trusting that the manna will come and pray and depend on God, we can tend to grumble

In our culture, today we would lose all sense of peace at the end of each day wondering if God would come through the next day. Even if we got ourselves to a point that we are going trust, if the manna did not come down by like 10am-we would lose it.

This prayer to give us this day our daily bread is a pray of will I have peace today and trust in My Fathers Ability and Willingness to meet my needs

Proverbs 30:7-8
7 Two things I ask of you, O LORD; do not refuse me before I die:
8 Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.


Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the LORD?' Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.

Have you ever in your life prayed that type of prayer? "God, please don't give me a lot of money, nor make me hungry. Please just give me enough food for today so that I can live. If you give me too much money, I will likely trust in it and forget about you! And if you don't give me enough to eat, I may steal and reproach your name! All I'm asking is My Daily Bread, Amen" Does that sound like a good prayer to you? That's what Jesus asks you to pray in "The Lord's Prayer".

Should we thank God for our food if we have earned the money for it by our own labor? Of course! "You may say to yourself, 'My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.' But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today." (Deuteronomy 8:17-18)

MIND CHANGE: Our riches consist not in the abundance of my possessions, but in the fewness of my wants. This is what we must learn to trust our God in when we pray.

Philippians 4:11
I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.

Philippians 4:12
I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want

1 Timothy 6:8
But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.

Give us today our Daily Bread should be thought as- God deliver me from the fear of worry and anxiety.

Psalm 37:25
I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.