The Lord’s Prayer, Part 3 | How to Pray Well

Luke 11:3

When we set kingdom priorities, we realize that we are servants of the kingdom. We’re citizens who have a stewardship to perform. We have an accountability to give to our king. Just to illustrate that, turn a page over in Luke’s Gospel, to chapter 12. And I want you to hear from the king himself the kind of priority and thinking that you have to have.

This is what it means to pray, your kingdom come. This is such an important, comprehensively encouraging portion of Scripture. Look at Luke 12, starting in verse 22, “He said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens, they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?’”

Can I tell you, that in the age of the coronavirus and COVID-19, whatever you want to call it? You will not live or die one second short or longer than what God has ordained. So don’t fret. You can’t add a single hour to your span of life. Verse 26, “If then you are not able to do a small thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?

 “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, and yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, your father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.

 “Fear not, little flock, for it is your fathers’ good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.  For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Beloved, where is your treasure? Is it in good health? Is it in the stock market? I mean, I’m no financial analyst, but may I recommend a more secure market to invest in? One with an eternal reward for all your investments of time and money and labor and concern, and suffering.

 Where’s your treasure? Where’s your confidence? Is it in the public health system? Is it in modern medicine? Is it in the soundness of our hospitals? Is it in the response of our governments to keep us safe and sound and protected and provided for? Let me recommend that you entrust your life and well-being to the only one who can hold you fast. The only one who has the power, by the way, and the will, the desire, to guard your precious life. He actually counts you as more precious than the birds, and you know what? The birds never sinned against him. We have. He’s made provision by forgiving our sin and making us precious to him, because we’re in Christ. We are his little flock.

Well, as we said, Jesus has given us these first two petitions. He’s given these petitions, these prayers, to believing, trusting hearts. We focus our interest and our concern on God and his interests. He is orienting us toward heavenly concerns. He’s provoking within us kingdom impulses, and when our perspective is shaped by the interests of God’s eternal dominion, when God is at the center of our hearts and minds, well, then, now we’re ready to make petitions that have to do with our lives, our concerns, our day-to-day.

So, let’s look ahead at the second set of petitions, verses 3 to 4. “Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.” Those are categories of daily concern: physical life. And the fourth and the fifth petitions are spiritual concerns. Physical concerns, material concerns, and then immaterial, spiritual concerns, in the fourth and fifth.

 This is our daily life. It’s where we live. It’s where we walk around. It’s what preoccupies us, all the time. And our father cares about these things, too, and lovingly he bids us to come. Not until we’ve thought about him and his kingdom and his hallow, the hallowing of his name. He wants that to set our perspective, first, and then he says, okay, now come on and think about the rest.

So, here’s a third point. Just one more for today. We’ll just save the other two for next time. But one more for today. This is the third point, about our provision. So, number three: Pray for God’s provision. When you pray, say, “Father,” and then verse 3, “Father give us each day our daily bread.” “Give us each day our daily bread.” You notice, too, the repetition of the word day; day, and daily. It’s an emphasis, there.

 Bread is being used as a metaphor to represent all of our needs. It stands for all of our sustenance. You could fill in whatever you want to there: bread, meat, drink, shelter, clothing, whatever. Bread, stands for all of that. I’m going to give you, a just, a rather awkward rendering of the verse, and I’m going to do that on purpose.

 You know, you usually don’t want to give awkward things that sound unclear, but I wanna, I wanna, I wanna show you the emphasis of this. The sense that Jesus gives us, and the flow, here, and how we need to think about this petition about bread. And here’s the sense. And notice again it’s a repetition of that, day and daily idea. “The bread of us,” this is like a literal translation, “the bread of us, that which is for today, give to us according to the day. The bread of us, that which is for today, give to us according to the day.” So the petition he wants us to pray is: The bread we need each day, that bread, give us that every day. Daily.

That petition, by focusing on the day and not the morrow, it assumes trust. That I’ll be fine with whatever you grant me today and tomorrow, pray the same prayer. Know that you will provide. It assumes trust. There’s an attitude, here, of peaceful contentment, isn’t there? This isn’t wringing our hands about next month’s bills. It’s a confidence that God attends to us, at all times, and cares for us, at all times and we just need to think about the day. That petition can only be made sincerely, when it’s accompanied by an attitude of trust, of rest, of full confidence in the kindness and care and perfect provision of our father, who is in heaven. Who sees it all. Who knows it all.

 We believe he’s good. We believe he wants to provide for us. We believe that he is wise, and so he will provide for us, according to his will. And so, we pray in an attitude of trust and contentedness. We can only do that, if we adopt that attitude, we just read about in Luke 12:32, “Fear not, little flock, for it is your fathers’ good pleasure to give you,” not just bread for today, but “the kingdom.” The whole thing. So don’t worry about your daily food. Sell your possessions. Give to the needy. That is to say, don’t hoard toilet paper! Don’t fret! Don’t scramble! Don’t tussle! Don’t fight for stuff! Don’t stockpile in fear about the morrow. Why? Because “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” You find yourself preoccupied about all that stuff?

Josh was telling me about a, telling me about this video he watched on the internet of, evidently, two ladies; one with her cart stacked with toilet paper to the ceiling, and the other saying: Oh, no! That’s too much for you! I’m going to grab one of those! And they got into a fight. Where’s her treasure? In toilet paper? And the other one; the have and the have not.

Both of them, their treasure was in toilet paper. Gonna be flushed. I mean, I’m not trying to be crude. I’m not, actually, trying to be funny. I’m just saying, like, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Don’t flush your heart. When your treasure is protected by your father, your heart is at rest, and you can trust him to distribute your bread to you every day, as you have need, according to his perfect will, according to his perfect timing.

 So why don’t we pray something like this: Give us this day, father, the bread we need for the rest of our lives. And that we can be done with this. Why not ask for a windfall and just be done with it. Don’t even have to ask anymore. Don’t need to trouble you. Just ask, one time, you dump it all. I’ll be good.

 Two reasons. First, because of our tendency toward sin, to drift away from God. And second, because God is teaching us. He’s discipling us. He’s training us. He’s growing us in humble trust and quiet dependency. And he does that on a day-by-day basis. So first, we have a tendency toward sin, don’t we? To drift away from God. And if we prayed for a windfall, and God dumped it all on us right now, our relationship, would be, with God would be in the rear-view mirror, wouldn’t it?

 In Proverbs 30, verse 7 to 9, the wise sage named Agur, A G U R, he sensed the danger of over provision when he wrote this, he says, ”Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: Remove far from me,” false, “falsehood and lying;” and then this, “give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you, and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.” What is Agur well acquainted with? The sinful tendencies of his own heart. Too much, I deny the Lord. Too little, I become a thief. I’ve got sin in my heart. Just give me my daily bread. It’s just another way, an Old Testament way of saying, “Give us each day our daily bread.” Not too much, not too little. Please, father, take care of my daily needs, because I trust you.

 If we received a windfall of provision from God, getting our life’s provision in one lump sum, might there be a danger that we’d treat our heavenly father, like the prodigal treated his father? Give me the cash, Dad, now. Give me the cash. He’s basically saying to his father, your only value to me is the money that you’re going to give me when you’re dead. So, let’s get it over with. Cash the check out. Cash my inheritance out. Die already. Give me my inheritance, so I can go have fun with my friends. What an ugly, ugly, ugly attitude.

How many of us have been just like that? God wants us to come daily for our provision, not because he’s stingy, not because he wants us to grovel, but because he loves us. He wants us to rejoice in a growing relationship of intimacy, as we come to him day by day, praying to our father.

 The puritan pastor William Gurnall provided an apt illustration to help us think about the fathers’ intent, here. He said, “Which think you speaks more love and condescension for a prince to give a pension to a favorite on which he may live by his own care, or for this prince to take the chief care upon himself and come day by day to this man’s house, and to look into his cupboard and see what provision he hath and what expense he is at, and so constantly to provide for the man from time to time? Possibly some proud spirit that likes to be his own man or loves his means better than his prince would prefer the former. But one that is ambitious to, have his, have the heart and the love of his prince would be ravished with the latter.”

What a beautiful picture, isn’t it? Of intimate concern, of God, for his children, that he bids us to come day by day, that he might, as it were, look into our cupboards and see how we’re provisioned. See what we need. Take an interest in our daily life and we open it up to him, and he says, here you go. Let me stock that for you. He wants us to come to him not just for bread, not for just for the stuff of daily needs, but for the sake of daily communion. If, it’s not about bread, per se. If it was never just about bread. It’s about relationship.

 Listen to Gurnall, again, “This is how God deals with his saints. The great God comes and looks into their cupboard, and he sees how they are laid in, and he sends in accordingly as he finds them. Your heavenly Father knows that you have need of these things, and you shall have them. He knows you need strength to pray, to hear, to suffer for him, and in the very hour, it will be given.”

Isn’t that precious? That is why we are to pray, “Give us each day our daily bread.” But there’s another lesson, here. Again, think beyond bread because, again, bread stands for what sustains us. So, we gotta ask the question: What really sustains our lives? Is it bread, or is it something else? What really sustains our lives? Is it our fast and effective response to a pandemic? About preventing the spread of a deadly virus? Is that what sustains our lives? What really sustains our lives? Is it hard work, proper planning, wise investment, up in the morning to do all the hard work of the day, and then invest it, and then keeping track of all of our finances, keep track of where the stocks are going, and all the rest? Is that what sustains our lives?

Listen, sometimes, we’re seeing this now, aren’t we? Sometimes God removes, from us, all the wrong things that we put our trust in. He takes away all those false supports that we lean on. All the things the world has trusted in, and all the things the world tells us to trust in. He takes them all away. Grabs our attention, and he teaches us what truly sustains our lives and beloved, it is not bread.

Turn to Deuteronomy chapter 8. We’ll close with this. Deuteronomy chapter 8, I’m going to start reading in verse 2, but you just catch up with me, when you get there. Moses told Israel, they’re about to go into the promised land. And it’s the children of the people, that came out of Egypt, that are going into the promised land, not the parents.

 All the parents, the people who originally came out of Egypt, who saw God’s wonders, God’s miracles, God’s amazing provision for 40 years, while they wandered in the wilderness, they died in the wilderness, because they did not trust God, because they didn’t believe in him, because what he provided, they complained against. All we have is this manna. Where’s the water? We want the leeks and the onions and all the free fish we got in Egypt.

 God was angry with that generation, and he strewn their bodies all through the wilderness. And he said, your children, whom you think are going to be a prey to the Canaanites. Those weak ones. Those little ones. The little flock. They’re going to prevail. I’m going to do my work through them. So, Israel’s, or Moses is there to instruct this young generation of Israel, and say, don’t be like your parents. Don’t be like your faithless, unbelieving parents. Look at verse 2, “And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know.”

Now, remember the manna. When did they go out? Did they, did they go out and, grab, gather it in a hoard and store it up for the next month? Did they put it in silos? Did they silo the manna and start to sell it off to the Canaanites, as like, nice wafers? Here’s some honey wafers for you. Two for a dollar? No. Every day, right? Every day. Every day, they went out and gathered. He who, who gathered little, didn’t have too little. He who gathered much, didn’t have too much. Each day, the daily provision. Verse 3, “He fed you with manna, manna that you did not know, your fathers didn’t know, that he might make you to know that man does not live by bread alone.” What sustains your lives? Not bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”

Let’s keep reading. “Your clothing did not wear out on you nor did your foot swell these forty years. Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you. So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. And you shall eat and be full, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.”

What’s our lesson? Our lesson is to look ahead, not to now, but to look to then. We’re not to look for gratification in the moment. Fixing it all now. God always points us to the future, to the fulfillment of his kingdom, just as he’s doing with them. Look at verse 11, “Take care then, lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied.”

Oh, America, please listen! The only remaining superpower. Please listen! Take care, lest you forget the lord your God because when all this abundance and prosperity has happened to you, verse 14, “Then your heart will be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end.”

Beloved, God is unchanging, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the rock who followed them, who gave them the water in the desert, who fed them with manna. He is the same yesterday and today and forever. What about you, Christian? What about you, American Christian? Knowing that your life does not consist of bread. That you’re not ultimately sustained by bread or good health or sound financial investments or very prosperous and powerful and influential governments. Do you understand that you live by every word that comes from the mouth of the lord?

 Beloved, let us together, as a church, pray in faith, in an attitude of humble faith, with a corporate concern that shows a quiet contentment in our God and a love for our neighbor, and express joy and gratitude for God’s care for us all. Let us pray, “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread.”

Father, we do pray that. That is our constant. It’s our daily prayer. And even more so, now, as we see the days that we’re in. It’s become so clear to us. So, help us, please, Father, to rise up, as a strong church that trusts you. That sees your goodness and provision, and sees your will prevailing. Let us be a source of comfort and joy to those around us, and all of us together, pointing them to you and the salvation of your Christ. It’s in his name we pray. Amen.