SUMMARY KEYWORDS

god, jesus, prayer, pray, today, bread, life, depend, daily, daily bread, faith, cosmic vending machine, give, week, unshakable, church, relationship, talking, day, grew.

SPEAKER

Phil EuBank

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Well, Good Morning, Menlo Church. Welcome, welcome, welcome, so glad that you are here with us. What a special service to be able to celebrate new life and faith in a couple students; to be able to continue a really important series together this week; to be able to celebrate together week one of the 40 Niners championship run of the 2023-2024 season. Stanford different story, but I'm so glad that you're here. Whether you're joining us from one of our Bay Area campuses, or you're watching online, I just want to say a huge, huge, huge, thank you, thank you, thank you for being with us today.

I hope that as we've journeyed through this series together already, you've had a chance to be able to kind of look at and think about a little of the life that God wants for you through this experience of prayer. Prayer is a conversation. It's designed to be an actual, not transactional experience with God. And so I'm going to help us to dive into the next portion of the Lord's Prayer that we've been studying together. The thing that I want to just caution you for is, if maybe you're new or newer to church, maybe it's been a while you've missed all of this series. If this sparks something in you, if you find this interesting to go back and watch the previous talks that we've done, we're a few weeks in now. Because these are offered to us by Jesus in order on purpose. It's designed to be a pattern for us. It's designed to be a message, really a model, not a mantra in the way we approach God together. But before we get started, I'm gonna pray for us. And if you've never been here before, or never heard me speak, I pray kneeling. And the reason that I do that is because this picture we have is really, really important. It's absolutely unshakable that we think ourselves bigger than we really are. But God is way bigger than we often think He is. And so by humbling ourselves for even a moment, even if you wouldn't call yourself a follower of Jesus, God can meet you, specifically and uniquely, in that moment.

Would you pray with me?

God, thank you so much. Thanks for the encouragement of singing together, the encouragement of seeing people go public with their faith, the encouragement God that you have a pattern of prayer for us that can unlock a conversation with you that's maybe something we've never had before, or maybe for a long time we've just slipped into maintenance mode in our faith. Would you help shake us out of that today together? It's in Jesus name. Amen.

Now, I grew up outside of Cleveland, Ohio. And in case you're wondering, yes, I'm a Cleveland Browns fan. Sure, well, thanks so much. And no, we are not going to be good this year. That's just a, if you've been a Cleveland Browns fan for a long time, people will tell you, they'll say, Oh, you guys are gonna be good this year. We're not and we just all come to grips with it. I really am pinning my hopes on the 49ers, I hope there's still room on the bandwagon. So appreciate that. Thanks for welcoming me. And one thing that I remember though, growing up in the Midwest during high school, was that every cafeteria had one of these. There were no card readers, many of them didn't even have a way to put bills, in you use these small circular pieces of metal called coins. And the thing was, there was this chocolate bar that was in a clear plastic wrapper that was 35 cents, and it served as the perfect pick me up at the end of the day for me as a high school student. And I know that there were probably more effective ways to get the boost of energy I needed at the end of the day, but it was 35 cents.

Now some of you are wondering how old are you Phil? And that's disrespectful. That's a disrespectful question to ask in your heart about me. The reason that I point that memory out though, is because I think that we often have a similar approach in the way we think about prayer. See, many of us, we want to learn the bare minimum investment that is necessary of time, energy and resources to God in order for God to give us whatever we have decided we want in the moment. God is like our cosmic vending machine. We want to know what is the code? What is the combination? What is the amount of energy I have to put into it? And at the end of the day, prayer is successful only when it comes with the status and the stuff that I have convinced myself is what I most need. Now I know that we've probably advanced past nostalgic snacks in what we pray for her look for, but how different is what you're really asking for? We usually pray for what we want while we assume we have what we need. And Jesus is going to challenge that approach. Not because God doesn't care about our wants, He absolutely does. But He cares about something so much bigger than just what you want today. And when we settle for God's report card in our life only delivering what we want on our terms our way today, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, you are missing out.

Last week, we started in on the Lord's Prayer, what Jesus was teaching His closest followers to pattern their prayers after. And we learned that we start with God's power, not our problems that when we do that, it actually changes how we pray. When we remember how big God is, it can help us to understand our problems, by relation are much smaller, and He actually can help.

This week, we're going to learn an important lesson from Jesus together, that our daily needs are an invitation, not an inconvenience. And I know that that idea in Silicon Valley is really, really hard. We are consumed with optimizing outcomes and increasing efficiency to become less dependent, more independent, but that is not how God works in us not how God wants to work through us. As a matter of fact, in a time where we are driven to learn about tomorrow, and assume today is already taken care of; Jesus frames the lesson of this part of the Lord's Prayer, by challenging us to live in light of today. In the pressure of constantly pushing, and outsourcing, the inconvenient, we can forget, that God built today. And that tomorrow is never guaranteed for any of us.

Think about the biggest claims of innovation that many of us are involved with today, driverless cars, digital assistants, streamline communication, faster information, it's no wonder we can convince ourselves we don't need anyone. And don't get me wrong, I love technology, I just don't think it can replace our soul, and I don't think we should let it. Understanding what its role in our life should be is so incredibly important. As a matter of fact, the original promise of some of these very innovations that we use every day, from the internet, to cars, to email, to smartphones, if you remember, at every one of these milestones, the sort of promise that gets made is we will be so efficient, we will get so much work done in such a small period of time, what will we do with all of our free time? We will have so little stress, we will just live in this utopian, incredibly peaceful and prosperous world. How's that going?

It's just pushed us faster and faster and faster, to want even more. Jesus, He began His prayer last week with these words that we prayed together. And if you're familiar with the prayer, just pray these words, as you see them on the screen. He said, Our Father in heaven; an invitation to His care. He said, hallowed be your name. Remember that? In exposure to His power He said, your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven; a reminder of the real kingdom, with a real King that is still raining and ruling today. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven; it's an imperative to submit our lives in a broken world, to the person and the plan that really can make a difference, even when it feels like nothing can make a difference in your life. Again, these are words that we don't have to repeat verbatim, there a pattern to begin and think about our personal private prayer practice with, so that we would have perspective to bring to our problems. But Jesus, He doesn't stop there. It's just where He starts. And the next portion of this is what many of us have been waiting for. If you were like cool, I want to learn about prayer, and the reason that I want to learn about prayer is so that I can have a more effective relationship with this cosmic vending machine. And so today's prayer portion is going to be really interesting to you.

Jesus says, Give, and we are here for this one, right? So matter of fact, we just add me, give me, give me, if you're in a hurry you just say gimme, if you have kids, they say gimme, gimme, gimme. That's our prayer posture to God. Some of you, that's how your prayer starts, how your prayer has a middle, how your prayer ends, you are a spiritual toddler in the way you approach God to prayer. And all of us have that in us. Me too. We can all default to there. This Vending Machine God is not an actual relationship, it's just a transactional one. It's easy to get there, but it's not worth it. But especially if our faith is a convenient hobby; we run to God in crisis, with our marriage, with our job with our finances, with our health. But we've often forgotten the first part that we learned about in prayer last week. And maybe for you if you're not a person of faith, you have no idea that any other part of prayer could exist. This is the only part you even thought about. God wants to be in a relationship with you and me all the time. He wants us to know His power all the time. He wants us to submit our plans to His plans all the time. So there was a way that He had been doing that for generations, and we see it sort of alluded to in the whole verse where He says, Give us this day, our daily bread.

Now, this verse is probably harder for us, right? Part of it is because I know a lot of you are actually trying to avoid eating bread entirely. That's a different sermon. Okay. But seriously, we don't even understand the reference that Jesus is making. Because to us, we just think like daily bread, who cares? We're not really thinking about daily bread at all. We're thinking about this kind of bread, right? We're thinking not even just about daily bread, we're thinking about annual bread. We're thinking God, I need a lot more bread, but it doesn't look like that. Maybe you want a little bit more bread in your bank account, so that you can spend it, so that you can save it, so that you can invest it. We're usually trying to think about how our bread can last a lot longer than a day; our daily bread has been taken care of a long time ago, but Jesus, He's talking to a group of people who grew up Jewish. And they instantly knew the reference that Jesus was making.

See, there was a time when God's people had escaped Egyptian captivity, where they had been for a very long time. And when they escaped Egyptian captivity, there is a song that if you grew up in church, you learned about this, when Moses went to talk to Pharaoh, so I'm gonna ask you to sing that song with me just a second. If you're not a church person, this is going to be weird, and I promise we didn't practice this beforehand. Okay? If you grew up in church how does the song go? Pharaoh, Pharaoh. Alright, are you gonna have to help me out? Ready? Pharaoh, Pharaoh, whoa baby let my people go. Oh yeah, that's, it's weird. It's a weird thing. And if you grew up in church, it's in you now. And I just got stuck in your head all week. But that song was about a story of how God delivered His people from Egypt. And eventually, they end up in the wilderness for an entire generation, and God wanted to teach them to depend on Him every single day. And one of the ways that God did that was by feeding them with this thing called manna, or what it means in English, bread from heaven; it didn't quite look like this bread.

God delivered bread each and every day for the Jewish people that only lasted for that day. So clearly, it was organic, right? They only had bread to last that day, they couldn't store it or save it, except for one day; on the Sabbath- their day of rest - their weekly routine and rhythm of being able to reset their pace and connection with God, the bread would last two days. And that was the way over time that God would teach his people to depend on Him and to rest. Now, Jewish children, they learned that story before they could speak. This was hardwired into who they were this was in their cultural reality, it was core to their identity. People were annoyed then too, even as it was happening, they were like God, can we put in a different menu option? Are there other options? Can we get some tupperware down here? I'm sure they would have loved refrigerators or tupperware, stock portfolios or Costco who wouldn’t? See God was teaching them a lesson about depending on Him because remember, our daily needs your daily needs; they're an invitation, not an inconvenience. They're a feature, not a bug. God wants you and me to depend on Him.

So what do we do with this? Maybe for you it's really easy to relate to that situation, because of your situation or stage in life. I can remember as a college student, deciding where I would eat dinner that night, based on how much money was left in my checking account. That's how little there was right? Maybe for you. You're a single parent, you were laid off months ago, the financial stability you hoped for is long gone. And so what this prayer does is it puts words to a story that you are feeling, and you're longing to experience God's provision in your life. Maybe that's how you feel, maybe you over time forgotten that God was interested and wanted to know, that He wants to be in relationship even for your daily needs.

For others of you, though, the problem is, you don't really think about daily needs anymore. Your daily needs are covered. As a matter of fact, for some of you, your daily needs are covered for several lifetimes. But you still have daily needs, right? Maybe it's the need for your health to improve and you feel powerless to change it. Maybe it's your desperation, your depression and anxiety and you've never gotten the help to change that part of your story. Maybe it's for your grown children to call you back or to come back to the faith that you raise them in. We all have daily needs. It's just a matter of how we see them, how we think about them. What are those things that you can thank God for each day? That can give you a reminder that it is not passive that God is actively providing for your needs every single day. Maybe it's the very basic hierarchy of needs stuff, its food, its shelter, its physical health, what are the cues that can remind you to thank God for that and pray for that? Every time you take your daily medication, you thank God that it exists. Maybe every time you turn on the faucet and clean water pours out about you, thank God that that exists. Maybe every time you flip a light switch on, and PG&E has poured favor down upon you for your electricity to work, you thank God for that; I do. Maybe it's a chance to pray for restored relationships today. Or the strength you need to endure a difficult conversation or situation ahead. Even today, I want to take just a moment to pray that line together, and then to give you a moment in the quiet of your own heart to talk to the Lord and to just ask Him, God, what is that daily need I should be praying for today, asking you to show up in? So pray this line out loud with me, and then take a moment you ready? Give us this day, our daily bread. Now take a moment and ask the Lord to show you that daily bread today.

God we do we lift up the powerlessness that sometimes we can creep into. We confess God, the assumption we make, that you have taken care of everything already or that we have. And God We simply ask that you would give us today our daily bread. That what we need financially, that what we need circumstantially, that what we need relationally and emotionally, that God you would deliver it. That we would see your hand, that we would give you honor and praise. And that we can trust you more because we depend on you, rather than trying to do it on our own. Keep the prayer close to our heart today. God remind us of it. It's in Jesus name. Amen.

So what did God show you? What did he bring to your attention? Maybe write it down, put it in your phone. Are you annoyed by it? Does it seem too small, too insignificant, maybe too big? Just remember, even though we want to be independent, we are built to be dependent. Our daily needs are an invitation, not an inconvenience. They're there to draw us to God. What would change in your life if you believed that? How would you live differently? How would you see people differently? How would you wake up differently or go to bed differently?

Now the second aspect of this part of the Lord's Prayer is going to lead us further into the same chapter that we've been reading, but out of the Lord's prayer itself and that's to help us learn to trust for today. To trust for today. Over the last few years, we have become pretty aware or at least concerned about what's next. Right? From COVID, to inflation, to the new iPhone that's about to get announced, to whether or not you got Taylor Swift tickets, to the next election, all have equal importance, obviously, you know. But the gift of this part of Jesus’ Prayer for us is that we can live in light of the future by trusting that God is as powerful as we prayed He was last week; because we understand that today is all that's guaranteed we let God have tomorrow, and we trust them for today so that we might depend on him more. This all feels totally fine in our life, right? Until there's a problem, until there's a setback, until there's an issue that we didn't see coming and now we are consumed about tomorrow.

Earlier this year, in the span of 90 days, I lost my mom and then one of my brothers. And in general I'm a pretty upbeat person, I can roll with the punches and I kept pushing through the details but there was this nagging weight that I couldn't shake. There were and there still are days when I feel very low motivation, when I'm exhausted even when the activity level I've done doesn't feel like it warrants it. I'd seen this and others and could quickly diagnose it. But in myself it took longer to see what really was depression. I've had great conversations, and I've good help in my life to be able to walk through it. But it can happen to all of us, and trusting God for today isn't about pretending that that's just going to go away, right? I'm going to dive into some of Jesus’ words that can help, but if you are facing whatever depression or anxiety looks like in your life, and counseling has never been a part of your story, can I just encourage you? You're not meant to do this alone, it's time to get help. Maybe today, the next step you need to take is talking to one of our prayer teams at the campus that you're at. Maybe it's to send an email this week to ask for some referrals or to ask to sit down with someone. Don't do this alone, you can't, and part of trusting God for your daily bread may be to take a step to get help today.

Now, at the end of the chapter, where we've been studying the Lord's Prayer together, Jesus is focusing on something that we might define differently, but it's really a common issue throughout all of human history. He puts it this way. Jesus says, “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or What shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” See, Jesus knew that the basic necessities of life would always be things that would be easy for us to worry about. Now, He's not referring to clinical depression, He's not talking about, hey, how do you just pray away bad feelings, He's talking about what you and I deal with all of us universally on a regular basis where worry can creep into our lives. Now, we actually have entire industries that are built around future proofing our life, right? Like so much else in our pursuit of Jesus, the approach that we take is really about the motivation that sits underneath the decisions that we make.

We aren't designed to live a life that doesn't depend on God every day, if you're looking for a version of faith that you only have to pull out, like a merit badge when you need it, that is not the version of faith that God wants for you. Pastor and author Steve Cuss helps us identify a core issue as we battle daily bouts of anxiety. He says it this way says, he says “I believe leadership anxiety is generated when we think we need something in any particular moment that we don't actually need.” This is sometimes just a lack of self-reflection, that if you were mad at God because He hasn't answered your specific prayer, whether you call yourself a Christian or not; if you wrote out in the things that you think this is what I definitely need today, and then hand that to someone else in your life whose judgment you trust, would they cross any of them out to say you don't need that today. You want that today. Maybe you want that for a future day, but what you need today is just this, and beginning to say you know what God, I'm going to trust you for what I need today. What have you convinced yourself that you need?

Need is a really powerful word. I think sometimes we say we need something that we actually just want. And what we really need we've already assumed. With little kids, you hear this all the time, right? I need a snack, I need a game, I need a show, I need to not go to bed yet. Right? And we can chuckle but we do the same thing with God. This kind of exaggeration of our wants, it can happen to all of us. So where is it in you? And how can you release that? By thinking of the kingdom that Jesus is really talking about that we were praying last week.

Jesus, He calls out a specific group of people, He calls out the Gentiles, and says the Gentiles think this way. They don't depend on God because they don't have a relationship with God. Non-Jewish people say they don't even try this, for them it's all about what they can do to survive on their own, and we have our own version of Gentiles today, too, right? There are people all around us that if you're a Christian; people you work with, people you go to school with, people who live around, people who are like I don't have any connection doesn't even make sense to me to depend on God. I'm going to depend on myself. And let me just tell you, this idea, right? Of depending on the approval of others, or the false identities that the world and culture around us tell us will be enough, before you judge your unchurched neighbor, that friend who's walked away from faith; before you judge other people too harshly, Jesus is warning all of us to consider how quickly we can drift into those same patterns of thought. Those same lies in our own life.

That was Jesus’ point, even 2,000 years ago. Without intentionally going to God for your daily needs, for my daily needs, we stop going to God for an actual relationship; He just becomes our vending machine. He's only someone that we go back to when we need something. He becomes our last resort rather than our closest comfort. That's not the way God made you.

You'll never be satisfied that way. Let me put it plainly; We aren't built to be independent even though the world around you is constantly telling you you are. We have been created to be dependent on God and interdependent on one another. The sooner that we believe that and incorporate that into our daily lives, the sooner we will be living in light of what Jesus taught his disciples; the sooner that our prayer can become a conversation rather than a transaction. So no matter how independent you think you are, it would only take one phone call, one text message, to show you how much you aren't in control. For me, it's been calls about the passing of loved ones. For you, maybe it was your own diagnosis, or the end of a job that you thought was secure, or news about your kids that was devastating. For some of you, it's been the journey to find a spouse or to start a family. And I know, I know, these are pressure points, because they remind us of how little control we actually have.

In March of 2020, we all discovered how little control we really had. And for a little while I think it kind of shook us. But then just like Jesus is warning 2,000 years ago, we slip right back, and we take control -we think we do. We slip back to believing we have covered all our bases, that we're in control again. God can take a seat on the bench, we got it. But this pattern of prayer from Jesus; it's an affront when we live and pray according to those lies that we are tempted to believe that we can do it on our own. Corrie Ten Boom, who is a Christian who worked to rescue Jewish people from the Nazis during World War II, she puts it this way, she says “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.” You should write that one down, because whatever stress you're going through, I'm telling you, we should listen to her. She had plenty to worry about, and she said I'll let tomorrow take care of itself. The Lord is already there. Today, right now, I'm going to trust God for my daily bread.

Menlo Church, what if God gave you the needs that you have to show that you really need Him? What if that's actually the point? See, we don't want to bother God, but it bothers God when we try to live without Him. Manna, could be how God continues to do life today, He could have man a fall from heaven for you and me. He's doing it differently on purpose, but it's the same principle. The way that God shows up in your life every day, is an invitation to a deeper and deeper relationship with Him.

Many of us we hold a version of what's called practical atheism, where you call yourself a Christian and you believe and think all the right things, but your life reflects none of it. As a matter of fact, your decisions, your core frameworks about how you live your life look nothing like the way that Jesus is calling us to. So I wonder if you abandon Christianity tomorrow other than your Sunday schedule and your social habits, what would change? would your life look any different? Would your 9-5 look any different? Would your classmates notice? Your neighbors notice? Your friends notice? Your co-workers notice? When we pattern our life closer and closer to Jesus, they do because the principle of daily dependence on God is the foundation of our relationship with Him. It's the basis on which our faith depends.

Maybe for you this is an invitation to daily prayer that you schedule a reminder for. Maybe for you over the course of your day, you know when those stress points are going to come up and you say God, I want to pray for my daily bread, my moment-by-moment bread, I want to not assume. What does that look like for you to acknowledge where your strength is really going to come from this week? Take a step. If you think that your status or your stuff is going to protect you or defend you from this need, by the way, let me just let you know if you don't already, our status will evaporate and our stuff will outlive all of us.

Our standing with God is the only thing that carries with us into eternity. It's the only thing that we have that's unshakable. And the great news is that we've been offered standing with God eternally and for today, if we just accepted it. Jesus over the course of His ministry, He gives these little hints. He tells us who He is and why He's really on Earth, but He does it in sort of increasingly open ways, and one of the clearest ones that He offers, a follower of His, named John writes about. And he records Jesus saying this, he says, “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat. Jesus then said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” Then “The they said to him, Sir, give us this bread always.” Even they were saying, we don't want the manna one time, give it to us always. And “Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

See, Jesus is highlighting what we've already been talking about; with Israel in the wilderness, they were receiving it from God every day, and He was showing that He was a permanent and perfect provision from God. The daily bread that we pray for, that we long for, the ultimate spiritual bread that we need God had already provided. And the daily bread we pray for in our regular life is just a shadow. It's just letting us know and reminding us of God's ultimate faithfulness in the provision of Jesus. You will hunger and thirst again physically, good news, we still have donuts, we still have coffee, right? Lunch is on the way. But because of Jesus living a perfect life for you, dying, the death that we all deserved, and coming back from the grave, we can have a permanently satisfied spiritual appetite secured forever. That's what Jesus wanted them to hear. And that's what He wants you and me to hear. Maybe for you, you've been a Christian for a long time, you just needed to be reminded of that. Maybe you're somebody that walked away, and you needed to be reminded that that offer was still available to you. Maybe you're somebody that's never considered this before faith was a joke to you, and you feel God waking you up to this kind of daily dependence, to this kind of idea that there is something bigger for you, than what the world has promised.

So even as we pray this prayer together, give us this day, our daily bread. Let's remember that Jesus has already provided us the bread of life in Himself forever. And if you've never made that decision, you've never prayed to follow Jesus, I'm going to begin our prayer as we close together with a prayer you can just pray in the quiet of your heart, in your own words to say Jesus, I’m in. And so if that's you, if you need to pray that prayer, you just pray it. And then I'll close our time together. Would you close your eyes with me.

If you need to choose to follow Jesus, in your own words, you just pray a prayer just like this in the quiet of your heart; God, thank you for loving me. Thank you for making a way back for me. Thank you that your love is inexhaustible, that your plan is unshakable. And God I surrender my plan to yours. I surrender the version of life I was living for, for yours. God, I accept the gift you've made available, and I choose to follow you today and every day after. Thank you for my daily bread. And thank you for a kingdom without end. God I love you, and I choose to follow you today.

God, I pray for everyone who just asked that for the first time, that you would give them such confidence, such joy about what it looks like to take another step with you. God I pray that as a church, those of us who are followers of you, we would welcome with open arms people who are skeptically trying to figure out what it means to know you people, who are coming back after a season away, God that we would be known for how we love one another. And God today, even as we think about what's next and we're tempted to let our minds drift into the rest of this week. God just give us today. Our Daily Bread. It's in Jesus name. Amen.

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