This transcript was generated by whisper.ai. Welcome back to day three of our look through the first part of Matthew chapter 6. We're looking at what Jesus had to teach us about managing and strengthening our relationship with God in the Lord's Prayer. We're going to look at verse 11 today. Simple prayer, Jesus said, "When you pray, pray like this. Give us today our daily bread. " God wants to meet your greatest needs, and God wants you to depend on him to meet your daily needs. And in this simple prayer, he shows us how. One way of Bible study is to take a verse or a number of verses and emphasize the words in those verses. And in this simple prayer, as you emphasize the different words, "Give us today our daily bread. " Give us today our daily bread. Give us today our daily bread, these truths come out about how God meets our needs. There are four principles here for people who have needs. That's all of us, by the way, people who have needs, that we see in this, as you emphasize these different verses, beginning with the first word, "Give. " Give us today our daily bread. Needs are met. First principle is this. Our needs are met by God's gifts. Your needs are met by God's gifts. You give. We don't earn it. God gives it. This reminds us that God is the sole source of supply in our lives. God is the sole source of your income. I know you think, "Wait, wait. I do the work. I earned it. " Well, let's just ask. Who was the one who worked out the circumstances to give you that job? Or let me just ask it a different way. Who was the one who gives you the strength and the mind to be able to do that job? Or let me just ask it a different way. Who's the one who created you in the first place so you could even be on this planet to do the job? Everything about you is a gift from God. Life is a gift from God. And when you realize that God's the sole source of supply, that's one of the keys to living with this sense of God is meeting the needs of my life. You see, if I think I've earned it, it's so easy to get prideful because I earned it better than you did. I earned it faster than you did. Or it's so easy to get discouraged. I should have earned it better than you did, but you've got more than I do. I don't understand that. But when I see that God has given it, instead of becoming prideful, then I become grateful. And that's how God wants us to live. So you start by realizing principle one, give. Our needs are met by God's gifts. The second principle is this, selfishness multiplies our needs. It doesn't meet our needs. Selfishness actually multiplies our needs. Did you notice how Jesus taught us to pray? Give us today our daily bread. Not give me today my daily bread. Give us our daily bread. Even as you pray for your needs to be met, you're thinking about other people who have needs that need to be met. This is one of the greatest mistakes I can make in prayer. I think many of us can make in prayer. I just get too focused in on just me. And because of that, all I start to see are the needs in my life that aren't being met. When I want them to be met, I start to get more and more selfish about it. But when I start to think about other people's needs, my heart opens up. It's interesting. The more we try to selfishly meet our own needs, the more those needs start to pile up. It's only when we unselfishly trust God with our needs and we humbly recognize the needs of the people that are around us that our deepest needs start to get met. It's a sort of a paradox that if all you do is chase after your own needs, you're going to have more needs every single day. But when you open your heart to recognize others have needs, you start to pray for their needs, you realize we all have needs, you begin to see your needs met. That's the paradox of service. That's the paradox of humility in our lives. Selfishness multiplies needs. It never meets needs. Third principle Jesus teaches us here. You cannot meet tomorrow's need today. You can't meet tomorrow's need today. Give us, you notice he says today, and just to emphasize it, our daily bread, two strong words about he's going to meet your needs one day at a time. You see, every one of us, myself included, we want our needs met by God, but we want them met well in advance. God, if you could put them like in the bank, six months in advance, or maybe a year would be good, that would be great. But God promises to meet our needs just in time. I'm not saying you shouldn't save money, I'm not saying that you shouldn't have a bank account where you can know that some needs will be met in advance. God allows that many times, but there are many other times in our lives when the needs are met just in time, where we don't know where the supply is going to come from, but God shows up. When it comes to the meeting of our needs, our problem is most often not with whether the need is met, but the timing of it being met. We want God to meet it now, but he doesn't really need to meet that need until we really need the bread, we really need the moment. And God often, to build our faith, shows up just on time. Now this prayer, today our daily bread, when the disciples heard daily, they would have thought of, just as if you study the Old Testament, you would think of this, they would have thought of manna in the Old Testament. This is the greatest example of how God meets needs one day at a time. You remember in the Old Testament, they were hungry, the people as they wandered in the wilderness, as they were headed towards the promised land, and God promised to meet their needs by sending them manna, this flaky stuff that came from heaven, that they would be able to gather one day at a time. If they gathered enough for two days, it would rot, whatever they gathered for the next day. They had to go out one day at a time. That's really what you do in many ways, in the work that you do. You're gathering one day at a time. You may not be a farmer, you may be working on electronics equipment, but the truth of the matter is, you're gathering money one day at a time that's going to be used to buy food, that's going to be used to meet the needs of you and your family. That's how God meets our needs. They were so closely connected to it, what a lesson it was every day. Sometimes we miss the connection today, but just imagine a Hebrew child beginning to figure out for the first time. They go out and they say, "Wait, there's plenty of food out here on the ground for tomorrow. Why don't we just get enough for the whole week? We won't have to come back out again. " And the answer was, no, God always supplies our needs every day, one day at a time. There's something refreshing about reminding yourself, "God's meeting my daily needs. " That's how God works. That's how God acts. And when you remind yourself of that, it strengthens your relationship with God, depending on God on a daily basis. It reminds you every day, "I am depending on God for this need. " We either lead an independent life, depending on ourselves trying to, or we lead a depending life. We're depending on God because we know that he loves us. Now, there's a fourth lesson that we learn in this simple prayer. Give us today our daily bread, just bread. The fourth lesson is understand the difference between our wants and our needs. Jesus didn't say, "Give us today our daily 12-course meal. Give us today our daily steak and mushrooms, and there could be some salmon, a little more seafood, and oh, let's see, chocolate cake. Give us today our daily all of that, Lord. " No, just bread, daily bread, the basic stuff of life. God has promised to meet your daily needs, not your daily greeds. Give us today our daily bread. Understand the difference between our wants and our needs. What I want is not always what I need. You probably learned that in your own life, too. What I want is not always what is best. Jim Elliott famously said, "God always gives his best to those who leave the choice with him, those who trust him. " Now, there is something that's working against this principle in our lives every day in the modern world, understanding the difference between our wants and our needs, and that something is called advertising. Advertising, which our minds are fed heavy doses of every day. The goal of advertising is to convince us that our wants are our needs, not just you want this thing, this new car, this new perfume, this new whatever, but you need this thing. Without this thing, you're going to be lost, you're going to be looked down upon, you're going to be nothing. God says don't confuse your wants and your needs. When we get our wants and our needs confused, you know what we often do? We start buying what we've told ourselves is daily bread with a credit card. One of the reasons people get in credit trouble, it's not the only reason, but one of the reasons is they've convinced themselves, "I need that. My God shall supply all your needs according to MasterCard or Visa at 18% monthly interest. " Is that what the Bible says? No, it says in Philippians, "My God shall supply all your needs according to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus. " Your Father is working to meet your daily needs. One of the things we have to get a hold of in this verse is the love that God has for and get better connected with the fact that today he is meeting the needs of my life. He's meeting my physical needs. He's meeting my emotional needs. He's meeting my spiritual needs. He's meeting my intellectual needs. He is a God who is there to meet my needs. When I connect through that, through a simple prayer like this, it deepens my relationship with God. It's not advertising that's meeting the needs of your life. It's not the sinful world, the selfish world that's going to meet the needs of your life. Only your loving Father can meet the deepest needs of your life, and he wants to do it on a daily basis. So let's trust him for it right now. Would you pray with me? And Father, we just pray that simple prayer. Give us today our daily bread. Meet our needs today like only you can. Help me to recognize that through the work you've given, through the things you've given, through the people who have shared with me, that you're meeting the physical needs of my life and that you've given the strength to do that. I'm depending on you for that, God, and thank you. And that alongside of that, you're also meeting the emotional and the spiritual, the intellectual needs of my life as you meet me through relationships, as you meet me through your word, as you meet me through speaking through your spirit. So thank you that I can trust you for the needs of my life, that you're a trustworthy loving God. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Tomorrow Jesus is going to help us to learn about forgiveness.