Give Us This Day Means What Do You Require of Me

Sermon outline

"Give us this day our daily bread" is not a list of wants but the question "Lord, what do You require of me today?", and being in the will of God means adopting His vision, refusing to be double-minded and living a balanced, obedient life.

1. Being in the will of God means adopting God's vision

   Being in God's will means exchanging our vision, culture, family dynamics and belief systems for His. If the eye is bad and we keep God in a little box, the light in us is really darkness. Mammon is not only money: pride, fear, anxiety, workaholism, offence, bitterness and whatever takes precedence over God are all little gods to be laid at the altar.

   “Anything that takes precedence in your life over the things of God is mammon.”

   • Matthew 6:22-24

2. Give us this day: Lord, what do You require of me

   The birds neither sow nor reap and the lilies neither toil nor spin, yet God feeds and clothes them, so what does worrying add to your life? We live in a consumer-driven world primed from birth to say "I need, I want", and the next thing never makes us happy. God answered Job's questions with His own: where were you when I laid the foundations? Read in that light, the prayer for daily bread is a paradigm shift from wants to His will, and whatever God does is forever.

   “Give us this day our daily bread is really speaking, Lord, what is it that you require of me today?”

   • Matthew 6:25-34
   • Job 38
   • Ecclesiastes 3:14

3. Let patience have its perfect work, and do not be double-minded

   Count it all joy in trials, because the testing of faith produces patience, and patience perfected means the devil can no longer control you through emotions, thinking or circumstances. Ask God for wisdom daily. But a double-minded man receives nothing: you cannot declare the Word in your prayer closet and then walk out complaining about the municipality and the electricity. Lay the thing at the altar and leave it there.

   Illustration: Faith grows like driving. At first every move takes thought, but after a few years you arrive and cannot remember how you drove there, because it has become natural.

   “We cannot be people of faith and be people of fear. We cannot be the victim and the victor.”

   • James 1:2-8
   • James 4:7

4. Worry about nothing, pray about everything

   Philippians 4 gives a pattern: prayer, then supplication, which he explains as obedience in word and action such as sowing a seed or blessing someone, then thanksgiving. The peace of God may not be there at first, but it builds as you pray, obey and give thanks, until it surpasses even the understanding of the people watching you.

   “Even the people you know won't even understand the peace of God that you have.”

   • Philippians 4:6-7

5. 1. Fellowship with Jesus

   To be in God's will, fellowship with Jesus through a consistent personal prayer life and the Word is essential. Hebrews gives two commands together: draw near to the Lord, and do not forsake assembling together. There is no more one week in and one week out; the local church should be part and parcel of everything you do.

   “The assembly of the saints should be part and parcel of everything that you do.”

   • Hebrews 10:24-25

6. 2. Fellowship with one another

   Residing in God's will means being rightly related to brothers and sisters in the local church. Offence is dealt with by going to your brother first, and only then to the elders. If one member suffers, all suffer; there must be no schism. Someone who criticises a brother has not yet reached the maturity of the love walk.

   “We provoke each other to love, and then we provoke each other to forgiveness, and then we provoke each other to unity.”

   • 1 Corinthians 12:20-26
   • Hebrews 10:24-25

7. 3. A diligent, balanced life

   Paul taught believers to earn a living with their own hands and need nothing, but not to become workaholics who let the cares of life and the deceitfulness of riches choke the Word. Work Sunday, work late, the work event and the family holiday all have their place, but if you overdose on anything, overdose on God. If you are not faithful in little now, you will not be faithful with much later.

   Illustration: If you can't tithe now with the twenty you have, you will never tithe when it is two hundred thousand or two million.

   “If you're going to overdose on anything, you should be overdosing on God.”

   • 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12
   • Luke 16:10
   • Proverbs 11:1

8. 4. Obedience in giving

   God promises to open the windows of heaven to those who bring the tithe into the storehouse, but the question goes back to the eye: are we giving the Lord what belongs to Him, or only what we feel is necessary? For some God requires money, for some time, for some their life, depending on what they hold dear. God is no man's debtor.

   Illustration: As at work, a promotion asks for sacrifice, more study and more effort. How much more with God.

   “When you give unto the Lord, God supersedes every expectation that you can have.”

   • Malachi 3:10

In this message