Matthew 6:5-15 And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 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. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.' 14 For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Introduction: Why pray?
If Ephesians 1:11 is really true, and God really does work out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will… - if everything is predetermined - why pray? Last week we talked about God’s will of decision – His unchangeable, perfect, sovereign plan. You can have full confidence that every single thing that has ever happened to you was His perfect plan, because His plan never gets derailed. And inevitably, whenever I preach a sermon like that, questions are going to arise on this whole issue of determinism. If God’s plan cannot be changed, what is the point of praying? What is the point of working? What is the point of doing anything?
I addressed that a few weeks back, but I think I need to talk about it again because this is such a common pitfall. But always remember this rule of thumb: Any time your theology hinders your prayer life, you know you are into error. If your doctrinal system causes you to pray less or pray less fervently – your theology is messed up. Good theology never does anything but intensify prayer.
It is interesting to me that the result of both hyper-Calvinism and hyper-Arminianism is the same – less prayer. A hyper-Calvinist is someone who takes the legitimate aspects of Calvinism about the sovereignty of God and then adds in his own human reasoning to draw conclusions that are unbiblical. And a hyper-Arminian does the same thing with free will. The hyper-Calvinist says, “If God is in full control of everything, that means my decisions must not matter – so why pray?” The hyper-Arminian focuses all his attention on human free will and says, “What happens is determined by what human beings decide. God will not override our free will, therefore – why pray? Why pray for God to do something when it is not really up to Him; it is a matter of what human beings decide to do? I really think the key to harmonizing what Scripture says about God’s sovereign control on one hand and man’s responsibility and free will on the other hand is in prayer. Prayer is the perfect balance because it acknowledges that God is in control, but it also acknowledges that the future can go one way or go another way depending on our prayers.
Scripture is very clear about two things: The future is one hundred percent in God’s hands and He will accomplish His perfect plan. God wants us to think of what is going to happen in the future as undetermined from our perspective. God already knows what is going to happen tomorrow morning. But from our perspective He wants us to think in terms of outcomes depending in significant measure on what we decide. Just look at the life of Jesus. If anyone would become a fatalist and just say, “It doesn’t matter what we do – God’s plan is set in stone” you would think it would be Jesus (since He is the one who came up with the plan and set it in stone). Jesus believed in the sovereignty of God more than any Calvinist, and yet - look at His life. Did Jesus behave as though our actions do not really matter? No! Just the opposite. He worked hard. He got up out of bed early – before the sun was up. He stayed up all night sometimes. He traveled long distances on foot. And He prayed hard, and long, and intensely.
Be very careful with human reasoning and philosophy. Sometimes we become so philosophical we become too smart by half, and we need to just back up and remember that God is our Father. I think sometimes we could get better answers from a child who loves his dad than from a philosopher. If you do not know why we should pray, just go to a seven year old and ask the question: “My dad is in charge of absolutely everything – so why should I talk to Him about my troubles?”
“Uh – because… he’s in charge of everything?”
God is sovereign. That means He is absolutely free. Ask a kid – “My dad can do absolutely anything he wants, so why should I ask him for stuff?”
“Because he can do anything he wants?”
If it helps, think of it this way – it may be that it is God’s perfect plan to do one thing if you pray and to do something else if you do not pray. Either way He will accomplish His perfect plan, but your prayer still determines what happens. So we need to pray not as an empty, meaningless exercise, like people’s lives depend on it. We need to pray as though the honor of God’s name depends on it, because it does. We need to pray as though the kingdom of God depends on it, because it does. And we should pray as though our daily bread depended on it, because it does.
James 4:2 You do not have because you do not ask.
Thomas Watson said: “The tree of mercy will not drop its fruit unless shaken by the hand of prayer.” That is a great statement. We have access to the orchard free of charge, but the fruit does not come off the tree until you shake it by prayer.
The Stuff: Daily Bread (temporal needs)
Stands for all temporal things needed to do God’s will
We are studying through the Sermon on the Mount and we come this morning to Matthew 6:11. Jesus is teaching us how to pray, and in verse 1 we have the fourth request in the prayer: Give us this day our daily bread. There are three parts to this request – the bread, the supplier of the bread, and the fact that it is daily. So our outline this morning is “The Stuff, The Supplier, and The Schedule.” We will start with the stuff: Bread. That is the only physical thing in the prayer. And most interpreters would agree that bread is shorthand here for all our physical temporal needs. Jesus is not saying to pray for bread but not water or clothing. Pray for everything you need, whether it be food, drink, sleep, shelter, eye-glasses, clothes, cars, cell phones, couches, earrings, iPods, hot tubs, televisions, video games…- wait a second, is that going too far? Video games? Is Jesus teaching us here to pray for video games? Bread and water – that’s fine. But “Give us this day our hot tubs and iPods?” God provides all our needs, not all our wants – but what is a need and what is a want?
God will supply everything you need – but everything you need for what? Everything you need to stay alive? That is not much. You could stay alive in a grass hut with a bowl of rice per day. Is that all God promises? Or does He even promise that much? If God has promised to provide all we need to stay alive – why do Christians die? None of us have everything we need to stay alive the day we die.
So God provides me with everything I need…to do what? To be happy? To have fun? What kind of needs are we talking about here?
There is only one answer that fits the context of the Sermon on the Mount. A need is whatever is necessary to do His will and advance His kingdom. God will supply everything we need to carry out our calling. He will supply us with everything we need to glorify Him – to do the work of His kingdom – to please Him. If I need food and drink to do what is pleasing to Him, He will provide me with food and drink. If I need a car to do what He has called me to do, He will make sure I have a car. And if I need to starve to death for Him to accomplish His will, He will make sure I have the strength and courage to die for Him – everything I need to do His will. When a Christian gets mugged or runs out of money or dies – that is not an exception to the promise of provision. There are no exceptions. God richly supplies us with absolutely everything we ever need to do what He calls us to do – even on the day He calls us to die.
That is our daily bread – the earthly stuff we need to do God’s will. There is no place for praying for our earthly desires apart from what is needed to do God’s will.
“OK fine, but I still want to know – where do the hot tubs come in?”
Are Jacuzzis included in daily bread? Is it ever God’s will for us to sit in a hot tub or go skiing or play a video game? Should I pray for a job? Yes - I need a job to provide for my family – that is easy enough. A car? Yes - I need a car to get to work. Those are easy. But what about a boat or an RV? What is the role of recreation in doing God’s will?
When is an earthly pleasure self-indulgence?
For a detailed answer to that question I will refer you to the message titled “Recreation,” March 6, 2009). For now, a quick summary. Earthly pleasures exist to assist us in delighting in God.
1 Timothy 6:17 Command those who are rich in the present age… (to repent and give all their money away? No) not to be arrogant or to set their hope on the uncertainty of wealth, but on God, who richly provides us with all things for our enjoyment.
God created enjoyable things for our enjoyment. It is important that we enjoy them because throughout Scripture the presence of God is compared to all kinds of earthly pleasures. God created earthly pleasures as samples of God’s delightfulness. We are to make all our enjoyment of earthly pleasures acts of fellowship with God. And we do that when the enjoyment of the earthly pleasure is not an end in itself, but is only a means to the end of helping us delight in God.
But that is dangerous, because of James 5.
James 5:1 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. … 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. … 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.
I don’t know about you but I definitely do not want to hear that on Judgment Day. How do you know when you have gone too far with earthly pleasures?
James 4:3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
How do we know when our enjoyment of earthly pleasures is not an enjoyment of God, but just sinful hedonism? So how do we harmonize 1 Timothy 6 and James 4?
1 Timothy 6:17 …God, who richly provides us with all things for our enjoyment.
James 4:3 …you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
In my study I found eight principles for knowing when the enjoyment of an earthly pleasure has become sinful luxury and self-indulgence. The first one is found in 1 Timothy 6:8.
1) When you are not content without it.
1 Timothy 6:8-9 if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. 9 But those who want to be rich fall into temptation, a trap, and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge people into ruin and destruction.
When you are seeking some earthly pleasure and you are not content without it that means fellowship with God alone is not enough for you – which means enjoyment of that pleasure is not enjoyment of God.
2) When the price you pay for the pleasure outweighs the benefit
A second way to discern if you have crossed over into self-indulgence is when the price you pay for that pleasure outweighs the benefit. There is a section in Proverbs 23 about the foolishness of drunkenness, and the argument of that passage is basically that even though there may be some enjoyment connected to being drunk, the cost is too high. If your recreation is ruining your marriage, it is not worth it. If it is putting you into debt, if it is interfering with your ministry, or interfering with developing friendships it is not worth it. If you are sacrificing more important things for recreation – you have crossed the line.
3) When it enslaves you
Titus 3:3 At one time we too were … enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures…
It does not matter if it is cocaine or coffee. If you have a habit that you are doing too much and your efforts to quit or back off have failed – you are enslaved.
4) When it becomes the object of your love
2 Timothy 3:4 says there will be terrible times in the last days because people will be lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Everybody enjoys pleasure (by definition). When you go from using pleasure to teach you about the goodness of God and start loving the pleasure itself, so that pleasure becomes the love of your life, you have crossed the line.
5) When your hope is in that thing rather than God
1 Timothy 5:5 The widow who …puts her hope in God and continues night and day to pray and to ask God for help. 6 But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives.
The one who lives for pleasure in a bad way is the opposite of the one who puts her hope in God. The more wealth you have the greater the temptation to put your hope in that wealth.
1 Timothy 6:17 Command those who are rich … not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth … but to put their hope in God
Hope is when you feel good today because of something good that is coming in the future. How do you know when an earthly pleasure has become too high in your priorities? If the thing that keeps you going in life is looking forward to some earthly pleasure rather than the grace of God, you have crossed over into idolatry.
6) When you prefer that thing above what God promises
Hebrews 11:25 [Moses] chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time.
Sometimes you have to make a choice – give up the pleasure in favor of heavenly reward or forfeit heavenly reward to enjoy the pleasure. Any time we prefer a temporal pleasure over heavenly reward we have gone too far.
7) When it chokes the work of the Word in your heart
Luke 8:14 The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life's worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature.
You have gone too far when that earthly pleasure begins to interfere with the work of God’s Word in your heart. You are distracted when you read Scripture because you are thinking about that earthly pleasure. Your heart is reluctant to accept certain things in the Bible because it might interfere with or restrict your involvement with that thing. Or it can just dull your affections toward God. You are not as excited about your ministry at church as you are about your next enjoyment of that thing. You think about that thing more than you think about God’s Word. You study that thing more than you study Scripture – like the guy who has all the statistics of his favorite sport memorized – or the storyline of her favorite TV series, but does not have any Scripture memorized.
8) When it impels selfishness rather than love
James 4:1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your pleasures that battle within you? 2 You want something but don't get it.
When enjoyment of God’s gifts is in its proper place it does not push you toward selfishness or interfere with loving people. If you find yourself getting angry a lot, chances are it is because your love for pleasure is bloated out of proportion. Ironically, indulging in earthly pleasures tends to make us irritable, which proves how ultimately unsatisfying they are.
If enjoying recreation or some other earthly pleasure increases your love for God, and does not violate any of those eight principles or any other biblical principles, then it fits into the category of daily bread, and it is the proper subject of prayer. But the moment it begins to violate one of those guidelines it becomes hedonism - lust for pleasure, and it is not fellowship with God at all, which means there is absolutely no place for it in our prayers. There is no place for praying for anything that does not advance the kingdom of God.
The Schedule: today
Not annual bread
So, the stuff? Bread - everything we need to do what God wants us to do. Now let us think about the schedule: today. Give us today our daily bread. Most of Jesus’ hearers earned the money to feed their families each day. If they could not work for a couple days they did not eat. But we live in a much wealthier culture. We tend to think in terms of “Give us this year our annual bread.” If you did not go to work tomorrow you would still eat just fine. We worry not about today, but about the months and years to come – how we will pay our bills in the future. But as far as today goes, our only real fear is the terrifying possibility of possibly having to eat something that is not what we are in the mood for. Or poor service in the restaurant. When it comes to provision, the last thing on our mind is today. What we want is not daily bread, but a lump sum payment that will make us secure for at least a year to come. We are not saying, “Lord, fill my belly” but rather “Lord, fill my barns.” But our sense of feeling secure is not supposed to come from our bank account or paycheck or apparent job security. Our sense of feeling secure should come from daily trust in our Father. My kids never check the balance in our bank account – ever. They have asked me for a lot of things, but never for the login info to check our bank balance. If I take them on a vacation they do not say, “Are we going to be able to make the house payment next month if we go on this vacation?” All of that is the farthest thing from their minds. They do not worry about whether they will have a place to sleep tonight, or if they are going to have to go hungry for a week. And it is a day-by-day kind of trust. I do not have to put a one-year stockpile of canned foods in their bedrooms in order for them to feel provided for. And that is the kind of trust Jesus is teaching us to have in our heavenly Father.
When you pray for earthly provisions, pray for what you need right now. Where wisdom calls for planning ahead, plan ahead. But if nothing can be done today for some future concern then it does not belong in today. Leave it in the future where it belongs.
The schedule Jesus gave for provision is “daily.” Living one day at a time is more than a platitude. It is a very important principle for walking with God. The schedule for His provision is daily, not yearly. When we get a stockpile of provision ahead of time it tends to make us feel independent, rather than dependent on God.
Proverbs 30:8 …do not give me riches, but give me only my prescribed amount of bread 9 Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the LORD?'
Do not ever make me so wealthy that I might be tempted to think I am self-sufficient.
“But what if He already has provided for me for years to come? I have a lot of money in the bank, and my job is very secure, and I am in a position where even if I did lose my job I would be fine for quite a while. So He has provided a year in advance.” Not really. We need to remember two things- first, all your money could be gone tomorrow. And second, there is a lot more to daily bread than money. For example, you are going to need sleep. If you get a bad case of insomnia you will not be able to function. You also need various relationships. You need a boss who will not be unreasonable. At various times, you need people to keep their word and come through for you at critical moments, you will need the right people with the right knowledge to come along and point out things you need to know. You will need health. There is a germ on a handrail that will make you deathly ill for eight weeks – you need your hand to miss it by a centimeter instead of landing right on it. And when you do get sick you need to recover. It makes a big difference if your recovery is two days instead of five years. You need clear thinking at those moments when you make an important decision. You need the Post Office to get you important mail on time. You need it to rain enough for farmers to produce crops. You need the government to have a military that can protect the country. You need other drivers on the road to stop at red lights.
Every day, we live off charity from God. Nobody is “set for life.” Nobody is even set for tomorrow. If God withholds your daily bread tomorrow – there are no resources that could carry you through. Nobody is set for tomorrow, but if God is your Father then you are always set for today.
Nor hourly bread
So we pray “give us this day our daily bread” not “give us this year our annual bread.” And nor do we pray, “Give us this hour our hourly bread.” We are into instant gratification, and so usually we eat something within minutes of getting a hunger pang. No way can I remain hungry for forty-five minutes – I gotta stop at Wendy’s! In fact very often we eat a whole meal before we even get a hunger pang just because it is time to eat. We respond to cravings, not hunger. There are some people who have not felt a true hunger pang in months. Think of how rare it is that we ever go more than an hour or two between feeling hunger pangs and eating. It is rare – and when it happens we think it is a calamity (“I’m STARVING!!!”) When we allow the flesh to demand hourly bread we become enslaved to our appetites, and we greatly hinder our freedom to do kingdom work.
We want our annual bread and our hourly bread, but Jesus said, “No, ask your Father in heaven for your daily bread.”
The Source: The Father
OK, so the stuff is bread (all our earthly needs), the schedule is daily – not yearly or hourly. Now let’s look at the Source of this bread – our Father in heaven.
God is our Provider
One of the most obvious roles of a father is to provide for His children. And God has promised to do that for us.
For the world
But doesn’t He feed the rest of the world too?
Acts 14:17 He did not leave Himself without a witness, since He did what is good by giving you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons and satisfying your hearts with food and happiness.
God satisfies the hearts of unbelievers by supplying them with food and happiness. God’s provisions for mankind in this world are staggering. Do not believe the lies of the overpopulation fanatics. During the last sixty years the world population more than doubled – almost tripled. And yet food prices have fallen by half during that time. The earth is experiencing a food glut. The United States Government pays farmers not to grow crops in order to get prices up so the farmers do not all go bankrupt. And still, enough food is now grown in the world to provide every single person on the planet with four pounds of food per day. Even China has a problem with obesity. And less than a third of farmable land is even being farmed. Every day God provides way more food than seven billion people could possibly eat. God has been providing this world with food since the world was created and still, to this day, the resources are vastly greater than what we need. We are not going to run out of resources. The only thing this world is going to run out of is time (time to repent).
God’s love
If you ever question God’s love, just look around at what He created. God could have made us all exist on mud. He could have designed our bodies and designed mud such that it would be all we need to stay alive. But look what we get instead. Think of the varieties of meat and fruit and breads and desserts and vegetables and spices and fats. And the effect of mixing various things together, and cooking them in different ways. The literally millions and millions of different flavors He provided – it is staggering.
For His children
So yes, God provides the whole world with abundant food. So what is different for us? What is different is for us God has promised provision. God has not promised to care for unbelievers. In fact, the day will come when they will all be hungry (Lk.6:25 Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry). Did you know on top of all the other torment of hell, the people are going to be hungry the whole time? And in this life God may provide or He may not – but they have nothing to count on. For them things could go horribly wrong. But we have the promises.
Philippians 4:19 God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.
God forgive us for the times when we have worried and fretted and acted like we were in the same condition as the world – with no promises to count on.
God provides through work
This does not negate responsibility to work.
Deuteronomy 8:18 But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth
So we pray for bread, God answers that prayer by enabling us to work, so if we do not work we are rejecting His answer.
2 Thessalonians 3:10 If a man will not work, he shall not eat.
God provides through giving
So the way God provides is through hard work – and also through giving. Many times when other people pray for what they need God will answer their prayer through you.
1 John 3:17 If anyone has this world’s goods and sees his brother in need but closes his heart to his [need]—how can God’s love dwell in him?
So God does use human means to provide for us, but if we will receive it, He will provide.
Getting bread from God is important
Now let’s take a minute to think about why this request has a place in the Lord’s Prayer among all these huge, lofty, towering subjects we have seen so far. One of the things we learn from the Lord’s Prayer is what is important to God. If God tells us to pray for something, obviously that thing is important to Him. It is something near and dear to His heart. If you make a list of things that are important to God, and that should therefore be important to us, the list so far is:
• God’s honor
• God’s kingdom
• God’s will
• Bread
It is very important to God that we receive daily provisions from Him.
Neediness
God created us to be incredibly needy, dependent creatures. The animals are up walking around moments after being born. It takes us a year. The animals are out on their own in a matter of weeks – for us it is twenty years. And even when we do grow up and become adults we are really not all that different from when we were first born. We need God to supply us with air to breathe and strength to breathe it, and a certain temperature and water and nutrients and countless other things or we will die. And not only do we need physical things – we need guidance. We are absolutely blind to the future. We cannot see even one second into the future – no way of knowing what is coming next. No way of knowing for sure how our decisions will turn out. Think of it – we are careening down the highway of life totally blind. You cannot stop or even hit the brakes – time never stops or slows down. If you do not have someone in the driver’s seat who can see what is coming ahead, you are a fatal accident waiting to happen.
All those needs I talked about earlier that make up our daily bread – we have to have those things and we cannot generate any of them on our own. God made us that way on purpose. If you are a believer you have a father-child relationship with God, and your role in that relationship is to be taken care of. God made it that way to put His glory on display. One of the wonderful facets of God’s glory is the fact that He is the great Supplier of all needs. And so He made us needy.
It is not a relationship where we scratch His back and He scratches ours. God has no needs of any kind – not one. He does not need our worship, He does not need our fellowship, He does not need our service, our money – nothing. So God is the great Supplier of the needs of His creation, and He stands out as the only being without any need.
That is a wonderful facet of His glory. All the pagans worship gods who have needs. What a priceless blessedness it is to worship a God who has no needs!
And so we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread, not “Sell us this day our daily bread.” Normally it is impolite to just ask someone for a gift – you should offer to pay for it if you can. But if you want something from God it is impolite to offer to pay for it (because of how valuable the gift is and how puny our payment would have to be). When we say “Lord, if you give me this thing I’m requesting I’ll do this for You and that for You…” That is an insult. It is like if someone gave you a $150,000 car, and you said, “Here, take this nickel. I want us to be even-steven.” That would show the person that you have no idea what the car is worth. And it would be even worse if you had to borrow the nickel from him to begin with, and then thought you were all even.
The communion of neediness
The reason this request for bread has a place in the Lord’s Prayer is because it shows us an important aspect of fellowship with our Father. We draw near to God and enjoy communion with Him when we stand before Him in a receiving posture. We draw close to God and bring pleasure to Him when we come to Him like a nursing baby. And the continuous interchange of asking and receiving from God and responding with gratitude is a crucial part of fellowship with him.
Maclaren said: “Note the beauty and blessedness of this method of supplying our wants. It gives to each moment its own special character, it gives to each the glory of having in it a fresh gift of God. It binds all together in one long line of brightness made up of an infinite number of points, each a separate act of divine love, each a glittering sign of His presence. It brings God very near to all life. It draws us closer to Him, by giving us at each moment opportunity and need for feeling our dependence upon Him, by bringing us once again to His throne that our wants may be supplied.”
Disinterested love is arrogant
Sometimes Christians who are influenced by worldly philosophy buy into the idea that the highest kind of “love” is what they call “disinterested love” – love where you have no vested interest for yourself. They say, “We should love for God’s sake alone, without any motive of wanting to get anything for ourselves.” That may sound noble, but it is a kind of “nobility” that glorifies us, not God. If we worship God for His sake alone without wanting to get anything out of it for ourselves – that is not love; it is arrogance. If we pray that way we are assuming we are independent and self-sufficient. We are saying, “I don’t need You, God. I have something to offer You (worship), but You don’t have anything I need.” That is arrogance. It is not inappropriate to come to God with worship that seeks nothing from Him. You do not honor a spring by coming to it with a full cup.
Prayerlessness = pride
You can tell when pride starts leaking in to a person’s heart because he will inevitably begin praying less. He will think he is self-sufficient, he is the solution to his own problems, and so he feels less and less urgency in prayer. In practice he becomes a hyper-Arminian. He will tell you that he is totally dependent on God, but deep down he really believes what happens is mainly dependent on him so his prayers become perfunctory.
The same is true for a church. A church that is not very committed to corporate prayer is an arrogant church.
“We’ve got it covered, God – we don’t need Your help.”
If we understand what God has called us to do, we will pray – hard. Because everything God requires of us as a church is impossible. The salvation of souls, the maturing of the Church, overcoming sin, pleasing God, genuine worship – every one of those things is humanly impossible. Outside of special divine intervention we will fail across the board. And that intervention is not automatic – it is conditioned on prayer.
Conclusion: Gratitude
So let us find ourselves on our knees before Him constantly seeking the bread that we need to hallow His name, advance His kingdom, and do His pleasure on earth as it is being done in heaven. Let us draw near to Him as our provider, and let our thanksgiving be as constant as His gifts.
Benediction: Hebrews 4:15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses … 16 Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
