Our Daily Bread: Depending
What are you depending on God for today?
I don’t know about you, but one of the first things I noticed when we started gathering in-person again for worship about a year ago was just how much all our kids had grown!
All in all, our church at Riverside was totally online for church for about 6 months. Like a lot of churches in this area and across the country, we decided after Spring Break 2020 to not meet in person because of COVID. And when we started coming back together again for in-person worship, the one thing everyone was talking about was…
Look at how much all of the kids have grown!
Over the last year, my 3 kids have grown a lot! In fact… my son Will pre-pandemic was 5’6″. Today he’s 6 feet tall! And he’s not done growing yet, people!
If we want to measure growth in terms of how much our kids have grown all I have to do is take a tape measure and measure Will from head to toe. We know how to measure this kind of growth. We can see how much he’s grown, how much all our kids have grown. It’s tangible. Easy to see. Easy to measure. Easy to quantify.
What’s harder to measure, what’s more difficult to see and quantify is spiritual growth.
How do we measure spiritual growth?
Something I often pray for is for the growth of our church. But what does growth look like in a church? How do you measure the growth of a church?
We could count how much money is given. We could count how many people come to church. How many people are watching online. That’s one way of measuring “growth.” We can count nickels and noses but is that how you measure church growth?
Because I’m a preacher people often ask me if our church is “growing?” Well, that’s an interesting question. How would you answer that? How do you know if a church is growing?
Is a church really growing if more people are coming? If people are giving more this year than they did last year? Or could you have a church that is experiencing a different kind of growth?
The hard part is knowing how to measure the spiritual growth of a church because to know that you would have to know how to measure the spiritual growth of a person.
Which brings us to the question:
How do you measure the spiritual growth?
To answer that question, we may have to answer another question first.
The Way God Measures Growth
The way God measures growth, as you might expect, is counter-intuitive. it’s upside down. Inside out. It’s different than you might think or expect.
And I think it’s important to talk about because this may be the key that unlocks the doorway to spiritual growth for you.
When one of Jesus’ disciples came to him and asked him to teach them to pray, Jesus said, pray this way…
Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
and then he prayed…
Give us today our daily bread.
What in the world did Jesus have in mind when He taught His disciples to pray, “Give us today our daily bread”?
Isn’t that interesting?
Hunger & Growth
For those of you who have kids at home like we do, I think the reason they grow so much and so fast is because they are ALWAYS EATING! They are ALWAYS HUNGRY!
I’m not a doctor, but I think it’s safe to say that their GROWTH DEPENDS on their HUNGER for FOOD.
They are always asking, “What do we have to eat?” “What’s for dinner?” “Can I have a snack?”
By asking those kinds of questions they not only reveal their HUNGER, they declare their DEPENDENCE. Children know, even if they don’t know how to verbalize it, that they are dependent on mom and/or dad for all their needs. And their growth is a result of that need, that hunger, being met by us giving them the food, the bread, that their bodies desire.
So what happens when we pray, “Give us today our daily bread”?
When we pray, “Give us today our daily bread,” we reveal our hunger and we declare our dependance on Our Father. And watch this… our spiritual growth is a result of our needs, our hunger, being met by Our Father giving us our daily bread that our souls desire.
If this is true, then the opposite may also be true. If we do NOT pray, “Give us today our daily bread,” then we may not hunger for God, we may not be depending on God, and as a result… we probably aren’t growing in Christ.
Independence
If you’re anything like me, when you were a kid, someone somewhere along the way taught you that part of growing up, part of becoming mature, was becoming INDEPENDANT.
You need to grow up, which meant being able to stand on your own two feet, provide for yourself, and not need anyone else to help you.
And listen, I do want my kids to grow up. I want them to discover their calling in life, to be able to use their God-given talents to help others, and hopefully make a living and move out of my house at some point! I tell people we’re not raising kids, we’re raising adults.
But Maturity doesn’t equal Independence. At least, not in the Kingdom of God. Not the kind of maturity we’re talking about.
Spiritual Maturity = Dependence on God.
Spiritual Growth = Hunger for God and Dependence on God.
And when we pray , “Give us today our daily bread,” we admit our dependency, our helplessness, and our need.
For many of of us an independent, self-sufficient, approach to life equals maturity. But when it comes to our spirituality, it is our fundamental sin. It’s like we’re back in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve reaching for the fruit declaring we don’t need God.
You know like I know that a lot of us, we pride ourselves on our independence. But when it comes to the spiritual life, growth is measured by our absolute dependance upon Our Father. Our spiritual growth is directly linked to our prayer: “Give us today our daily bread.”
Dependence
The idea of dependance on God for bread that leads to LIFE throughout scripture is so full of meaning.
Manna
It’s hard not to think about the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness where, every single morning, Manna fell from Heaven. This bread from Heaven came with each new day as God’s provision for that day. And except for the day before Sabbath, they could only collect what they needed for that day. If they tried to keep more than they needed it would go bad.
Everyday in the wilderness, between Egypt and the Promised Land, between their past and their future, between their captivity and their ultimate freedom, God literally provided daily bread for his people. His provision was something they could trust, rely on, depend on. Every single day.
And God’s provision of daily bread from Heaven helped them GROW into the people of God.
I AM the Bread of Life
It’s hard not to think about Jesus when he spoke those words, I AM the Bread of Life. He spoke those words to people who were desperate for God, waiting for God’s Messiah, longing for deliverance, and hoping that Jesus was the One they had long been expecting.
Jesus, the Bread of Life, fed the masses bread on more than one occasion. Both were miraculous moments where hungry people found provision from God through Jesus. In both situations those who needed bread learned they could trust God to provide. And every time He fed them their faith in Him GREW.
The Last Supper
It’s hard not to think about Jesus in the upper room with his disciples, taking the Passover bread, breaking it and saying, “This is my body broken for you.”
He offered that bread to a disciple who would betray Him, to another disciple who would deny Him, and to other disciples who would abandon Him. In that moment He wanted us to know that at His table all are welcome. No one is excluded.
Your perfection isn’t a prerequisite to be present at the Table of the Lord. And at His Table, where He broke that Passover Bread and transformed it’s meaning into something entirely new, at His Table, where we break the Bread of Life every week, our faith GROWS every time we remember the great love of God for us revealed at the cross.
A New Way to Measure
So what are you depending on God for today?
I started with that question because I think this is HOW you measure your spiritual growth. I think this is how you measure your spiritual growth as a person and I think this is how we measure our spiritual growth as a church.
The more we DEPEND on God for what we need, the more we GROW in faith, love, joy, peace, and every fruit of the Spirit.
So what DAILY BREAD are you praying for today?
What DAILY BREAD are we praying for today as a church?
You measure your spiritual growing by measuring your depending on God.
Jesus once said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
If you’re not depending on God in prayer, if you’re not asking, seeking, knocking… then you may not be experiencing the kind of spiritual growth you want in your life. This may be why you feel stuck, frustrated, this may be why you’re always angry.
Of course, I’m making an assumption. I’m assuming you want to experience spiritual growth. I’m assuming you’re open to having your heart, your life, and your mind changed by Christ. I’m assuming you’re depending on God for your daily bread.
Thomas Merton once wrote…
“The whole Christian life is a life in which the further a person progresses, the more he has to depend directly on God and it’s not the other way around at all… The more we progress, the less we are self-sufficient. The more we progress, the poorer we get so that the man who has progressed most, is totally poor — he has to depend directly on God. He’s got nothing left in himself.”
Thomas Merton
Sitting in the Sun
Once upon a time there was an old, wise, spiritual woman that people would go to for advice about their lives. Specifically, they would ask about the spiritual life. One day, a young man came to the door of the woman because he had a question he wanted to ask her. She invited him in and they sat at her table with a glass of lemonade. She said, Tell me, what is your question? What do you want to know?
He replied, How does a person grow spiritually?
She considered his question for a moment, and then responded with her own. How does an apple ripen? By sitting in the sun. So it is with prayer.
For an apple to grow there is no striving. No one tells an apple to try harder, work harder, do better, do more. Apples grow from sitting in the sun.
Disciples of Jesus grow in the same way, by sitting in the presence of the Son of God and by praying, Give us this way our daily bread. And as we depend on Him for everything we need, we grow.
When we pray, “Give us today our daily bread,” we reveal our hunger and we declare our dependance on Our Father.
What are you striving for that you really need to depend on God for today?
Why not bring that need, that hunger, that desire into the light of HIs presence and just sit with it?
Just so you know, if you do, nothing may happen.
Your circumstance may not change.
But you will.
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