We need God to: “Give us,” “forgive us,” and “lead us.”
Luke 11:3-4 "Give us day by day our daily bread. 4 And forgive us our sins, For we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one.”
In the previous post we looked at the first half of the Lord's Prayer and we saw that it gave us an example of how to "Talk to God About God."
We looked at the part of the prayer that says: “Hallowed be Your Name,” “Your kingdom come,” “Your will be done.” We learned that we should get our minds away from our selfish ways and focus on him, then we will be able to pray as we should for our own needs and desires. It doesn't seem proper to come before the throne of grace without revering God's name, without desiring for his kingdom and his will to be done.
The second half of the Lord's Prayer is a look at talking to the Father about His family—the children’s need for provision, pardon, and protection: “Give us day by day our daily bread,” “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us,” and “Do not lead us into temptation.”
His Provision – Give us this day our daily bread.
God cares for our needs and it is okay to talk to him about them. Praying for our daily bread shows a level of dependence on God. This doesn't have as much meaning to us and it is easy to forget to be truly thankful for our daily bread when we have freezers and cabinets full of groceries at home. When Jesus gave this example of how to pray there was a much greater concern for getting food for the day.We need to realize our dependence on God for everything that we need. Jesus didn’t give us a blank check to ask for anything and everything. Most of us need to realize how blessed we are and that we need to pass some of those blessings on to others.
His Pardon – Forgive us our sins.
After we ask for provision we need to ask for pardon. We spend a lot of time worrying about our daily provision and we dwell on that a lot but most of us are not as concerned about our need for forgiveness.We all like to get forgiven but we don't like to offer it to others. Jesus told us to ask for forgiveness for our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Why did he have to put that in there? Forgive me but why do I have to forgive others?
If I honestly see my sin the way that I should then I realize that I am not righteous and I am in desperate need of God’s forgiveness. If I am truly grateful for God’s forgiveness in my life then I will feel obligated to show forgiveness to others. Since God has given up his right for revenge and he has offered mercy to me then I must do the same. We are never more Christ-like than when we offer pardon to those people in our lives that have hurt us.
His Protection – Do not lead us into temptation.
You may have heard the saying, "Do not lead me into temptation, I can find it myself." We seldom want to be delivered from temptation, it promises too much fun, maybe you have heard it said “Don’t resist temptation, it may not come back.” We like to play around with sin.We have a natural inclination to do the opposite of what God desires. It isn't easy to consistently do what pleases God. The work of Satan threatens to seduce us to live life apart from God. We will be tempted to build ourselves up and honor our own names, to build our own kingdoms, to take credit for supplying our own needs and denying our need for forgiveness.
| God Provides |
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| Philippians 4:19 And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. |
