Prayer for Personal Needs

Transcript

GR 666
4/15/84
Prayer for Personal Needs
Matthew 6:11-15
Gil Rugh

In the previous study, Jesus used the analogy of a family to demonstrate the privilege believers have to address God as their Father and share their burdens with Him. The study also included a consideration of the first three requests in what is frequently referred to as the Lord's Prayer. These three requests are related to the exaltation of God. This study will include a consideration of the last three requests which are related to our needs.
The first request of the prayer dealing with our needs is found in Matthew 6:11: "Give us this day our daily bread." In this request, God is being acknowledged as the source and provider for all of our needs. He created us so He knows the needs we have. As we ask Him to provide for our daily needs, we are reminding ourselves of our dependence on God and asking Him to provide for those needs. When the needs are provided, that is a reminder to us that our needs have been met because of God's mercy and grace. The Jews to whom Jesus was speaking were anticipating the coming kingdom. Jesus was telling them that they were to be looking to God as the One who would provide for their needs as they awaited the coming Messiah and the establishing of His kingdom.
Trusting for Routine Needs. The word which is translated daily in verse 11 is a unique word. This is the only time the word is used in the Scripture, and it is only found in one other place in Greek writing. The word indicates bread for the coming day. As we pray in the evening or in the morning before beginning the day, we ask God to provide for our physical needs for the coming day. That indicates that we must look to God to provide, in a regular way, our needs for the day.
It is a privilege to know that God is interested in details. We sometimes think that we should give the "biggies" to God, but that we will take care of the normal, mundane things without bothering Him. Jesus' instructions concerning prayer indicate that He wants us to come to Him with the little, daily things. We sometimes think we should come to God for direction in deciding whom we are going to marry or in choosing a career. We think we really need to look to God for direction in those decisions, but we conclude we can handle the daily things. We must be reminded that we are dependent on God for all of the normal, run-of-the-mill, ordinary things. It is encouraging to know that God is interested in the nitty-gritty details of our lives.
He wants us to tell Him of these needs, and He wants to provide in those areas.
David spoke in Psalm 34 of finding all our needs met in the Lord. "O taste and see that the Lord is good; How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him! O fear the Lord, you His saints; For to those who fear Him there is no want. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger; But they who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing” (vs. 8-10).
This is a good reminder that God provides for those who seek Him and depend upon Him to meet their needs. This is such an important concept that Jesus is going to spend the last part of Matthew 6 addressing this particular subject. He is going to make clear that we do not need to be anxious about what we will eat, what we will wear or where we will rest, because God knows we have need of all these things. Therefore, we do not have to be taken up with anxiety or concern about them, but we can have full confidence that God will provide for our needs as we wait for Him.
There is a special danger that afflicts those who live in a prosperous society such as ours. We are not like those in other parts of the world who are suffering from famine and want; they get up wondering if they are going to have enough food to live through the day. We are more concerned with overeating than with having enough. This special danger in our prosperity is that if God blesses and provides for us, we may get caught up in what we have and our ability to acquire it and lose sight of the fact that it is God who has provided it for us.
God warned the children of Israel in Deuteronomy 8 that this was a special danger Israel would face if they settled into the land where the Lord had brought them. He had brought them up out of Egypt into a land that He said was flowing with milk and honey, a very prosperous land. But He warned them that as they prospered and were successful in their new land, they would face a special danger, "When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you. Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today; otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud, and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery" (vs. 10-14).

The Lord continues the warning throughout the rest of the chapter. "In the wilderness He fed you manna which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do good for you in the end. Otherwise, you may say in your heart, 'My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.' But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day" (vs. 16-18). As we begin to prosper, the danger is for us to begin to think that we are intelligent, clever and wise, that we have diligently applied ourselves and that our success is the result of our own work. Prosperity brings its own dangers!
When this was a small, struggling church, it was easy to recognize that we were dependent upon God to meet our needs from day to day. But as the church grows larger and becomes well-known, it is easy for that thinking to change. I might begin to think, My, I am a great preacher. I can get the point across very well. Let's face it, I'm just wonderful!
What happened to allow this kind of thinking? I forgot who the source of the growth is. Then it is as though God reminds me, Who gave you the power to preach? Who gave you a mind to be able to think? Who gave you a body that is healthy enough to stand there and preach? Who placed you in a society where people are responsive to the Word? Why were you not born in Ethiopia where you would be groveling for enough food for today, where you would not have enough physical strength to apply yourself to do what needs to be done, where no matter what your mind was, you would be battling to keep it from being destroyed by malnutrition? The answer comes; it is all because of the grace of God!
In our prosperity, we lose sight of where God fits in. Today our society spends more time with laws that are trying to remove God and the emphasis on God from society. Why? Because we do not need Him. We are self-sufficient! We have done so much on our own strength. We can bring peace to the world and success and happiness by our own doing. There is no place for God any longer. That dangerous thinking affects Christians in a subtle way. We as Christians get so caught up with the world's ideas and the blessings God has given us so that we forget that we could easily lose the power even to think. For example, I could have a stroke this afternoon, and my ability to study and preach would be gone. A disease could take hold of me this week causing me to lose the physical strength to work. I need to remind myself that even my daily provision is because of the grace of God. He has given me the ability and the strength to do what I need to do. He has placed me where I can work and accomplish what needs to be done.
It is good for me to acknowledge my dependence upon Him to meet my daily needs. Perhaps it is even more important for us to remember these things in times of prosperity. God is the One who is providing for our needs. James reminded us, "Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow" (James 1:17). God is ever the same. Everything good has come from Him.
Recognition of Responsibility. In this context He has given believers responsibility. We are to apply ourselves diligently and work as hard as we can using the minds God has given us.
There is no place to sit back and say, I am going to wake up in the morning, tell God I am trusting Him for my daily needs, roll over and go back to sleep and see what He does. If you did that, you would get awfully hungry. Proverbs 6:6-11 tells us what happens to those who fail to assume their responsibility, "Go to the ant, O sluggard, Observe her ways and be wise, Which, having no chief, officer or ruler, Prepares her food in the summer And gathers her provision in the harvest. How long will you lie down, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? 'A little sleep, a little slumber, A little folding of the hands to rest' -Your poverty will come in like a vagabond, And your need like an armed man." God says we are to take a lesson from the ant. We must be wise and diligent and apply ourselves. We must remind ourselves that the ability to work hard, the ability to think and the provision of the result of our working is all a matter of God's grace in providing for us.
The second request of the prayer dealing with our needs is in Matthew 6:12, "And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors." Not only are we to look to God for the provision of our physical needs, but we are also to look to Him to meet our spiritual needs as well. There are many people today who are concerned about God's meeting their physical needs. When they face problems, they want to look to God to meet those needs and He is supposed to come through! But we are to be looking to God to provide for our spiritual needs as well as our material needs. He is the One who provides forgiveness and cleansing.
Debts are sins. The word which is translated "debts" in this verse was a very common word for sin among Jews of biblical times. When we sin, we incur a debt; we become guilty and accountable before God. William Barclay, the great Greek scholar, noted that there are five words used in the Greek New Testament for sin.
The first word is hamartia. It means to miss the mark or the target. God tells us what He expects of us, but we miss the goal and do not do it. We fail because we do not hit the mark.
The second word is parabasis. It means to step across the line and refers to a transgression.
God says, "do not do this," but we do it and we transgress by crossing the line.
The third word isparaptoma. It means to slip or to err. We do not like to call some things sins, so we call them a slip or error. Yesterday I almost made an error. The police had a speed trap set up. That is a terribly sneaky thing for them to do, but they did it. I was in a hurry, but there was a pokey little old lady in front of me who was driving me crazy. As we neared the crest of the hill, I contemplated tromping on it and blowing right by her. Then I thought, She probably attends Indian Hills, and this would look terrible! So I waited behind her in all of my frustration thinking, Don't you know you can go a lot faster than that? Then, lo and behold, I saw the police car set up with radar, then down the road a couple more police cars were stationed where the officers were pulling the speeders over.
It is amazing how quickly your attitude can change. While going up the hill I was thinking, I wish this lady would get off the road. If she can't drive better than this, she ought to stay home! But then while going down the hill, I was thinking, My, what a sweet lady! I almost slipped. It would have been an error. No, it would have been a sin! We call some things errors but those things are still sin because they bring guilt and incur a penalty.
The fourth word, anomia, means lawlessness. It is a flagrant violation and disregard of what God says. God says, "Don't do this," but people do not care what God says because it is not an issue with them. They simply disregard it.
The fifth word, and the one in Matthew 6:12, is opheilema, a debt. When we sin we incur a debt, an obligation before God. All of our sin makes us guilty and accountable before God, thus we are in debt before Him. We need to seek His forgiveness of our debts. The first thing to note here is that we are seeking forgiveness, we are not working out a time-payment plan. We are seeking from God forgiveness of the debt, we are not offering to pay it. The debt is such that we cannot pay it.
God puts us in our place as Paul writes to the Romans quoting repeatedly from the Old Testament in Romans 3, "There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one" (vs. 10-12). That is God's perspective. We are all guilty; we have all sinned; so we are all in debt. There is not even one person who does good from God's perspective. Notice the purpose of the Law in verses 19 and 20, "Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin." The Law reveals the fact that we are sinners, guilty, in debt, accountable. The greatest need we have is the need of forgiveness from our debt of sin.
Matthew 6:12, "And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors," is explained in verses 14 and 15, "For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions." This seems to be saying that we will be forgiven if we forgive, therefore, the way to get forgiveness from God is to forgive others. Obviously, there is a real problem with that interpretation.
The problem of this interpretation can be solved when the prayer is put in the context of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is addressing Jews who are anticipating the kingdom and describing their character and the resultant conduct in their lives. The Beatitudes, the "Blesseds" of Matthew 5:3-11, are describing those who are going to be part of the kingdom, those who have believed in God and His salvation. A further description of the character of the children of God is in Matthew 6. God Himself is a forgiving God. In Christ, He has forgiven all our sins. Those who are born into God's family partake of His character and, thus, are to be forgiving people.
It is just that simple. Those who manifest God's character will be forgiving. If forgiveness does not characterize you, then it is legitimate to question the basis of your claim to have ever been forgiven. Those who have been forgiven partake of God's character and manifest His forgiveness in their dealings with others. An unforgiving spirit is indicative of one who does not understand the forgiveness made available in Christ. Those who are believers will be forgiving. We are not always consistent in our behavior because we do not manifest God's character perfectly in any area, but the basic principle is clear: God's character is to be seen in His children. Since God is a forgiving God, His children will be forgiving.
. The fact that we are seeking His forgiveness for our transgressions is a reminder to us that we need to be forgiving others. We sometimes forget that in Christ we have been forgiven. Our forgiveness becomes commonplace. When we take forgiveness from God for granted, it affects the way we relate to other people. In those situations, we tend to become small, unforgiving, bitter people harboring grudges and resentment. That is because we have forgotten that we have been forgiven all our sins. We each have a debt that would take eternity and beyond to pay, yet God has forgiven us. How out of character for us to hold on to little things against others. Oh, it wasn't little, you protest, it was big! Well, if you compare it with the debt you had in light of eternity, it does not really amount to anything. In fact, it is embarrassing to even mention it.
Imagine being reminded that you have been forgiven all your sins in Christ. You, destined for hell for eternity, have been forgiven by God's great love for you. Isn't that wonderful? You also need to imagine what you would say if you were holding something against another believer and were asked why you were unable to forgive him. You would probably be so embarrassed that you would feel the matter was too small to even mention. Oh, it wasn't anything, you would respond. Yet some believers harbor those things in their hearts and mull them over for months and years. But those offenses are really nothing when measured in light of the forgiveness we have in Jesus Christ.
Such unforgiveness is an important matter where God is concerned. There is no place for an unforgiving spirit among those who claim to belong to Him. In Matthew 18, Jesus gives an extended parable to drive home the importance of forgiveness. Peter asked Jesus how often he should forgive his brother when his brother sins against him. Peter thought seven times was a pretty good amount to forgive. Jesus told him to forgive seventy times seven. In other words, do not even keep track of the times you forgive. After 490 times, you will lose count.
Then Jesus began the parable, "For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him" (vs. 23, 24). This amount is estimated to be about ten million dollars, a lot of money! There was no hope of a servant ever being able to repay a ten-million-dollar debt. The servant was brought before his master who said, "Throw him into prison. Sell everything he has; family and everything." The servant cried out, "Have compassion on me!" So the master forgave him and sent him on his way,
"And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt" (v. 27). That was his only hope, that he would be forgiven. He could promise to pay it back, but there was no hope that he would ever be able to.
After being forgiven his debt of ten million dollars, "that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii" (v. 28). That is about eighteen dollars, a debt not amounting to anything compared to ten million dollars. You cannot even compare the two amounts. But the slave was unwilling to forgive his fellow slave who owed him such a small amount. He had the fellow slave thrown into prison because of the debt.
The conclusion of the matter is in verses 32 through 35, "Then summoning him, his lord said to him, 'You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.
Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?' And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart." The issue as God sees it is that if you have really been forgiven in Christ and understand the scope of your forgiveness, then there is no chance that you can continue with an unforgiving spirit. God says that those who are His children will manifest His character and forgiveness.
Forgiveness can be found in only one place. You may be the most kind, gentle, forgiving person, yet still be unforgiven. You are guilty of a crime; you have a debt to pay.
Recently several men have been put to death as the sentence of capital punishment has been carried out. Those men, by and large, would have done anything to escape the payment of death, but there was nothing else they could do. Any one of those men could have said, "I will be good the rest of my life. I'll be kind to other people as long as I live." Maybe they would have, but they each still had a debt to pay. That is the point people lose sight of when they talk about their debt for sin. They miss the fact that we are starting out on the negative side, already guilty before God and under condemnation. We must have our guilt taken care of before we can do anything else. That can only happen when a person believes in Jesus Christ as his Savior.
That is the significance of the death of Jesus Christ and His resurrection. In Acts 10:42, Peter is preaching, "And He [God] ordered us to preach to the people, and solemnly to testify that this is the One [Jesus Christ] who has been appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead." Accountability is built in. There is going to be a judgment. Jesus Christ is the Judge of all; the living and the dead. "Of Him all the prophets bear witness that through His name everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins" (v. 43). Forgiveness of sins is found in Jesus Christ. It is not found in the church, not in the baptistry, not in doing the best you can. It is found in Jesus Christ; in His death and resurrection.
Paul makes the same point in Ephesians 1:7, "In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses." Forgiveness is found in the blood of Christ. Because He died, we can have forgiveness. The penalty for sin is death, but Jesus Christ paid the penalty for each one of us by His death. When a person believes in Christ, God can justly declare him forgiven. The trespasses are forgiven, the individual is cleansed from his sins.
Paul spoke of the importance of our forgiving other in Ephesians 4:32, "Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you."
God has forgiven us in Christ. That is where forgiveness occurs. Therefore, we are to be forgiving others because of the forgiveness we have received.
Colossians 2:13 tells us how it happened, "When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions." The next verse tells us the basis for God forgiving us, "having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross" (v. 14). When the Romans crucified a criminal, they nailed to the cross an explanation of why he was being crucified.
When Christ was being crucified by Pilate, they nailed a sign on the cross which read, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." The Romans were crucifying Him because He declared Himself to be the King. That was their political reason for His crucifixion.
The Penalty Must Be Paid. What happened when Christ died? From God's perspective, all my sins were nailed to His cross so that He was dying to pay the penalty for my sins, so God could forgive and cleanse me. The penalty for all my sins -- all my transgressions, debts, slips and errors -- is death. My sins were all nailed to His cross and He paid the penalty for them all. When I believed Christ died for me, He forgave me and cleansed me of all my sins.
Some people think that God will forgive without payment of the penalty. That is impossible. What kind of uproar would we have in our country if a judge said to those were sentenced to die, "Let's just forget it"? The outcry would be great because justice would not have been carried out. But millions of people think that when they stand before God, they will hear Him say,
"Let's just forget it." God cannot do that. He is a righteous and holy God. But He is also a loving God, so in love He has provided a payment for the penalty. However, the penalty is only applicable to those who believe in Jesus Christ as the One who died to pay the penalty for their sins.
Forgiveness is in the context of trusting Jesus Christ and acknowledging our dependency upon God. When we trust the payment Christ made for us, God forgives us. We want to manifest that forgiveness in our attitudes toward others. We must forgive them for what they do against us just as God forgives us for our offenses against Him.
The third request we offer to God on our own behalf is found in Matthew 6:13, "And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil." This request at first strikes us as being strange because we think of temptation always in an evil sense. When we think about someone being tempted, we usually think about him being enticed toward sin or evil. The word is neutral and is used in Scripture both in a positive and a negative sense. It means to test or to try. Sometimes it means to lure into sin. Other times it is used in a positive sense of proving and approving. We know that God does not tempt people to sin because He tells us He does not in James 1:13: "for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone." But God does try us and test us by bringing us into various kinds of situations.

Keep in mind that the immediate context of this prayer is the coming kingdom. The Jews to whom Jesus is speaking were familiar with the Old Testament and knew that the time of Jacob's troubles, the Tribulation, will precede the coming kingdom which the Messiah will establish. This is the time when God's wrath will be poured out upon the earth. The immediate reference is for the Jews to pray that God would save them from the sufferings that are coming and the evil that will characterize the Tribulation.
Jesus speaks of this in Matthew 24, "For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will. Unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days
will be cut short" (vs. 21,22). This is a time of terrible suffering and tribulation followed, as described in verses 29 and 30, by signs in the heavens and then the coming of the Son of Man to establish His kingdom on the earth.
The Principle for Today. The immediate reference to the Jews' praying not to be led into temptation and to be delivered from evil is regarding the coming Tribulation and their being spared from the evil of that time in light of the coming kingdom, but the principle is the same for us today. We look to God to keep us from trials and to preserve us from evil in the trials. That is encouraging because the Scripture teaches us two things: It teaches us that we can ask God to keep us from trials, and it teaches us that trials will come for our good.
Knowing that trials come for our good does not mean that we have to sit by complacently saying, "Well, if they come, they come." We can ask Him to preserve us from the trials and not bring us into them, but we can also have the assurance that when he sees fit to bring trials into our lives, He has a purpose in it. That purpose is to refine us, mold us and prepare us for His glory. We can be confident that He will keep us from evil and the power of the Evil One even under the pressures of trials.
God allows tests and trials to come into our lives because they enable us to learn to endure and to bear up under pressure. "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing" (James 1:2-4). Trials are part of the perfecting and maturing process God brings us through. When we are brought into times of testing, we can appreciate those tests as part of the maturing process, but it is still valid for us to ask God not to bring us into times of trials, because they are hard. They are pressuring times when we face them. It is encouraging to know that we do not have to sit back and passively wait, but we can ask God to spare us from tribulations and temptations. It is also encouraging to know that when He sees fit to bring them into our lives, they are for our good, helping us to grow to maturity.
When we do face trials, it is good for us to keep in mind that God is in control. "No
temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, that you may be able to endure it" (1 Cor. 10:13). God is in control and will not allow us to be destroyed by the test as long as we trust Him and depend upon Him as we are enduring the test.
The phrase, "but deliver us from evil" (Matt. 6:13), refers to the power of the Evil One, Satan. Ephesians 6 indicates that we are in a battle, not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against spiritual forces. We need to take on the whole armor of God. God has made provision for us to stand and be victorious. Even when pressures come, we need to acknowledge that God is in control. We can ask Him to spare us and to preserve us in the difficulties. During these times we must depend upon Him for His strength.
The Book of Hebrews is given to a discussion of the high-priestly ministry of Jesus Christ. Hebrews 4:14 speaks of that ministry He carries on for us, "Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession." This high-priestly ministry is based on having Jesus Christ as our High Priest.
He has come to earth and has died, thus He offered Himself as a sacrifice that is acceptable to God as a payment for sin.
Those who believe in Him as their Savior are privileged to have Him as their sympathetic High Priest. Verse 15 continues, "For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin."
He was tempted, but He did not sin. He underwent hunger, sorrow, burdens and physical discomfort. All of those things pressed in upon Him, so He knows what we go through when we face those kinds of difficulties. Note the invitation of verse 16, "Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need."
This privilege is limited to those of us who have Jesus Christ as our High Priest. We are the only ones who can come and notice that He encourages us to come with boldness and confidence. We do not have to wonder if He is tired of our asking or whether He wants to be bothered by us today. He tells us to come with boldness, confidence and assurance. We can come into His very presence to get the strength and grace we need in time of difficulties. That is the privilege we have as God's children.
It is a pity that we live on the level of the world, focused on what we see and acquire instead of what we are in Jesus Christ. We have a heavenly Father who has promised to meet every need. We need not worry about tomorrow. Even though we are unworthy and undeserving, He encourages us to come with confidence and boldness and to ask Him for the things we need. Grace is undeserved and unmerited. He gives to us because we are His children, not because we have earned His blessings.
God deals with us in the same way we deal with our children. When they come and ask for something they need, we do not get out a list and see if they have earned it. There may be special times when we expect them to earn something, but generally we provide all their needs simply because they are our children. That is the way God does with us.

This prayer is an all-encompassing prayer. God has not instructed us to pray these words, verbatim; we are to be concerned with the pattern that the prayer gives. We start off by acknowledging the family relationship we have with Him as our Father. Our desire is that He should be exalted and honored in all that is done. We want His name to be hallowed and His will to be accomplished. Then we acknowledge our dependence upon Him for every need; even those nitty-gritty things we need from day to day. We also look to Him for the goodness that He can provide for us as sinners. It is also our privilege to look to Him for strength and deliverance which enables us to remain faithful in the midst of an evil and perverse generation. But this is all based upon the relationship we have with God through faith in Jesus Christ.
Do you know what it is to have God as your Father? Are you able to talk with Him at any time and take to Him the burdens you carry? Are you privileged to come and lay before Him all the pressures of your life and have Him give you supernatural strength? The child of God can trust the Father to meet his needs in a way that no one else can do. To be able to come to our Father in this way makes all the difference in the world.