Sermon: Face to Face Daily

This sermon are in the format I use when I preach. They are not edited....

Face to Face: Daily

Last we started a conversation…

We took a look at Moses setting up a tent outside the camp of the Israelites.

Last Week…

We talked about how Moses had to get away from all the distractions that were inside the camp…so he could give God his full attention….

We talked about distraction in our own lives and how we need to get outside of them and spend time with God.

We need to be face to face with God…

Ex 33:11 The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend.

Moses had a “Face to face”….relationship with God….Moses was "at home" in this tent speaking with God.

Lastly we talked about having to protected this time with God…

Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent.

We have to protect our time with God. We need to guard it with everything we have…with our very best.

See this time we spend with God has to be important to us…we need to keep it from being taken from us. We need to protect it as if our lives depended upon it.

So I challenged you…to set apart time for God…I told you about what I started doing “No Bible…No Breakfast”…which I cannot take credit for, but I read it somewhere. But it works…for some people but the idea is to set time apart for God everyday….

Israel Depended on God Daily

Which brings me to what I want to talk about this morning…I want to expand this entire conversation and ask you why do we need to seek God daily.

But before answer this question lets look at the Bible and look at a time when the people had to depend on God daily. There is a beautiful picture of this in the 16th chapter of Exodus.

God has freed the people of Israel from over 400 years of slavery. He does so in a very dramatic way…you have the ten plaques, the Passover, the parting of the Red Sea…only to be brought out into a desert!

Think about this for a minute…what is in a desert? Nothing! Rocks and sand and more rocks and sand….heat, that is why it’s called a desert!

God bring then into nothing…for one reason…see the are about to get ready to go to the promise land. There they would become God’s people and He would be their God. From there the nation of Israel was to be the light of the entire world. But before they could get there they had to learn to depend on God…

So the Lord rained down bread from Heaven, manna. So in the morning there was manna and at night there was quail. So God provided for them daily. They were only to collect enough food for the day…no more and no less. If they tired to keep the food through the night in the morning it would be full of maggots and smell bad…it would be rotten.

So God taught them to depend on God daily…to trust Him everyday….to have faith in Him and Him alone…

Daily Prayer

So the question comes to mind how does this apply to me today?

See maybe you’re here today and you have come from some form of slavery…maybe a bad relationship, finances, there are all kinds of slavery. And you find yourself in a desert…alone and you can’t figure out why your there…
But the facts are you’re alone, physically, spiritually. And you want to experience freedom; you want to have your promise land.

Doesn’t Jesus promise a life more abundant? I mean Jesus says this and I don’t think he was taking about a new house or boat…He was talking about something great, something wonderful. Something I could have right here right now…the promise land.

See Jesus wants us to learn to depend on him daily. First Jesus called himself “the true bread from heaven”, he said, “I am the bread of life”, He said he was the living bread that came down from Heaven”….He also said in the Lords prayer give us our daily bread…to take up your cross daily…

Do you see the patterns…see many of us ask God to take away our hurt, take away the things that hold us back…Lord free me from this weight forever and I’ll serve you with everything I have…and God says no….

Pastor Neely gave me a book to read…called The Necessity of Prayer…by E.M. Bounds. It’s an old book, it’s pages yellow with the years and some of the pages are “dog-eared”….At first I thought what is this….and then I went home that night and started to read…71 pages later I looked at the clock and to go to bed…

Here is something that stuck with me and hit me hard…listen to the words of Mr. Bounds…

When we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread, we are in a measure, shutting tomorrow out of our prayer. We do not live for tomorrow but for today. We do not look for tomorrow’s grace or tomorrow’s bread. Those who live in the present thrive best and get the most out of life…

True prayers are born out of present trails and present needs. Bread is for today is enough. Bread given today is the strongest pledge there will be bread tomorrow. Victory today is the assurance of victory tomorrow…

Our prayers need to be focused on the present; today…we must trust God today and leave tomorrow to God. The present is ours, the future belongs to God. Prayer is the task and duty of each new day—daily prayer for daily needs…

Face to Face: Daily

I am convinced we need to seek God daily in prayer…to earnestly seek Him to be comfortable talking to Him, face to face: Daily with God.

If we want to get out of the deserts of our lives we have to learn to depend on God. How long you spend in those deserts of life is dependant on you…

How long does it take for you to learn to give up the one thing holding you in your desert? You simply have to give it to God daily…it took the Israelites 40 years in the desert to learn this simple task. So my question for you is how long have you been in your desert?

Conclusion

This morning we have talked about setting a time apart for God…to protect it and the importance of seeking God daily, to learn to depend on God for daily victory. By doing so we learn to trust God, it will build our faith and free our lives from the deserts.

It will empower you to make it to the promise land. The land of more abundantly, the land of freedom, peace and hope, but it all starts and ends with Jesus Christ. He is the daily bread we must seek, he is the one we are to trust for victory…he is our guide to the promise land.

And next week we are going to talk about Face to Face with Jesus. What was it like to be with Him and the daily choices we make that either free him in our daily lives or crucify him.

-ps

Daily Reading: Lev 26,27 Mark 2