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Key Passage: Matthew 6:5-18

Topic: Christian Living

"Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him." (Matthew 6:8, ESV)

Jesus teaches about prayer and fasting in today's passage. And He tells us that the Father knows exactly what we need before we even ask. So, if God already knows our needs, why should we take them to Him? Won't He take care of it all anyway?

Well, we take our needs to God because:

1. He wants a relationship with us. Like any father, He wants to hear from His children. He wants us to tell Him what's on our minds.
2. He wants us to trust Him. He knows if we bring our requests to Him and watch Him work on our behalf, we'll learn to trust Him more.
3. God knows that He is one of those needs, that deep inside us is an emptiness only He can fill.
4. Bringing our needs to Him will change us into people He can use to meet the needs of others.

It's comforting to read the words of today's verse and know that He knows what we need even before we ask. But He does want us to ask.

The language student impressed the instructor with her academic diligence. But when the class went on a field trip for some cultural training, he didn’t even recognize her. The reason? In class, she concealed 6-inch heels beneath her pants. In her comfortable walking boots, she didn’t even reach 5 feet tall. “My heels are how I want to be,” she laughed. “But my boots are how I really am.”

Thankfully, physical stature is not how we really are. It may or may not be dangerous if we’re masking what we perceive to be a physical flaw. But the consequences are forever fatal when we attempt to cover our spiritual flaws.

Jesus had harsh words for those masters of the cover-up—the religious leaders who obsessed about appearances but neglected their hearts. One day some of them asked Jesus why His disciples didn’t wash their hands before eating, as their religious traditions dictated. Jesus answered with a question: “Why do you, by your traditions, violate the direct commandments of God?” (Matthew 15:3). Quoting Isaiah, Jesus said, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship is a farce, for they teach man- made ideas as commands from God” (vv.8-9).

That ancient prophet Isaiah understood how even “our righteous deeds . . . are nothing but filthy rags” (64:6). The problem in his day, as it is in ours, is that people who appear to follow God may actually be the furthest from Him. And some of the least religious-appearing may be closest to His heart. Only God, through the righteousness of His Son Jesus, can give us a clean heart that cuts infinitely deeper than all our appearances. Only when we admit that we need His help will we find it.

I am happy to report that I don't obsess about chocolate any more than I obsess about oxygen. Lucky for me, both necessities of life are always available.

It’s time for the Church to rise up and be the Church that Jesus called us to be.The world was once transformed by magnetic, loving redemptive communities.… people lived with radical generosity… racial lines were erased… lonely people found community… addictions were broken… and people encountered the love of God in Jesus Christ for themselveseverydayIt’s not a fairy tale. It actually happened, and if it happened