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Turn your Bible to Matthew chapter 4. Let's read together: "But he replied, it has been written: man shall not live and be upheld and sustained by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God."
Today, I want to tag a title to our talk: Everyday People in 2025. We are going to be everyday people.
I am a pastor whose parents are in ministry. They are pastors themselves, and what I've noticed in their lives is that they have all, in their own way, seen a demonstration of their consistency with God. My father reads his Bible every day as if he's about to preach at a conference the next day. The level of attention and time he puts into it is remarkable—I can wake up and he's reading his Bible, I go out and come back and he's still there on his iPad.
My mother cannot say more than two sentences without mentioning communion with God. My father-in-law prayed over us this new year and his charge was: "Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you."
My mother-in-law came into town recently with something God had laid upon her heart for us and for our church. I set up the camera, lights, and microphones—if CNN was about to interview her, I had everything ready. She laid out her topic and said:
"Every Christian must spend time with God every day. Every Christian must have a daily devotion. Every Christian must have daily quiet time."
I have to be honest: I was disappointed. I was waiting for deep revelation, waiting for scripture to be expounded in a way I had never seen before. But she said, "Read your Bible every day." I thought, Not that. That was old school.
But as I was wallowing in my disappointment, the Holy Spirit spoke to me: "Why are you disappointed?"
I said, "This is old school. I'm looking for some new revelation."
He said, "Is it old school to put water in your mouth to drink?"
I said, "No."
"Is it old school to put food in your mouth when you eat?"
"No."
"Is it old school to draw air into your lungs?"
"No."
Then He said to me: "When did it become old school to spend time with me every day?"
"Why are you more consistent with food than you are with me?"
You miss breakfast and your eyes want to roll into your head. You don't eat for 12 hours and you're barely productive. Yet we are more consistent with social media. We stay off it for six hours and we have to be on for the next two hours to catch up on what we've missed. We're driving home sleepy, but we can still stay up for six hours catching up on a TV show or movie series.
We are more consistent with work than we are with God. The question is: Is God not worth spending time with every day?
We wake up just in time, no matter what is happening, to make it to work. We make it to dinner with our friends on a Friday night, no matter how bad our day was. We make it to bed early because we have to catch an early flight. We finish a TV series no matter how tired we are.
But somehow, when it comes to consistency with God, we hope that God understands why we are not consistent.
Champions do consistently what other people do occasionally. Champions are not extraordinary—they just do the ordinary things extra. The secret of experiencing everything that God has for you in 2025 is going to be found in what you do every day.
I can tell, people can tell, God can tell, and you can tell how your 2025 is going to be by what you do every day. And it begins with daily devotion. Daily quiet time.
Another "daily" began to come to my mind: the Bible says in Matthew chapter 6:11, nestled in what we call the Lord's Prayer: "Give us this day our daily bread."
The disciples came to Jesus and asked Him to teach them how to pray. Amongst other things, Jesus told them: Make sure when you pray, you ask for Daily Bread. What that prayer suggests—what most of us have missed—is that Jesus is saying you should pray every day.
If the bread is daily, asking for it means you're praying this every day. Many of us have relegated this to physical bread, but let me make a case that Jesus was talking about more than physical bread.
In Matthew 4:4, Jesus has been tempted after fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. (Sidebar: for those of you who think 29 days or 21 days of fasting is going to kick the devil out—absolutely not. The devil does not fear praying and fasting. The day you finish, he will be waiting for you in the parking lot. Jesus had just finished 40 days of fasting, so when He was about to break the fast, the devil tempted Him.)
The devil tells Him: "Turn these stones into bread." Jesus responds: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God."
In this response, Jesus pairs bread—physical food—with the word of God.
All through Scripture, we see this theme: the word of God is likened to food.
Psalms 119:103 says: "How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth."
Jeremiah 15:16 says: "Your words were found, and I ate them."
Job 23:12 says: "I have not departed from your commands. I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my daily bread."
Jeremiah is saying God's word is food. David is saying God's word can be eaten and it tastes sweeter than honey. Job is saying God's word is more valuable than physical bread.
Now Matthew 4:4 and Matthew 6:11 make more sense. Jesus tells the devil: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." And in Matthew 6:11, Jesus says: "Ask God for daily bread."
Daily bread, then, is more than physical bread. Daily bread includes spiritual bread—the word of God.
Physical bread is to the body. The word of God is to our spirit.
If my body needs food and bread to function effectively, my spirit must surely need bread. My spirit must surely need the word of God.
Isaiah 55:2 says: "Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance. Listen carefully to me and eat. Listen and eat."
Listen and eat. Listen and eat. That means God's bread for us comes through His voice. It is the word of God that is bread to my spirit.
When I read the Bible, I am eating bread from God. When I read the Bible, I'm eating bread from God. When I take time to listen after I've prayed, after I've read my Bible, and I just have quiet time before Him and He begins to minister to me and share with me—that is my spirit eating.
The word of God is my bread.
We were not designed to live by physical sustenance alone. We're designed to live by spiritual bread. This real bread is not the one that goes into your mouth—this bread is one that goes in through your eyes and your ears.
While your physical bread makes its way into you through your mouth, your spiritual bread makes its way in through your eyes and your ears. It is the one that feeds your spirit.
Sidebar: Speaking about the word of God—God's bread is His word, but God's bread is not just a thing. God's bread is also a person.
The Bible says in John 6:33: "The true bread of God is the one that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
And John 6:35 says: "Jesus replied, 'I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never thirst.'"
That means when Jesus was asking us to ask for Daily Bread, He was asking us to pray for a daily encounter with Jesus in His word. It was not about just physical bread—it was about a daily encounter.
When Jesus was talking about bread, He was talking about it in three dimensions:
That's how dynamic the word of God is. Sometimes we get so myopic with the word of God that it has to mean one thing. Sometimes God is saying one thing and we're hearing it multiple times because we're hearing more than one thing from what He's saying.
God is speaking the same set of words now, and He is ministering to all of you individually. When people see me in the lobby and tell me, "Man, when you were saying this..." sometimes I think, "I don't think I said that." But that's what they heard. That's what they heard.
So God's bread is physical, spiritual, and figurative.
"Give us this day our daily bread" is not just about meeting your physical needs. It's more than that. It's a prayer for daily provision of material needs, a prayer for daily insight and instruction from the word of God, and a prayer for a daily encounter with the person of Jesus.
There is no way that this symbolism of bread is more prevalent than in the story of the children of Israel in their Exodus from Egypt. In fact, Jesus's response when the devil tried to tempt Him was gotten from that story.
We see this in Exodus 12. God orchestrates their deliverance from Egypt. The king of Egypt sends them out so fast that they don't have time to pack everything. The Bible says in Exodus 12:34: "The Israelites did not have time to put yeast in their bread. They wrapped up their bowls of dough with cloth and carried them on their shoulders. They left, and they found some time to bake."
In Exodus 12:39: "For bread they baked flat cakes from the dough without yeast that they brought from Egypt, made without yeast because the people were driven out of Egypt in such a hurry that they had no time to prepare bread or any other food."
So they leave with dough. They stop long enough to bake so they have bread. The first complaint in Exodus 15 was for water. Then the next complaint in Exodus 16, when the bread ran out, was for bread again.
Just as their bread ran out before they got to the promised land, we cannot bake enough bread to sustain us.
Remember: bread is the wisdom of God, instruction, insight. You don't have enough common sense, intellect, and brilliant ideas to take you to the place God wants to take you. At some point, you're going to run out of your own bread.
The bread God gave them—manna—continued until they got into the promised land. When they got into the promised land, it ended. Because the word of God is quick and powerful—it can deliver. It doesn't just make you a promise; it contains within it the power to deliver the promise.
But the bread that you make, the ideas you come up with, the common sense you want to live your life by—will run out one day.
Turn to your neighbor and say: "You're not that smart."
If you insist on living by your intellect, you're guaranteed to come short of God's best for you. If you insist on living by common sense, at some point you're going to run into confusion and stagnancy.
God will never make us a promise that can be fulfilled without Him. God will never set you on a course that you can successfully finish without Him. God will never give you a campaign that you can complete without Him.
God's best requires God's bread.
I know it sounds corny, but remember it: God's best for you requires a dedicated supply of bread from Him.
Let's go back to the story. In Exodus 16:4, the Lord says to Moses: "Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you. The people shall go out and gather a certain portion every day."
The Easy English Bible says: "Each day the people must go out and pick enough bread for that day."
The Expanded Bible says: "Every day the people must go out and gather what they need for that day."
The children of Israel exhausted their bread. God gave them bread, but on one condition: every day. Every day you will go and gather what you need for that day.
God told them: "I'm going to give you bread, but unlike the grocery shop where you can go and get your supply for the week, I'm not going to give you a week's supply. You're going to have to come back here every day."
While the children of Israel were looking for bread, God was looking for a relationship.
Yes. If you're a parent, sometimes you just want a hug from your child. You tell them, "I'll give it to you if you give me a hug." Why? Well, they want what you have. You want them. They were looking for bread. God was looking for a relationship.
"I need to meet with you every day. I need to recreate what Adam and Eve had. So I'll do whatever it's going to take. If it's going to take bread to get it, I'm going to give you bread. But I'm going to give you bread every day."
Why do you think God has not given you all the favor you need in your office? Because if He gave it to you all at once, you would not pay attention to Him.
As I studied this, I stumbled on a translation that intrigued me. The Jubilee Bible 2000 renders Exodus 16 this way: "Every day the people must go out... I will rain bread from heaven, and the people shall go out and gather the word for every day."
I was like, "Wait a minute. Is this heresy?" I went to the New King James: "A certain portion they shall gather, a certain portion every day."
I went to the Hebrew because something seemed lost. When I read the Hebrew, I realized that the word "a certain portion" in Hebrew is the word darar, which means speech, saying, utterance, word, words, command.
God was saying: "Every day I'm going to give you bread, but when you go to collect, you're not just going to be collecting physical bread. You're going to be collecting words. You're going to be collecting words every day."
While the bread was raining down from heaven in the physical, that was just a picture of God speaking. While they saw bread in the physical, Moses—in writing this—renders this as words.
While they were looking for physical bread, God was drawing their attention to spiritual bread.
This is why Jesus's response to the devil's temptation about physical bread was to draw His attention to spiritual bread. "Bro, I know you read the verse, but you missed the meaning of the verse. It was not about manna. It was not about bread. God was trying to get you to gather words."
So my question to you is: Have you taken out time every day to gather words—enough for that day? Or are we too busy?
Because if the devil cannot stop God from speaking, he can distract you long enough that you might gather two of three, one of five, one of ten.
Have you ever tried to put together IKEA furniture? The attention we pay to that instruction booklet is incredible. I think I'm smart, so I'll just start building. All of a sudden I'll pull out a drawer and think, "Yep, that drawer is not working." But it is working—I just missed a step. Then I go back to the book and I see: "Oh, oh yeah. That's why it's not working. I missed a step. I did not gather enough words for what I have."
Or when you're cooking. You get to a critical part of the recipe, and you realize you need a spice or curry, and you realize the container is empty. You have a choice: do you cook a mediocre version of the food, or do you pause your cooking and go get what you need?
How many of us are living mediocre versions of our lives because we walked up to a particular part of our life and realized we didn't have the words to guide us there? Then we settle for common sense.
Common sense will always produce common results. Always.
Abraham is the father of faith, and we see him practicing this in Genesis 22:1–2:
"God tested Abraham and called unto him: 'Abraham.' And He said, 'Take your son, your only son, yes Isaac, whom you love very much, and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will show you.'"
Abraham wakes up one day and gets the daily bread. He gets the instruction for that day. He gets the command for that day. That is what is necessary.
If you had woken up on Tuesday and gotten the command, you would have realized that the guy who smiled at you when you were pumping gas into your car was actually your future husband. Maybe it was cold, but you were not smiling enough for him to ask for your number. If you had waited and gathered words, God would have spoken to you about joy and how joy has to be evident on your face.
How many times have you texted somebody and they said, "I was just thinking about you"? You just said exactly what I needed. Guess what you got? You got bread. You got fresh bread.
Abraham wakes up this morning and God gives him fresh bread. But in that instruction is the secret for the next one. He says: "Take your son to a mountain. I am going to show you." Yes—that means you have to keep paying attention. If not, you will miss the mountain.
That means you can have the right sacrifice and make the sacrifice on the wrong mountain. You can see the right girl and give her the wrong relationship. She was supposed to be your friend that leads you to your wife, but then you go after her like she's your wife—because all the bread you got was to identify her. But you did not get bread to identify the mountain.
You get the right job, but you have the wrong friendships in the job. You get the right financial breakthrough, but you spend it wrongly because you have the right Isaac, but you picked the wrong mountain.
The Isaac was chosen by divine inspiration. But the mountain was chosen by common sense and pop culture.
How many of us are living a frustrated life now because we tried to complete with our common sense what we began by divine inspiration? God said start the business, but all your marketing plan has been the product of common sense. And you wonder why it's not working.
God tells him you have to pay attention. So day one, he wakes up and gets the bread: "Take your son up." And he's going, and every day he has to ask: "Is this the mountain? Nope. Is this the mountain? No, that's not the mountain. No...".
Given the terrain we're talking about, there are mountains everywhere. So he has to pay attention. On the third day, Genesis 22:4 says: "On the third day of his journey, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance."
So he gets up that day, God says, "Oh, yeah. That's the one. That's the one. That's the one." So he walks up there, leaves the servants behind.
(Sidebar: For those of you that follow leaders who follow God, sometimes they don't know where we are going yet. The best you can do is pray for them. Ask Abraham's servants—he did not know where he was going. In fact, God told him, "You will not know where you're going until I show you where you're going." Most of us get so hard on leaders because we need somebody who knows exactly where we're going. But we're just going. I know where we're going. I know what we're going to do when we get there. But where we're going to do it—I haven't received that bread yet.)
He gets there and does exactly what the bread says to do. (When I say bread, I mean the word.) He sets the altar, sets the wood, ties his son, puts it there. He's just about to kill his son. Fresh bread. Do not kill that boy.
That means sometimes the bread that you received can contradict tomorrow's bread. Today, God can say, "Smile." Tomorrow, "I need you to be serious in the office. There's somebody coming to the office who needs to see that you're a serious person." Then the very next day, somebody's coming to the office who needs to see that you're a very happy, good-luck person.
But sometimes the bread is the same. It might be the same instruction, but it has progressive impact. Keep doing what I told you to do.
Verse 11 says: "Stop. Yeah, don't kill the boy."
What would have happened if Abraham was still eating three-day-old bread? He almost killed the person that was the fulfillment of God's promise.
Think of how many things most of us have lost, chewing on three-day-old bread. On 10-year-old bread.
God gave you the old word. This year, He's telling you don't. But it's today you're deciding. And we are killing things that should be alive because we think we can turn stones to bread.
If you follow a GPS, it tells you: "In 200 feet, take a left." You're driving, and it says: "In 200 feet, take a left." You get to 200 feet and take a left, and you get to where the water is. Right?
This is what most of us do. The bread you receive says: "In 200 feet, take a left." And we do 200 feet and get there.
But sometimes we say, "I don't know. I can't see the water." "Just take a left." "You see the water?" "God, I love You, and Pastor Victor says we should obey You, so I'm going to take a left now, in Jesus' name." And then you get frustrated that there's no water.
You know why there's no water? Because the water was 200 feet after you take a left. If you take a left when you're not supposed to take a left, you will not find what you're looking for.
It is the mercy of God that drags that water and brings it to us, because He knows if He leaves it to us, we're going to delay.
One of my commitments this year is to increase the speed of my obedience.
John 6:38 says: "For I have come down from heaven to do the will of the one that sent me."
How did He know the will of God? Luke 5:16 says: "But Jesus often withdrew to the Wilderness to pray."
What have we learned?
When you read Exodus 16:4, the Bible says: "For the Lord said to Moses, 'Behold, I will cause bread to rain from heaven for you. The people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, so that I may test them to determine whether or not they will walk obediently in My instruction.'"
Remember: what they were gathering were words, instruction. So the purpose of bread was to build a relationship. The purpose of bread was to build consistency in the relationship. The purpose of the bread was to provide an opportunity for obedience.
The law God was talking about here is not the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments have not even come yet. This was just everyday instruction He was giving them—with an instruction to see if they will obey.
So the bread you receive every day is an opportunity. Daily bread gives us the opportunity to obey God every day. Obey God every day.
The Bible says in Deuteronomy 8:1: "Be careful to obey the commands I am giving you today."
Every day, you're going to receive a supply of instruction. When you have your quiet time, every day you're going to receive an instruction, a command. It can be a very simple thing to do: text this person, call that person, email this other person, smile today, wear the blue shirt, or it can be some crazy stuff. But we stay there and we collect it.
The purpose of it is to obey.
You go to God. You worship. Put on some worship music, please. I want to dissuade us from this passive quiet time we're doing now, where you play the worship song and then you just keep quiet while the artist is singing out their guts. You are just quiet.
No. Sing. Worship. Read your word. Pray. If you have your prayer language, pray in the Spirit. And then keep quiet. Just keep quiet.
I know some of you have crazy ideas. Write those ideas down. When I do my quiet time, I have like posted notes. When I feel like the devil is trying to inundate me with thoughts, I just write all of them. Because you will forget. You will forget. You will forget? No, just write it all out. After, we discern if it's God. If it's not God, we discard it. But you spend time in His presence.
But God is calling us to do this not occasionally. Do you not know how I know? Everybody knows how to do what I'm saying, because we do it:
"Cast me out not, O gentle Savior; hear my humble cry. While others choose delight..."
We know how to do it. And then we stay there.
I sense that God is telling me, "I should move to California." Yeah, maybe He's telling you that. But guess what? You know where to go to get the bread. But somehow, because we think we can bake bread on our own, because we think we have the mind to do it by ourselves, the challenge God is calling us to embrace in 2025 is daily.
Everybody say it: "Daily."
Today, we're going to begin one of three challenges. The ushers have cards in their hands. I want to make this as practical as possible.
These cards have a QR code and a link to a page on our website that has links to many daily devotionals and Bible study tools—all kinds of things, videos, YouTube playlists, whatever. Some people in our church have written some devotions. We've created a page for it. Just go at it that way.
You cannot say you don't know what to do.
So what should you do? Scan it. Go to that page. Download it. Pick something and dedicate every day.
Why? Why should it be daily?
Why should it be in the morning?
Today, when you leave, everybody make sure you get that card. Go home. Scan it. (The internet here is poor, but go home and scan it.)
Decide:
If it takes you 20 minutes from bed to brain being on fire and working, factor that in. Some of you, when you wake up, need like 30 minutes just to be present in the world. Factor that time in.
And then what do you do? Spend the time. Jesus. Read your Bible.
We're going to have a conference in March—the Bible Believers Conference. Just like New Year's Eve, I'm telling you guys now before we tell the world: you're going to have to register for it. When registration opens on March 15th, please register. The theme of this conference is "How to Study Your Bible." We're going to press on the need. We're going to give you as many tools as possible. But now, let me just tell you: go create the time. Create the space.
Wake up. Put on some worship music. Get your playlist going. Take some time to pray. Prayer is not super complicated—just bare your heart toward God. Read the Bible and ask yourself: What is the Bible teaching me today? Pray about it. And then just be quiet.
This is not New Age meditation. You're not just being quiet for the sake of quiet. You've filled your heart with the word of God. Now you're letting that word do what it does—it makes you sensitive to the word of God. The word of God makes you sensitive to when God wants to speak specific things to you.
And then when He does, ideas and thoughts are going to come to your mind. That's how God speaks sometimes. So just write it all down. Capture it.
We are going to be everyday people at The Well.
If you believe that, put your hands together and celebrate God.
Turn your Bible to Matthew chapter 4. Let's read together: "But he replied, it has been written: man shall not live and be upheld and sustained by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God."
Today, I want to tag a title to our talk: Everyday People in 2025. We are going to be everyday people.
I am a pastor whose parents are in ministry. They are pastors themselves, and what I've noticed in their lives is that they have all, in their own way, seen a demonstration of their consistency with God. My father reads his Bible every day as if he's about to preach at a conference the next day. The level of attention and time he puts into it is remarkable—I can wake up and he's reading his Bible, I go out and come back and he's still there on his iPad.
My mother cannot say more than two sentences without mentioning communion with God. My father-in-law prayed over us this new year and his charge was: "Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you."
My mother-in-law came into town recently with something God had laid upon her heart for us and for our church. I set up the camera, lights, and microphones—if CNN was about to interview her, I had everything ready. She laid out her topic and said:
"Every Christian must spend time with God every day. Every Christian must have a daily devotion. Every Christian must have daily quiet time."
I have to be honest: I was disappointed. I was waiting for deep revelation, waiting for scripture to be expounded in a way I had never seen before. But she said, "Read your Bible every day." I thought, Not that. That was old school.
But as I was wallowing in my disappointment, the Holy Spirit spoke to me: "Why are you disappointed?"
I said, "This is old school. I'm looking for some new revelation."
He said, "Is it old school to put water in your mouth to drink?"
I said, "No."
"Is it old school to put food in your mouth when you eat?"
"No."
"Is it old school to draw air into your lungs?"
"No."
Then He said to me: "When did it become old school to spend time with me every day?"
"Why are you more consistent with food than you are with me?"
You miss breakfast and your eyes want to roll into your head. You don't eat for 12 hours and you're barely productive. Yet we are more consistent with social media. We stay off it for six hours and we have to be on for the next two hours to catch up on what we've missed. We're driving home sleepy, but we can still stay up for six hours catching up on a TV show or movie series.
We are more consistent with work than we are with God. The question is: Is God not worth spending time with every day?
We wake up just in time, no matter what is happening, to make it to work. We make it to dinner with our friends on a Friday night, no matter how bad our day was. We make it to bed early because we have to catch an early flight. We finish a TV series no matter how tired we are.
But somehow, when it comes to consistency with God, we hope that God understands why we are not consistent.
Champions do consistently what other people do occasionally. Champions are not extraordinary—they just do the ordinary things extra. The secret of experiencing everything that God has for you in 2025 is going to be found in what you do every day.
I can tell, people can tell, God can tell, and you can tell how your 2025 is going to be by what you do every day. And it begins with daily devotion. Daily quiet time.
Another "daily" began to come to my mind: the Bible says in Matthew chapter 6:11, nestled in what we call the Lord's Prayer: "Give us this day our daily bread."
The disciples came to Jesus and asked Him to teach them how to pray. Amongst other things, Jesus told them: Make sure when you pray, you ask for Daily Bread. What that prayer suggests—what most of us have missed—is that Jesus is saying you should pray every day.
If the bread is daily, asking for it means you're praying this every day. Many of us have relegated this to physical bread, but let me make a case that Jesus was talking about more than physical bread.
In Matthew 4:4, Jesus has been tempted after fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. (Sidebar: for those of you who think 29 days or 21 days of fasting is going to kick the devil out—absolutely not. The devil does not fear praying and fasting. The day you finish, he will be waiting for you in the parking lot. Jesus had just finished 40 days of fasting, so when He was about to break the fast, the devil tempted Him.)
The devil tells Him: "Turn these stones into bread." Jesus responds: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God."
In this response, Jesus pairs bread—physical food—with the word of God.
All through Scripture, we see this theme: the word of God is likened to food.
Psalms 119:103 says: "How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth."
Jeremiah 15:16 says: "Your words were found, and I ate them."
Job 23:12 says: "I have not departed from your commands. I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my daily bread."
Jeremiah is saying God's word is food. David is saying God's word can be eaten and it tastes sweeter than honey. Job is saying God's word is more valuable than physical bread.
Now Matthew 4:4 and Matthew 6:11 make more sense. Jesus tells the devil: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." And in Matthew 6:11, Jesus says: "Ask God for daily bread."
Daily bread, then, is more than physical bread. Daily bread includes spiritual bread—the word of God.
Physical bread is to the body. The word of God is to our spirit.
If my body needs food and bread to function effectively, my spirit must surely need bread. My spirit must surely need the word of God.
Isaiah 55:2 says: "Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance. Listen carefully to me and eat. Listen and eat."
Listen and eat. Listen and eat. That means God's bread for us comes through His voice. It is the word of God that is bread to my spirit.
When I read the Bible, I am eating bread from God. When I read the Bible, I'm eating bread from God. When I take time to listen after I've prayed, after I've read my Bible, and I just have quiet time before Him and He begins to minister to me and share with me—that is my spirit eating.
The word of God is my bread.
We were not designed to live by physical sustenance alone. We're designed to live by spiritual bread. This real bread is not the one that goes into your mouth—this bread is one that goes in through your eyes and your ears.
While your physical bread makes its way into you through your mouth, your spiritual bread makes its way in through your eyes and your ears. It is the one that feeds your spirit.
Sidebar: Speaking about the word of God—God's bread is His word, but God's bread is not just a thing. God's bread is also a person.
The Bible says in John 6:33: "The true bread of God is the one that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
And John 6:35 says: "Jesus replied, 'I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never thirst.'"
That means when Jesus was asking us to ask for Daily Bread, He was asking us to pray for a daily encounter with Jesus in His word. It was not about just physical bread—it was about a daily encounter.
When Jesus was talking about bread, He was talking about it in three dimensions:
That's how dynamic the word of God is. Sometimes we get so myopic with the word of God that it has to mean one thing. Sometimes God is saying one thing and we're hearing it multiple times because we're hearing more than one thing from what He's saying.
God is speaking the same set of words now, and He is ministering to all of you individually. When people see me in the lobby and tell me, "Man, when you were saying this..." sometimes I think, "I don't think I said that." But that's what they heard. That's what they heard.
So God's bread is physical, spiritual, and figurative.
"Give us this day our daily bread" is not just about meeting your physical needs. It's more than that. It's a prayer for daily provision of material needs, a prayer for daily insight and instruction from the word of God, and a prayer for a daily encounter with the person of Jesus.
There is no way that this symbolism of bread is more prevalent than in the story of the children of Israel in their Exodus from Egypt. In fact, Jesus's response when the devil tried to tempt Him was gotten from that story.
We see this in Exodus 12. God orchestrates their deliverance from Egypt. The king of Egypt sends them out so fast that they don't have time to pack everything. The Bible says in Exodus 12:34: "The Israelites did not have time to put yeast in their bread. They wrapped up their bowls of dough with cloth and carried them on their shoulders. They left, and they found some time to bake."
In Exodus 12:39: "For bread they baked flat cakes from the dough without yeast that they brought from Egypt, made without yeast because the people were driven out of Egypt in such a hurry that they had no time to prepare bread or any other food."
So they leave with dough. They stop long enough to bake so they have bread. The first complaint in Exodus 15 was for water. Then the next complaint in Exodus 16, when the bread ran out, was for bread again.
Just as their bread ran out before they got to the promised land, we cannot bake enough bread to sustain us.
Remember: bread is the wisdom of God, instruction, insight. You don't have enough common sense, intellect, and brilliant ideas to take you to the place God wants to take you. At some point, you're going to run out of your own bread.
The bread God gave them—manna—continued until they got into the promised land. When they got into the promised land, it ended. Because the word of God is quick and powerful—it can deliver. It doesn't just make you a promise; it contains within it the power to deliver the promise.
But the bread that you make, the ideas you come up with, the common sense you want to live your life by—will run out one day.
Turn to your neighbor and say: "You're not that smart."
If you insist on living by your intellect, you're guaranteed to come short of God's best for you. If you insist on living by common sense, at some point you're going to run into confusion and stagnancy.
God will never make us a promise that can be fulfilled without Him. God will never set you on a course that you can successfully finish without Him. God will never give you a campaign that you can complete without Him.
God's best requires God's bread.
I know it sounds corny, but remember it: God's best for you requires a dedicated supply of bread from Him.
Let's go back to the story. In Exodus 16:4, the Lord says to Moses: "Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you. The people shall go out and gather a certain portion every day."
The Easy English Bible says: "Each day the people must go out and pick enough bread for that day."
The Expanded Bible says: "Every day the people must go out and gather what they need for that day."
The children of Israel exhausted their bread. God gave them bread, but on one condition: every day. Every day you will go and gather what you need for that day.
God told them: "I'm going to give you bread, but unlike the grocery shop where you can go and get your supply for the week, I'm not going to give you a week's supply. You're going to have to come back here every day."
While the children of Israel were looking for bread, God was looking for a relationship.
Yes. If you're a parent, sometimes you just want a hug from your child. You tell them, "I'll give it to you if you give me a hug." Why? Well, they want what you have. You want them. They were looking for bread. God was looking for a relationship.
"I need to meet with you every day. I need to recreate what Adam and Eve had. So I'll do whatever it's going to take. If it's going to take bread to get it, I'm going to give you bread. But I'm going to give you bread every day."
Why do you think God has not given you all the favor you need in your office? Because if He gave it to you all at once, you would not pay attention to Him.
As I studied this, I stumbled on a translation that intrigued me. The Jubilee Bible 2000 renders Exodus 16 this way: "Every day the people must go out... I will rain bread from heaven, and the people shall go out and gather the word for every day."
I was like, "Wait a minute. Is this heresy?" I went to the New King James: "A certain portion they shall gather, a certain portion every day."
I went to the Hebrew because something seemed lost. When I read the Hebrew, I realized that the word "a certain portion" in Hebrew is the word darar, which means speech, saying, utterance, word, words, command.
God was saying: "Every day I'm going to give you bread, but when you go to collect, you're not just going to be collecting physical bread. You're going to be collecting words. You're going to be collecting words every day."
While the bread was raining down from heaven in the physical, that was just a picture of God speaking. While they saw bread in the physical, Moses—in writing this—renders this as words.
While they were looking for physical bread, God was drawing their attention to spiritual bread.
This is why Jesus's response to the devil's temptation about physical bread was to draw His attention to spiritual bread. "Bro, I know you read the verse, but you missed the meaning of the verse. It was not about manna. It was not about bread. God was trying to get you to gather words."
So my question to you is: Have you taken out time every day to gather words—enough for that day? Or are we too busy?
Because if the devil cannot stop God from speaking, he can distract you long enough that you might gather two of three, one of five, one of ten.
Have you ever tried to put together IKEA furniture? The attention we pay to that instruction booklet is incredible. I think I'm smart, so I'll just start building. All of a sudden I'll pull out a drawer and think, "Yep, that drawer is not working." But it is working—I just missed a step. Then I go back to the book and I see: "Oh, oh yeah. That's why it's not working. I missed a step. I did not gather enough words for what I have."
Or when you're cooking. You get to a critical part of the recipe, and you realize you need a spice or curry, and you realize the container is empty. You have a choice: do you cook a mediocre version of the food, or do you pause your cooking and go get what you need?
How many of us are living mediocre versions of our lives because we walked up to a particular part of our life and realized we didn't have the words to guide us there? Then we settle for common sense.
Common sense will always produce common results. Always.
Abraham is the father of faith, and we see him practicing this in Genesis 22:1–2:
"God tested Abraham and called unto him: 'Abraham.' And He said, 'Take your son, your only son, yes Isaac, whom you love very much, and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will show you.'"
Abraham wakes up one day and gets the daily bread. He gets the instruction for that day. He gets the command for that day. That is what is necessary.
If you had woken up on Tuesday and gotten the command, you would have realized that the guy who smiled at you when you were pumping gas into your car was actually your future husband. Maybe it was cold, but you were not smiling enough for him to ask for your number. If you had waited and gathered words, God would have spoken to you about joy and how joy has to be evident on your face.
How many times have you texted somebody and they said, "I was just thinking about you"? You just said exactly what I needed. Guess what you got? You got bread. You got fresh bread.
Abraham wakes up this morning and God gives him fresh bread. But in that instruction is the secret for the next one. He says: "Take your son to a mountain. I am going to show you." Yes—that means you have to keep paying attention. If not, you will miss the mountain.
That means you can have the right sacrifice and make the sacrifice on the wrong mountain. You can see the right girl and give her the wrong relationship. She was supposed to be your friend that leads you to your wife, but then you go after her like she's your wife—because all the bread you got was to identify her. But you did not get bread to identify the mountain.
You get the right job, but you have the wrong friendships in the job. You get the right financial breakthrough, but you spend it wrongly because you have the right Isaac, but you picked the wrong mountain.
The Isaac was chosen by divine inspiration. But the mountain was chosen by common sense and pop culture.
How many of us are living a frustrated life now because we tried to complete with our common sense what we began by divine inspiration? God said start the business, but all your marketing plan has been the product of common sense. And you wonder why it's not working.
God tells him you have to pay attention. So day one, he wakes up and gets the bread: "Take your son up." And he's going, and every day he has to ask: "Is this the mountain? Nope. Is this the mountain? No, that's not the mountain. No...".
Given the terrain we're talking about, there are mountains everywhere. So he has to pay attention. On the third day, Genesis 22:4 says: "On the third day of his journey, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance."
So he gets up that day, God says, "Oh, yeah. That's the one. That's the one. That's the one." So he walks up there, leaves the servants behind.
(Sidebar: For those of you that follow leaders who follow God, sometimes they don't know where we are going yet. The best you can do is pray for them. Ask Abraham's servants—he did not know where he was going. In fact, God told him, "You will not know where you're going until I show you where you're going." Most of us get so hard on leaders because we need somebody who knows exactly where we're going. But we're just going. I know where we're going. I know what we're going to do when we get there. But where we're going to do it—I haven't received that bread yet.)
He gets there and does exactly what the bread says to do. (When I say bread, I mean the word.) He sets the altar, sets the wood, ties his son, puts it there. He's just about to kill his son. Fresh bread. Do not kill that boy.
That means sometimes the bread that you received can contradict tomorrow's bread. Today, God can say, "Smile." Tomorrow, "I need you to be serious in the office. There's somebody coming to the office who needs to see that you're a serious person." Then the very next day, somebody's coming to the office who needs to see that you're a very happy, good-luck person.
But sometimes the bread is the same. It might be the same instruction, but it has progressive impact. Keep doing what I told you to do.
Verse 11 says: "Stop. Yeah, don't kill the boy."
What would have happened if Abraham was still eating three-day-old bread? He almost killed the person that was the fulfillment of God's promise.
Think of how many things most of us have lost, chewing on three-day-old bread. On 10-year-old bread.
God gave you the old word. This year, He's telling you don't. But it's today you're deciding. And we are killing things that should be alive because we think we can turn stones to bread.
If you follow a GPS, it tells you: "In 200 feet, take a left." You're driving, and it says: "In 200 feet, take a left." You get to 200 feet and take a left, and you get to where the water is. Right?
This is what most of us do. The bread you receive says: "In 200 feet, take a left." And we do 200 feet and get there.
But sometimes we say, "I don't know. I can't see the water." "Just take a left." "You see the water?" "God, I love You, and Pastor Victor says we should obey You, so I'm going to take a left now, in Jesus' name." And then you get frustrated that there's no water.
You know why there's no water? Because the water was 200 feet after you take a left. If you take a left when you're not supposed to take a left, you will not find what you're looking for.
It is the mercy of God that drags that water and brings it to us, because He knows if He leaves it to us, we're going to delay.
One of my commitments this year is to increase the speed of my obedience.
John 6:38 says: "For I have come down from heaven to do the will of the one that sent me."
How did He know the will of God? Luke 5:16 says: "But Jesus often withdrew to the Wilderness to pray."
What have we learned?
When you read Exodus 16:4, the Bible says: "For the Lord said to Moses, 'Behold, I will cause bread to rain from heaven for you. The people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, so that I may test them to determine whether or not they will walk obediently in My instruction.'"
Remember: what they were gathering were words, instruction. So the purpose of bread was to build a relationship. The purpose of bread was to build consistency in the relationship. The purpose of the bread was to provide an opportunity for obedience.
The law God was talking about here is not the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments have not even come yet. This was just everyday instruction He was giving them—with an instruction to see if they will obey.
So the bread you receive every day is an opportunity. Daily bread gives us the opportunity to obey God every day. Obey God every day.
The Bible says in Deuteronomy 8:1: "Be careful to obey the commands I am giving you today."
Every day, you're going to receive a supply of instruction. When you have your quiet time, every day you're going to receive an instruction, a command. It can be a very simple thing to do: text this person, call that person, email this other person, smile today, wear the blue shirt, or it can be some crazy stuff. But we stay there and we collect it.
The purpose of it is to obey.
You go to God. You worship. Put on some worship music, please. I want to dissuade us from this passive quiet time we're doing now, where you play the worship song and then you just keep quiet while the artist is singing out their guts. You are just quiet.
No. Sing. Worship. Read your word. Pray. If you have your prayer language, pray in the Spirit. And then keep quiet. Just keep quiet.
I know some of you have crazy ideas. Write those ideas down. When I do my quiet time, I have like posted notes. When I feel like the devil is trying to inundate me with thoughts, I just write all of them. Because you will forget. You will forget. You will forget? No, just write it all out. After, we discern if it's God. If it's not God, we discard it. But you spend time in His presence.
But God is calling us to do this not occasionally. Do you not know how I know? Everybody knows how to do what I'm saying, because we do it:
"Cast me out not, O gentle Savior; hear my humble cry. While others choose delight..."
We know how to do it. And then we stay there.
I sense that God is telling me, "I should move to California." Yeah, maybe He's telling you that. But guess what? You know where to go to get the bread. But somehow, because we think we can bake bread on our own, because we think we have the mind to do it by ourselves, the challenge God is calling us to embrace in 2025 is daily.
Everybody say it: "Daily."
Today, we're going to begin one of three challenges. The ushers have cards in their hands. I want to make this as practical as possible.
These cards have a QR code and a link to a page on our website that has links to many daily devotionals and Bible study tools—all kinds of things, videos, YouTube playlists, whatever. Some people in our church have written some devotions. We've created a page for it. Just go at it that way.
You cannot say you don't know what to do.
So what should you do? Scan it. Go to that page. Download it. Pick something and dedicate every day.
Why? Why should it be daily?
Why should it be in the morning?
Today, when you leave, everybody make sure you get that card. Go home. Scan it. (The internet here is poor, but go home and scan it.)
Decide:
If it takes you 20 minutes from bed to brain being on fire and working, factor that in. Some of you, when you wake up, need like 30 minutes just to be present in the world. Factor that time in.
And then what do you do? Spend the time. Jesus. Read your Bible.
We're going to have a conference in March—the Bible Believers Conference. Just like New Year's Eve, I'm telling you guys now before we tell the world: you're going to have to register for it. When registration opens on March 15th, please register. The theme of this conference is "How to Study Your Bible." We're going to press on the need. We're going to give you as many tools as possible. But now, let me just tell you: go create the time. Create the space.
Wake up. Put on some worship music. Get your playlist going. Take some time to pray. Prayer is not super complicated—just bare your heart toward God. Read the Bible and ask yourself: What is the Bible teaching me today? Pray about it. And then just be quiet.
This is not New Age meditation. You're not just being quiet for the sake of quiet. You've filled your heart with the word of God. Now you're letting that word do what it does—it makes you sensitive to the word of God. The word of God makes you sensitive to when God wants to speak specific things to you.
And then when He does, ideas and thoughts are going to come to your mind. That's how God speaks sometimes. So just write it all down. Capture it.
We are going to be everyday people at The Well.
If you believe that, put your hands together and celebrate God.
