Exodus 16 & Deuteronomy 8 | Crossroads Daily

Hey, I'm Chuck. I'm Jamie. And I'm Miko. And thanks for being with us today. I love this scripture because manna has to be one of the most fascinating things in the Bible. I don't know if you guys remember this, but when you read the description of manna, it literally reads frosted flakes. Read it in your Bible. It's flakes like frost. It's frosted flakes. I don't know if it was actually frosted flakes, but like, yeah, it's frosted flakes. It's the most interesting thing. And you know, I think the Bible is very clear. What God was doing there is not just feeding his people, but he was teaching his people and he was teaching them about daily dependence. So in this season of your life, what does daily dependence on God look like for you? Like what are some practical things? You're like, Hey, in this season of my life, daily dependence looks like this. I can tell you what it's not. And then I come back into what it is. And so I can get really caught up in, Hey, this, these are the things I want to see over the next couple of months. And I'm like, okay, what are the things I need to be doing? And I can get so fixated on the like tomorrows that I don't think about the like here and now and not wasting that. And so it's looked like this really small practical thing of in the morning, like after my quiet time, I asked God, like, okay, what's my intention for today? How do you want me to show up? And where can I look for you in the midst of that? And so I literally write it in my notebook at the top of the day of like, today is going to be about this. And it just grounds me. And I find that when I like get out of my practice or my rhythm of like spending time with God, I can like feel in the day where I'm like, Oh, I am all over the place. Like what was the purpose in today? Um, so it's just like genuinely like asking like, okay, what do you have for me today? And setting that intention at the beginning of the day. I'm just curious, like what's maybe the most surprising intention God's given you as you've been doing it? I don't know. No, no. It's usually around, um, how I treat myself. Like I think when I started the practice, it was like, and then I'm going to show up like this amazing person for all these other people. And then sometimes it's just like, you deserve grace. And so treat the moment like that. And I'm not going to wake up and be like, you know what I need to give myself today? Grace. Like for me, it definitely feels like that's a thing that

God is breaking in me because I have such a high propensity to not show myself grace. Thank you for that. That is just such, I love the practicality of that. Like that's really, really helpful and tangible. So thanks for sharing that. Man, it's good. Miko, how about you? It definitely makes it seem so simple. Cause I don't know. I don't, I wish I was that intentional regularly. Cause it's like, I could start a thing, but then it's like eventually life starts life and then I'll fall from it. But I do kind of like to your point, recognize that my thing is more so really just like, just quietness. I recognize like I need that, like I need some stillness. I need some quietness. I need some, sometimes it's not even prayer with words. It's more just like just being present. If I don't have that, like I try to have it daily, but if I go days without that, I definitely can feel like tension building in. But I don't know. Cause it's like, as I hear you say the piece about like specifically asking God, like what is the intention for today? That, I don't know. That's kind of challenging for me. That's something that I like, I want to try that. I want to try to see, right. Cause it gives the day so much purpose. But yeah, so I don't know. I may, I don't know. Maybe at a later time might circle back to something like that and I'll share with you how it goes. But, but yeah, right now it's, it's definitely, it's just that quiet time. Yeah. Yeah. Mine is a, it's a, it's kind of a recovery practice and it's making a daily call. So, um, every day I try to call a guy who has been in my recovery journey and we call it checking in. So like, how are you feeling physically? Yeah. Put some words to that. How are you feeling emotionally? How are you feeling spiritually? Um, what's, what's the challenge that you have facing today? What do you need prayer around? And it is this thing. I mean, usually I do it with my friend Michael and it is just daily dependence. You know, like today, today was a big day for me in some ways. And like, man, like that call to Michael this morning was really important just to be like, Hey, checking in, how you feeling going into today? Um, and so that daily dependence, and I will tell you, man, it is hard. I mean, it's one of my best friends. It's hard to make that call because there's a sense in which you have to admit your need, um, that I need this, I need this kind of connection. So that's one for me. And I always connect manna to the Lord's prayer. And particularly that line, give us this day, our daily bread, right?

There's a dailiness to our relationship with Jesus. And I think it's not, I think there's a moment by moment, a second by second, but definitely a dailiness to our relationship with Jesus that never goes away. was a way, but it's also hard sometimes to grasp, you know, or to keep in our lives. And so, you know, bread was never the point. I don't think it was about manna. I mean, yeah, he'd feed his people, but he could've, he could've sustained them. They could've just like, wow, they didn't eat for 40 years. Like, it's God. He wasn't limited to just like, oh, I gotta give them something that actually goes in their mouth. But I think it was the daily practice is what he was trying to get them to. So as you think about our lives, just busy, full lives, what do you think are some daily communal practices that would be really healthy for our church, for people in our church? I mean, I think low-hanging fruit is just delving into the word. Yeah. Yeah, I think that, as I'm sitting here, man, I am so challenged at just, I think daily is what's standing out to me because it's like, it's such a reminder of how inconsistent I am with even the things that I know I need as I'm sitting up here processing this.

And I'm like, man, like, how much do I deal with regularly that if I just committed to a daily thing, you know what I'm saying? How much would that like alleviate certain, you know, just so many different things that I deal with that, but not to make this about me. Yeah, you said, for our church, for our church. You're part of our church, though, so. Right, right, right. But yeah, definitely, I think the low-hanging fruit, man, it's just, it's delving in the word. I don't think there's a substitute for that. I think that there are other things that we do that are very good for our walk, but I don't think, for me anyways, I don't think there's anything that's just a substitute for just that daily sustenance of His word. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I mean, what you're doing right now is a daily practice that I think gets to dependence. I'm always struck by how we think about reading the Bible. Thankfully, we are more literate today than certainly the first century church would have been. So think about how they read the Bible. Somebody would come in with a scroll, probably only a handful of people who could read that scroll, but they would read the whole scroll and they would talk about it.

They would literally do what we're doing right now. And so I think that this is a beautiful thing. So yeah, you're joining us virtually, you're doing this on the app, you're doing this on a website or something like that, you're in front of your laptop or your phone, but we are having a communal experience of God's truth right now. And the fact that you do this daily is a daily practice of dependence, it really is. Yeah, and I think in that, in the app and or just whatever space that you're in, being able to talk to someone else about it, like whether it's being able to hear how someone else is processing or chewing on it, because I think that's, when they read the scroll and they kind of engaged in that debate and that open discourse, I don't have to agree with you, I don't have to, how a specific verse strikes you, Nico, doesn't have to be the same way it strikes me, but we can talk about it and I think we get to a deeper place of understanding. And I think sometimes, personally, as I'm reading in the morning, and I said, I write it in my notebook, the intention is to do it daily. And I know when I've gotten away from the practice, right? But if something strikes for me, then calling that person.

So I like that you have that in the morning. One of my little sisters, she calls me in the morning on her walk to the train. So I know it's like, at most, it's a 10 minute talk, but it's kind of that thing like, what's going on in your day? And I tend to say like, oh, I heard this in my quiet time this morning, you might consider. And so just having those people that you go to and you're willing to share for both like your building up in your faith, but also for theirs. Building into them, oh, I love that. That's so good. That's so good. When it comes to mine, as you mentioned the scroll, and I don't know why this didn't come to mind first, because this is something that has definitely been a huge part of my walk is journaling. I think that like, if I could wear a shirt, journal or die. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm that serious about it. Because the thought some years ago, it's like of all of the ways that God chose to preserve his word, he chose for it to be written down. And a lot of these things that you'll read in scripture, it's like, they didn't know that this would one day be the text that we would,

you know what I'm saying? Be building our faith on. So it's like, man, God, we don't even know the implications of what writing it down may do. You know what I'm saying? This person was just writing about what they were dealing with at that time. And now it's the Bible. You know what I'm saying? Or it's a part of the Bible. So I'm definitely a huge advocate of like, journaling as well, bro. I love that. This is not new and it's certainly not original to me, but I think if there's anything I'm taking away from this conversation is this simple reminder, we are not created to live independent. We are created to live in dependence. but even say interdependently. So there's the part of me that needs to have a vertical relationship with God and be independence on God. But there's also the part of me that needs to have this horizontal relationship with you, Jamie, and with you, Miko, and with other followers of Jesus where I'm living in interdependence. And I think that daily bread, that daily need, is just a reminder that we're not created

to be an independent agent, but we're created to live independent. So may you today receive and seek daily bread, and may you live independence and interdependent with God and with others. ♪♪