We are continuing to ponder and reflect on the prayer that Our Lord Jesus taught His disciples to pray. Jesus begins by calling us, His disciples, to open our prayers acknowledging the immanence (closeness) of God as our Father, and His transcendence (the greatness of God) as the Eternal King. We open our prayers acknowledging and rejoicing in the intimacy of the relationship that Jesus ushers us into and then bow in humility and submission to the King of the Universe. It is not an either/or but a both/and. God is both our loving Father and the King of the Universe. He calls us into intimate relationship but also deep reverence.
After giving us a right view of God, Jesus then directs us to bring to God our needs and that he will hear and give us what we need. Jesus picks up on what He had said earlier about trusting God, and coming to Him with simple words because He knows what we need (Matthew 6:7-8). We are to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” (6:11)
Give us this day our daily bread
Life in this world has us obsessed about the future. We are constantly being asked about where we see ourselves in five or ten or twenty years! It is said to be the responsible, reasonable thing to do. Part of why COVID was so challenging is that it completely threw out our plans for the future. It forced us to admit that we are really not in charge of the future. Jesus brings us back to the reality that we are to pray for the present. This is a prayer of trust for today – the here and now: “Give us this day our daily bread. . .”. Jesus is teaching us to focus on the present and not get lost trying to secure our tomorrows.
Someone will ask me, “So are you saying we shouldn’t plan for the future?” No, I am not. But I will let James give us some perspective, “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.” (James 4:13-16)
The problem is not trying to plan for the future but the pride we have that that future will come and that we will ‘control’ it. Our planning is often about trying to be god over our lives. We are not looking to God to lead us and take us where He is pleased to, but are proudly taking for granted that we will be alive and will do what we want. The Lord’s prayer slows us down when we are tempted to boast about tomorrow. It teaches us to look to God and trust His provision, not our plans. “Give us this day our daily bread. . .” It is an acknowledgement of our dependence upon the generosity of the King of the Universe.
Whenever I think about this section of the prayer, I am drawn to some wise words in Proverbs 30:7-9, “Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?” or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.” I think that what Agur (30:1) asks God is another way of praying “Give us this day our daily bread”. He helpfully builds for us a picture of God providing what is enough for us so that we can be kept from two kinds of errors.
The first error we are most tempted by is the error of greed – having too much. There is a reason the prosperity gospel is so appealing to us: it speaks to our deep desire to have an abundance of material wealth. However, we know that more often than not, this abundance clouds our eyes and puffs us up. We stop looking up to the God who has generously provided and begin to look at our storehouses and bank accounts and think to ourselves, “Look at all I have. I can look to the future with confidence.” Agur points out that when we are full, we are tempted to deny God and see no use for Him. We think, “I have money, why do I need God?” According to what we have looked at so far in the Lord’s prayer, it is clear to see that we can easily view our needs apart from the reality of who God is as our Father and the King of the Universe before whom we are to bow (Matt. 6:9-10).
In an era of bank accounts and financial security, we cannot imagine thinking only about today. Our confidence in provision is tied to what’s in the bank. If the account is running low, we are tempted to panic and get anxious. But if its flush with cash, then we are tempted to get proud, forgetting that it is God who has provided. While there is always wisdom in financial management, our attitude as we do that is very telling of what is really ruling us. If we trust God, then the balance in our account shouldn’t cause us worry or make us proud. We remember that it is God who supplies bread for each day – not our jobs or investments.
But the other error that Agur highlights is being poor and trying to taking things into our own hands, “lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.” This prayer for daily bread is also helpful in keeping us from the folly of turning to sin in a bid to provide for ourselves what we need. I think as a Kenyan living in an allegedly 85% Christian nation, this might speak to the equally high percentage of corruption. While we give lip service to our belief in God, we do not really see Him as the King of the Universe who deserves our worship and faithful submission, and who also cares for us and will provide for our needs. We become so wrapped up in getting things that we do not stop to think if our actions rightly reflect our confession of faith or the God we claim to worship.
And so as we pray “Give us this day our daily bread”, we are praying in trust of the All-Good, loving Father and King of the Universe. We are submitting ourselves to His care to supply for us what is enough for us, so that we can live contented godly lives – not having too much that we arrogantly deny Him, nor having too little that we turn to sin and dishonor Him. Who God is directs how we pray and what we pray for in trust. We can approach Him with the confidence of a loving, powerful Father who cares for us and knows our needs. We also pray with caution over our own greedy, easily deceived hearts that can turn from trust in Him to other things, including our weak hands. We are to pray for enough – what we need for each day like the Manna God so graciously provided in the wilderness (Ex. 16:4).
For me, this represents a huge mental shift. I need to look behind the curtain to the God who is truly in charge. The God of Providence, who alone supplies what I need. I need to surrender the façade that tempts me to trust in external things or myself for my provision. It is not my boss or earthly father or my hands which supply what I need. It is the Great God of Heaven, my heavenly Father! O for grace to trust him more!!!