Last Saturday it was my turn to pick up bread from a local bakery that donates its unsold goods to our church. I hauled out eight large containers full of bagels, pastries, cookies, flatbreads, and baguettes. Providentially, the text I had planned to preach the following Sunday evening was Matthew 6:11, “Give us this day our daily bread.” As my arms strained to carry what millions of parents around the world would crave to feed to their children, I found myself thinking: Why should we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread?” Why should we ask God to give us the essentials for survival (“bread”) on the very day we need it (“this day”) when it seems we have delicacies to last us indefinitely?
The very fact that this question popped into my mind revealed how our prosperous culture has saturated my thinking. I rarely consider that I am completely dependent on God. I complicate my life with an appetite for luxuries. And I tend to shape my requests according to my priorities instead of God’s. My drive from that bakery—with the fragrance of Asiago cheese bagels in the car—gave me an opportunity to reflect on lessons to be learned from the petition “give us this day our daily bread.”
Embrace dependence.
Why must we pray “give us this day our daily bread?” Because we really are dependent on God for every crumb we eat each day of our lives. Our abundance—inconceivable to most of the world’s population throughout most of history—easily blinds us to our desperate need for God’s daily provision. With a reliable stream of clean water delivered right to our homes, with gas and electricity to regulate the temperature, with access to doctors and medicine—not to mention a refrigerator packed with food—it rarely enters our mind implore our Father, “Give us today what we need to survive.”
Only when our luxuries falter do we feel anything approaching the dependence we ought to constantly realize: All we have is from God and all we have he can easily take all away. True, there is wisdom in having health insurance, life insurance, and other safeguards in place for us and our loved ones. But no insurance policy, no 401(k), no amount of savings can replace our need to depend completely on God.
Live simply.
“Give us this day our daily bread,” Jesus taught us to pray, but we tend to bloat this petition beyond the simple cry for daily sustenance. Our “needs” become increasingly elaborate, and these lead to other “needs.” Those new shoes require a new outfit, the new outfit begs for a matching purse, and the whole ensemble needs a gala occasion to show it off. The new boat needs a new car port, the car port reveals the need for new shutters, and the new shutters look out-of-place without better landscaping.
If we try to live simply, we will find no help from advertisers. They have mastered the art of convincing us that we have limped along in peril, ugliness, loneliness, and insignificance without their insurance policies, shampoos, lip balms, or new vehicles. Let us free ourselves from the bondage of believing every commercial, billboard ad, and rumor of that once-in-a-lifetime deal! Let us learn the words of the Apostle Paul: “But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction” (1 Timothy 6:8-9).
Keep God’s priorities.
If we follow the order of petitions in the Lord’s prayer, we understand that the request “give us this day our daily bread,” comes after the petitions about God’s priorities—that his name be treated holy, that his kingdom would come, and that his will would be done. Only when we submit to these priorities, are we in a proper frame of mind to offer our requests. In other words, our prayer for daily bread is a prayer that our lives would be sustained so that we may bring glory to God’s name, to advance his kingdom, and to do his will.
When we forget these priorities, our petitions devolve into selfish demands. As John Piper has memorably put it, Christians abuse prayer “as an intercom in their cushy houses and cabins and boats and cars – not to call in fire power for conflict with a mortal enemy, but to ask the maid to bring another pillow to the den.” How often, as James writes, do we “ask and do not receive, because [we] ask wrongly, to spend it on [our] passions”! Every bite we eat, every breath we inhale, and every surge of blood through our veins—these are just the means by which we are sustained to do God’s will, not our own. “Give us this day our daily bread,” is the cry of those who have learned to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” convinced that “all these things will be added” to them.
Perhaps you have prayed, “give us this day our daily bread,” not knowing where that bread would come from. Maybe you have never felt such desperate need. But whether rich or poor, everyone is equally dependent on God. As the psalmist puts it, “The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing” (Psalm 145:15-16). May we offer this petition sincerely, as we learn to embrace dependence, live simply, and keep God’s priorities.
