Sunday School at 9 am | worship at 10 am

Daily Bread Living

As Jesus moves on in the Lord’s Prayer, he takes us from “Hallowed by Thy name” and “Thy kingdom come” and “Thy will be done” to “Give us this day our daily bread.” The first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are about God. Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done. Then the last three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer are about us. Give us our daily bread. Forgive us our debts. Lead us not into temptation.

There’s an obvious shift of emphasis here. We might say it’s a shift from focusing on God to focusing on ourselves. It seems that Jesus is taking us from the sublime to the mundane, from the spiritual to the carnal, from great things we must pray for to something relatively unimportant we are permitted to pray for. Such a change from the lofty and spiritual things that come just before it has prompted some Christians to say that this can’t mean literal, physical bread. The Lord has just told us to pray for God’s name to be hallowed, for his kingdom to come, and for his will to be done as it is in heaven. And now it can’t be right that he is telling us to come down from that lofty spiritual plane. But that’s exactly what he is telling us. He’s telling us that there’s a connection between the spiritual and the physical.

God wants us to keep our focus on him. When we’re praying for God’s name to be hallowed, and for his kingdom to come, and for his will to be done, we’re focusing on him. That’s certainly clear. And when we’re asking God for our daily bread, we’re still focusing on him. Let me explain.

Life is uncertain. Most of us don’t have enough savings to get through another month if our income suddenly stopped coming in. You can be doing fine one day and the next day your life can be turned upside down. You can have a heart attack or a stroke or an accident. Your life gets rearranged in a split second. Just when you think you’ve got it all together, an illness, the loss of a job, the collapse of a business that you put together, can happen so fast. One reason God lets those things happen is to move us away from self-sufficiency to God-sufficiency. From self-reliance to God-reliance. From trusting in our own ability to trusting in him alone.

Do this mean that we shouldn’t plan ahead? Not at all. You should plan ahead. That’s biblical. You should plan ahead but you shouldn’t worry ahead. There’s a big difference. The whole point of asking for daily bread is to teach us to take life one day at a time. When you’re sick you don’t get better a week at a time or a month at a time. You get better one day at a time. That is a tremendous principle. Daily bread living means taking life one day at a time and being confident that God will take care of your needs day by day by day. It is an acknowledgement that we are completely dependent upon God for every spiritual and physical need we have.