Give Us This Day Our Daily
Bread
Once we
have focused appropriately on God’s glory and aligning ourselves with His
purposes, we then come to the point where we express our needs to God. Prayer,
as Jesus shows here, is about depending on God. This is a hard thing for many
Americans to grasp, particularly on the level of everyday physical needs, such
as food and shelter. We believe that we can provide for ourselves; after all,
there is an abundance of resources at our disposal. But when Jesus says to
pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” He is showing that, in reality, God
is the one who supplies for us. An overarching theme of Scripture is that God
is the true source and supplier of all that is found in nature. Praying before
a meal to thank God for food, then, is not a formality, it is to be the
heartfelt acknowledgement that the food which
nourishes us comes as a gift from God, and it reminds us of our dependency on
Him to meet our needs. Not only are we to depend on Him for food but for
everything we need. The apostle Peter says to “Cast all your anxiety on [God] because
he cares for you” (I Peter 5:7, NIV). Prayer is certainly a time for us to express
our needs to God because He, as a loving Father, cares about us.
Forgive Us Our Debts
Lest we be
presumptuous, however, assuming that God ought to meet our expectations, Jesus
says we should also seek God’s forgiveness for our debt against Him. Prayer, as
mentioned earlier, is not to be presenting a wish-list; it is about relating
rightly to God and others. We can have confidence that God will forgive us, but
we must be consistent in relation to others. “For if you forgive men their
trespasses,” Jesus states, “your heavenly Father will also forgive
you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your
Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14–15). This is reminiscent of a story Jesus tells
elsewhere in answer to a question posed by Peter.
Then Peter came to
Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who
sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Jesus
answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
“Therefore, the
kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with
his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand
bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to
pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that
he had be sold to repay the debt.
“At this the
servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged,
‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him,
canceled the debt and let him go.
“But when that
servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred
silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay
back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
“His fellow
servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay
it back.’
“But he refused.
Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the
debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged
and went and told their master everything that had happened.
“Then the master
called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt
of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your
fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over
to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
“This is how my
heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or
sister from your heart.” (Matthew 18:21–35, NIV)
Prayer
is a means of helping us to put things into perspective. It is easy to be
bitter and demanding toward others when they have wronged or failed us, but
when we see our own sin and need of forgiveness before God, it ought to lead us
to be merciful toward others. So Jesus instructs us to pray, “Forgive us our
debts as we forgive our debtors.”
Do Not Lead Us into
Temptation, but Deliver Us from the Evil One
This
request concerning temptation and being delivered from the evil one shows that
prayer is also about gaining spiritual victory. We may not realize it, but
great people of God have been people of prayer. Jesus said, “I am the vine,
you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears
much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. . . If you abide in Me, and My
words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for
you.” Those who know and follow Christ can expect to have their prayers
answered, and they must remember that without Christ, they cannot be successful
spiritually. The Scripture teaches that, in the realm of spirituality, there is
a battle taking place between the forces of light and darkness (cf. Eph. 6:12).
This manifests itself on a physical level, but it takes place behind the
scenes, so to speak. Prayer affords us the opportunity to be prepared to face
the situations that will be brought our way with confidence in God and His power
resting upon us. When Daniel (in the Old Testament) was under the imperial
decree forbidding prayer, he went on as usual with his worship practices. This
led him to be thrown into a den of lions as punishment, but he faced it with
courage and dignity because of the fortitude received from time with God.
An
important principle we must always keep in mind is that private practice
determines public performance. We can be inspired by a great athlete or
musician and be amazed at their ability. We may even say that these people are
so gifted, and we wish we could do those things. But what is easily overlooked
is the amount of time spent working on developing and perfecting their
abilities. Perhaps we could be quite good at a sport or an instrument if we put
the hours and hours of toil necessary to become proficient. In the same way, if
we are going to be spiritually proficient, we must privately prepare with
discipline in order to see spiritual growth and productivity. We must seek God
regularly in prayer and time in His Word, asking Him for help in the spiritual
battle we face.
The Reason for Prayer
“For Yours is the
kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”
This final phrase
brings us back to where we began in this prayer: God’s glory. Though this phrase
is not found in all of the ancient manuscripts, it does provide us with a
Scripturally- based conclusion to the prayer (cf. I Chronicles 29:11). We pray,
not out of duty or selfish motives, but because of who God is: the One who
possesses the ultimate authority, power, and glory forever. And so Christ-followers are to be people of
prayer, following the pattern presented by the Lord Jesus in this passage. This
is why the “Lord’s Prayer” was given to us, not a prayer to recite thoughtlessly,
but a model for how to pray effectively.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken
from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982
by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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