Daily Bread

Matthew 6:11 – This part of the prayer may seem foreign to us today in the United States. Why would we need God to supply us daily with bread to eat when we can go down to the corner market and buy more food than we can eat in a week? But before we make any assumptions, let’s stop and take a look at what Jesus is saying. After all, even though God’s Word was written and preached at a certain time in history, we must remember that His Word is TIMELESS! It reflects for us the character of God, and in fact is a revelation of HImself to us. The Living Word and the written Word have this in common – they are the same yesterday, today, and forever! You see, God’s Word really does apply to us and our lives right now, today! (And if your pastor is not teaching God’s Word and applying to your daily life, then he is failing at his job. He must apply God’s Truth to your life on a daily basis!!)

So what does this verse tell us about praying? Jesus is, after all, teaching us how God expects us to pray. And as Jesus continues with the model prayer, He asks for God to supply a daily need for bread in the life of the one who prays. This teaches us that we are to look to God for our daily provision. Whether it be spiritual, emotional, mental, or physical, it is God who supplies our every need. In the day Jesus preached this, most of the people there that day would have to stop by the market place to find something to cook and eat every single day! Bread was a real daily necessity.

Now, though, we must look beyond the need for food. Bread in this verse for us represents the totality of our physical needs. There are things that we need every day. We do need food, clothing, health, a job, family, friends, etc. There are things that we need every day whether we admit it or not. And ALL of these things are provided by God. We might foolishly depend on ourselves, but without God’s gracious provision, no matter how hard we worked at it we would have nothing!

A matter of truth is established with this verse. God is our Provider. James 1:17 says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights…” Get that! EVERY GIFT is from God and everything we have is a gift! We, contrary to the American Dream, don’t own anything. It is all His and He gives it to us to use as we have need. Jesus is teaching a perspective to have when we pray and His words simply point to the truth. It is all HIS!

To say, “Give” when addressing God notates the need and dependence we have on Him. We must learn that the first part of humility is admitting that we have needs. The second is that only God can meet them! We are dependent. We need God. We couldn’t take another breath without Him! And this single sentence in the model prayer sums up that total dependence on God. He must give us DAILY what we need to continue living to His glory — and if He doesn’t give it we either don’t need it or He will be taking us home to be with Him! If we really need it, on a daily basis He gives it!

Sadly, the opposite of this verse can be seen in our lives. We are taught in church at an early age that if we have an emergency or a situation that we get ourselves into and can’t get out of, then we can always call out to God and He will come to the rescue like a superhero! To use a word picture, imagine that our life is signified by a car driving down a highway. As we drive along the highway of life suddenly a situation arises, a supposedly unfortunate circumstance – we have a blow out. A flat tire forces us off the road for a while. To fix the flat we hurry to our trunk, open it up, and pull out the spare tire! We put the spare tire on and drive to a service station where they fix the flat – which is good because the spare is only a doughnut spare and can’t be used except in an emergency, besides, it is only good to drive slowly and carefully – we can’t do everything we want to do when the spare is out! The flat is fixed or replaced and in no time at all the spare is neatly tucked away and we are off back down the road! Isn’t this how we treat God? Truly, we act as though He is nothing more than a SPARE TIRE. He is the small, mostly useless spare tire that we pull out in case of an emergency when there is no other way to get where we want to go. And as soon as the flat or circumstance is fixed and we don’t need Him anymore back He goes into the trunk, forgotten until the next emergency!

Don’t think about using God like that! He is the giver of life and the provider of every single day by day need that we have. To see Him any other way is to cheapen Him and His grace! God is not the spare tire!! In fact He is the boss. He makes the road we drive. He lays the plans and paths for our lives. He is so far above our simple lives that it really is amazing grace that He takes the time to care about us daily!

Today – remember, we are dependent on Him and Him alone for everything we might need. And He promises that we can trust Him, He never changes, never lies, and will never leave or forsake us. He even promises that every single circumstance we encounter is another opportunity to see His glory and our good as He cares for us!