The further we get into the Lord’s
Prayer the more we should realize the necessity of putting God, and His
interests, ahead of our own. His will is to become our priority.
Learning to pray properly then means that we must decrease and He must
increase.
Lost
people may utter prayers but they tend to start in entirely the wrong
way. They usually jump right to the desires of their own heart. The
problem is that they only “know of” God but they do not really “know”
God. There is a big difference, for instance as a child, between the way
one talks to their own parents vs. the way one talks to other people’s parents!
The world at large thinks God is there to give them anything they want just
like a cosmic Santa Claus of sorts. When Jesus taught His disciples to
pray He did not begin by saying “My child, please tell me what you really
want!” Rather He taught them to begin with God - His holiness, power, and
coming kingdom.
Jesus
told them “Therefore in this manner pray;” then goes to “Our Father Who is in
heaven, hallowed be your name, Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as
it is in heaven.” This is a far cry from the general way a lost person
begins a desperate prayer for what he/she is desiring at the moment.
The
next phrase in the prayer signifies a shift; “Give us this day our daily
bread.” For the first time in the prayer there is a call for persons to
ask God for something. That “something” is “bread,” but more broadly for
food or sustenance. It is hard for people in our day and time to really
know what hunger feels like. The closest we come is perhaps missing a
meal or being hungry with food being delayed longer than we prefer. But
to truly hunger day in and day out is very rare in our affluent
land. The honest truth is that obesity is a bigger problem in our
country than hunger. We not only have the basics, we have excess.
But, throughout world history there have been plenty of people who did not have
the basics.
Jesus,
in encouraging His followers to pray rightly, teaches them that their prayers
must express their dependence on God. For years, Bible scholars and
linguists did not know the exact meaning of the word translated as
“daily.” This was because the word did not occur in either literary or
popular Greek. But eventually the word was discovered in a papyrus from
upper Egypt which seems to reveal its meaning. It is clear that the
meaning of the word refers to what we could call a “daily ration.” Food
in ancient times was not chocked full of preservatives like it is now.
You might have to go to the marketplace daily to get certain items. In
some places it is still much more common to do it that way. In Exodus 16
we learn how God supplied a daily ration for the Israelites by giving them
manna. They had to gather it daily. If they tried to gather a
two-day supply at once it spoiled. God desired for them to depend on Him
daily. We see in the Lord’s Prayer a simple prayer for the things which
we have need of every single day.
For
over 30 years I have had a quiet time with the Lord as a part of my daily
routine. It consists of Bible reading and prayer, at a minimum, and often
includes other devotional reading and even Scripture memorization work.
It is not enough to try to float from Sunday to Sunday. I need a
daily time with the Lord and it makes a monumental difference in my life.
There is a popular devotional used by many called “Our Daily Bread.” It
is so-named because of this line from the Lord’s prayer which recognizes how we
need God daily.
Just
as our bodies need food daily, our souls need fed daily as well. If we
live as God intends us to live, we are to live one day at a time. That
is, we are not to be anxious about the unknown future or to fret about it or to
worry about where our next meal is coming from. We know it is coming from
God! We are to live in moment by moment dependence on God.
Babies
are very cute, but helpless. They cannot feed themselves, cloth
themselves, bath themselves, give themselves medicine, keep themselves safe –
nothing. It is the perfect picture of how dependent we are upon God, our
Heavenly Father.
God
not only provides, He provides abundantly. The only other place in the
entire Bible where a request to “give us bread” is spoken is in the midst of
Christ’s sermon on the spiritual bread recorded in John 6. Jesus,
speaking to His Jewish hearers, says “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who
has given you the bread of Heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true
bread from Heaven. They answered, From now on [always] give us this
bread. Jesus said, I Am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will
never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never be thirsty.” (John
6:32-35) The Jews were, no doubt, thinking of physical bread, just as the
woman of Samaria (or the woman at the well) had been thinking of physical water
(John 4). Jesus, however, turned them away from the physical things of
bread and water and turned them toward the spiritual parallels. In fact,
as the spiritual needs of these people become clearer the physical objects of
bread and water disappear. They seem unimportant.
It is
sad that so many Christians continue to go hungry. The spiritual food is
offered but they turn away appearing to not have an appetite for it. The
ones that are hungry are the “unsatisfied.” We see the huge problem of spiritual
leanness today. We have all seen starving people in Africa with swollen
stomachs. Upon first glance they tend to be full, but those swollen
stomachs are a sign they are starving and are headed toward death unless
something changes. Many are praying for a type of bread that does not
satisfy. It is this world’s bread; physical bread. They long to
feast on it, but it is as unfulfilling as eating styrofoam. People are
hungering for achievements, more money, a different or better job, better
health, more time, more friends, more things, love, happiness, friendship,
acceptance, etc. These things are not necessarily good or bad by
themselves, but God wants them to be used as He intended for them to be used.
An
athlete may think he/she will find all satisfaction in an achievement, but it
does not really satisfy. Someone may think if I had a million dollars or
ten million dollars I would be happy. A young man or young woman may say,
if only I could find that special someone to share my life with and therefore
find love, all my problems would go away. Many homosexuals have bought
into the world’s lie today that all his/her unhappiness is linked to the
non-acceptance of their lifestyle and if people, especially parents,
churches/Christians would just accept them and their lifestyle then all their
anxiety would be gone. The simple truth is, there is a God-shaped vacuum
inside of every person that only God can fill. God alone can
satisfy! The bread He alone feeds us satisfies our hunger.
When
we pray “Give us this day our daily bread,” we are acknowledging total
dependence upon God and God alone. Have you reached that point of daily
dependence on Him or is He only a back-up plan or a last resort? He wants
a daily relationship with you.
In Christ,
Dr. Allen Raynor, Pastor
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