There is a priority to the prayer Jesus taught His disciples.
The prayer begins by "ascending to the heights of heaven." It's first concerned with the things of God – His name, His kingdom, and His will.
Now it returns to the plains of earth.
This half of the prayer, though, must be considered in light of the first.
We have asked God to make His name great in our lives, to expand His kingdom in our lives, and that His will to be done in our lives.
Now we ask Him to provide us with everything we need for those things to happen – starting with our most basic physical needs.
“Give us this day our daily bread.”
Jesus’ audience would have immediately remembered another occasion when God provided daily bread.
In the book of Exodus, God rescued His people from slavery in Egypt. He led them through the desert towards the land He had promised to give them.
And there, God quite literally provided daily bread called manna.
The people were only to collect what they needed for that day.
Now God certainly didn’t have to provide bread every day. He could have supplied them for a week or even a month at a time.
But He didn’t.
He wanted them to learn to trust Him one day at a time.
We can’t borrow trust from yesterday. We don’t get a credit on trust in the future.
Trust must be present. It must be now.
That’s why we pray for our daily bread. We ask God for His provision in this moment.
Tomorrow we’ll ask again. Tomorrow we’ll trust again.
When we ask God for our daily bread, we are doing so much more than asking Him for our daily bread.
We are declaring our trust in His provision and care over our lives. We are expressing our confidence that He is willing and able to give us everything we need to follow Him. Even when that means following Him into the desert.
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