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The model prayer for disciples, as taught by Jesus, was as follows: “Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” (Matthew 6.9-13). Our focus will be on the phrase, “…our daily bread.”

Bread is not all that man needs to survive; in fact, “Man cannot live by bread alone.” (Matthew 4.4). Bread, as used in the model prayer, stands for all of man’s needs (food, clothing, shelter, emotional care, medical care, etc.). Bread then, as used here, is a synecdoche (a figure of speech in which a part is placed for the whole). Those who work for a living are sometimes called breadwinners, but that is certainly not the only thing for which they work. They generally work for money with which they can buy bread and all other needed things. That is what Jesus meant when He instructed His disciples to pray for their daily bread. He may well have said, “Pray for the things you need on a day-to-day basis.”

The other peculiar aspect of this passage has to do with the word that is translated daily in Matthew as well as Luke’s record. While this instruction teaches the need for regular prayer, it certainly does not prohibit prayer more frequently than on a daily basis. In fact, it would seem that the real purpose of the word is to convey our constant and unceasing need for Him. When one stops to consider how frequently we depend upon God for our needs, there is no limiting it to every day, every hour, every minute, or even every second. The plain fact of the matter is this; we depend upon God for our existence to an infinite degree! We can’t even begin to count the ways or the times! There is an old hymn entitled I need Thee every Hour. This hymn no more implies our need for Him is restricted to once an hour than the prayer for daily bread restricts our need for Him to once a day!

Maybe a common illustration will drive this point home. The heart of the average human being beats somewhere around 100,000 times every day. We all know that life depends upon this vital organ; life truly is in the blood just as the Lord declared in Leviticus 17.11. While we take the heart for granted much of the time, for every year of our lives our heart has to beat reliably somewhere around 36 million times! We can not, of our own will, make it beat a single time; we depend entirely upon something we call nature to make the heart function, but the powers which we frequently call nature are actually powers that came from and are controlled by God. We can artificially stimulate and even simulate the heart, but it is not the same. Even with our superior medical knowledge and modern technology, we still cannot prolong life beyond a point that seems to be determined from a place outside of ourselves. When the time comes for the soul to go back to the one who created it, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men truly cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again!

The heart is but one of an almost infinite number of factors that makes life possible. Beyond the things over which we have limited influence (our physical bodies), there are things over which we exercise absolutely no influence. The solar system upon which we depend is entirely under God’s control; it is sustained “by the breath of His mouth” just like He created it (Psalm 33.6). One last factor which I will mention is time. We hardly know how to define it, say nothing about control it! Some day, according to the Bible, God will place His great hand upon the pendulum of time, and not another tick will emanate from that grand old clock. We not only need Him every hour, we need Him so the hour exists! He provides our daily bread!

Questions:

1. What does bread represent in the disciple’s model prayer?

2. How frequently every day do we depend upon God for our existence? How frequently do we acknowledge that dependence? (Note: These are two entirely different, but related questions)

3. What is time? Now define it with out referring to the universe in which we live? If God created the universe, did He not create time also? If time depends upon the universe for its existence, what will happen to time if and when the universe is no more?

4. What is “our daily bread?” Why should we pray for it?

"Refreshment in Refuge" from Gina Burgess

Things that go bump in the night