One of the more misunderstood petitions of the Lord’s Prayer is ‘give us our daily bread’. It is misunderstood for numerous reasons.
Firstly, it is the 4th petition in the Lord’s Prayer. Our ‘shopping list’ of needs/wants is not supposed to dominate our prayer life. It is to be less than a quarter of our prayer time, and is to come after we have (i) praised God, (ii) appealed for his kingdom to come, and (iii) asked that his will be done.
Second, it is not a prayer for luxuries. As Proverbs 30:8-9 says:
8Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. 9Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonour the name of my God.
‘Daily bread’ is a metaphor for the basics required to live, such as food on our table, clothes on our back and a roof over our head. If God is our ultimate treasure (the thing we enjoy most), then all we need from God is enough to keep us going. What we are really asking is for God to give us what is most expedient to continue to serve him joyfully.
Thirdly, as Proverbs 30 suggests, there is a social dimension to this petition as well. The God of the Bible hates the exploitation of the poor (Is 1:17), and would rather a society have a good level of employment, so that citizens are not drawn to theft. As such, when we pray ‘give US our daily bread’, we are praying for a just society, that WE must work towards achieving.
Yet finally, this petition is not just a way of having our needs met, it shows our dependence upon God. God actually WANTS his people to bring their requests to him, as it brings him glory, declaring that we are not self-sufficient, but look to God for our daily needs.
