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“Give us this day our daily bread.”
Jesus spoke these words as he taught his followers how to pray. It’s a prayer for provision, but I believe it is so much more than that. I believe this is a statement of asking but also one of attention. Let me explain. We should daily ask and rely on God as our provider. We should ALSO daily ask God to open our eyes to see his provision.
Often we have a lack of faith in God to do the big things in our lives, and much of this comes from our lack of wisdom to see how God is providing for us day by day. So to ask for our “daily bread” is as much a reminder as it is a request.
IN Exodus 16, God’s people were in the wilderness after having been freed from captivity in Egypt. While on their way to the Promised Land, they began to complain about their dining options. They reflected on the vast array of options they had back in Egypt. (I’ll remind you that they were SLAVES in Egypt.) So Moses asked God for help, and God obliged.
Moses told the people (and they didn’t believe him, so God literally had to tell them himself) that each night as they slept, God would provide bread from Heaven for them. When they woke up the next day, a strange substance was on the ground. “What is it?” or “Mana?” They said, and the name stuck. While I’m not sure what bread from Heaven would taste like, in my brain, it’s somewhere between a Krispy Kreme donut and a roll from Texas Roadhouse, but I digress.
God provides for his people. Often we struggle to notice his provision. We walk right past it, and the result is a weak faith that doesn’t trust God for our daily bread. How do we recognize God’s provision as we pray for it, and how do we grow our faith to trust God in everything? Our prayer for provision must be connected to our awareness of provision and our faith in God to continually provide.
Head Up:
Think about this story from Exodus 16. God provided, but he didn’t make anyone eat. Literally, people could have starved at their (portable) dining room tables if they didn’t leave the tent and recognize God’s provision. How foolish would it have been to see someone walking to the edge of camp, fishing pole in hand, on their way to catch lunch and walk right past the provision on the ground?
As foolish as this might seem, many of us do the same. We are so self-absorbed, oblivious, or culturally consumed that we never stop to recognize all the ways God has worked in our lives. Get your head up!
I think this problem is exacerbated by our Western culture, where many of us truly have very few needs. We have wants, but most of us have never known hunger or thirst. How much more should we be people of gratitude and continually be praising God for his provision?
Head Down:
In Exodus 16, God told the Israelites to only take what they needed to feed their family that day. While this might seem like an odd instruction, God had a very clear reason for it. If this bread only lasted for that day, they would have to trust God to provide again tomorrow.
This prayer for daily bread is one where we can lay our head down and rest. We can trust that just as God has provided today, he will again tomorrow! In this same way, we are called to be generous. Because we are building our faith in God as our provider.
Look how Jesus continues teaching in Matthew 6:25-34. He tells those listening not to worry but to trust God to provide for them. We can have rest in a restless world, we can have peace in a place of tumult, because God is our provider. Obviously, this isn’t a teaching that we should be lazy, but it is to challenge us to do what we’re called to do and to trust God to do all the things we can’t.
When we ask that each day God would provide for us, it is a prayer that we are dependent on God to nourish and sustain us, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, and in everything! It’s us praying for our eyes to be open to see how God is providing and to build our faith that each day we would trust him more and more.
