GIVE US TODAY

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us today our daily bread…” (Matthew 6:9-11 NIV)

         Before we move into the first of the petition portion of this prayer, let me throw back to last week’s topic “Your Kingdom come,” I noticed I left out the portion of “on earth as it is in heaven.” As I felt this needed little explanation.  When asking God’s reign to come and His will be done, it is only natural to assume that in the heavenly realm (i.e. the presence of God) there is no sin, there is no flaw, and there is no rebellion.  So this portion of the prayer acknowledges how far we have fallen from original design and that we want the purity of God’s reign as it is in its heavenly perfection.

         Now onto the petition portion of the Lord’s Prayer.  “Give us today our daily bread.”  The simplistic appearance of this first request is a lot more than it seems.  These six words alone are enough to establish a daily devotional ministry (Daily Bread).  There are books and sermons galore on these few words of the Lord’s Prayer.  I will try to summarize in two parts.

Let us first establish that by the context of this portion of the prayer, that it should be done daily.  Today and daily give that away.  If you read through the life of Jesus, you will observe a very distinctive pattern of prayer.  Jesus prayed.  He prayed often and powerfully.  “But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” (Luke 5:16 NIV).

Jesus uses this lesson on prayer to prepare us for two big concepts.  First is for us to focus on the today of our life.  We are not promised tomorrow and we can do nothing about yesterday.  Each day the believer needs to focus on that day.  The today mentality is expressed in “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own.”  (Matthew 6:34 NIV).  James also discusses tomorrow “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.  What is your life?  You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”  (James 4:14 NIV).  It is well established that we need to focus only on today.  The second big concept is of our daily needs (which I will cover next week).

A today focus is important because this is the only day we have at our disposal.  We do not know when we will be called home, we do not know when the Day of the Lord (end times) will come.  It may be this very hour.  So “Give us today…” and let us live today according to God’s will.