What does it mean to pray for our daily bread?

Then comes a petition expressive of dependence on God for our ordinary need. "Give us our needed bread for each day." It takes up the pure and simple need of the body. The word "daily" is a very imperfect expression in English of the original term. Ἐπιούσιος really means our "sufficient" bread (seemingly a word expressly formed for this idea in contrast with superfluity). One cannot without slighting the wisdom of the Lord ask for more than sufficiency. One ought not to look for more, even from the Lord of heaven and earth. He bids me ask for bread enough for each day's wants.283 Yet it is thoroughly the spirit of the One Who, after He had fed five thousand men with the five loaves and the two fishes, bade the disciples gather up the fragments which remained, that nothing might be lost. And then and thus twelve baskets were in fact filled. How easy it might have seemed for Him by Whom all was supplied to have exerted His power afresh! He would not have an atom to be thrown away because He had unlimited power. What a lesson for us!

Give us today our sufficient (or, necessary) bread. Thus are they taught to begin with confessing dependence for ordinary wants, as the apostle called us to be content with food and raiment.

Give us this day our daily bread is more simple, and affords no difficulty, when it is regarded as the expression of our entire dependence upon God for our daily food, and, at the same time, will not fail to remind us of what the Israelites were taught in the wilderness, that the manna, Christ as the bread that came down from heaven, must be gathered and fed upon daily. (Exodus 16; John 6.)

"Give us this day our daily bread." Many a saint of God would almost break his heart if he thought his income would come to an end in twelve months' time. But this implies that we look to Him and as having no other resource for today's needs.

We have to do with God today. We may leave tomorrow to Him. He is our God, our Father today, He will be the same tomorrow when we meet it. The Lord did not teach His disciples to pray about tomorrow, but "Give us this day our daily bread."

Almighty power then is His, yet combined with tender pity and constant thought for His children here on earth. Of old, in the wilderness, Israel experienced Jehovah's care, as they went forth on the week-day mornings to gather the needed supply of manna provided for that large encampment whilst they were taking their rest. They slept, but Jehovah was working — raining down for them food for the coming day, in the strength of which they could go forth for the ordinary occupations of life. Now, His children are to acknowledge and to prove that He daily cares for them. It is the part of a father to provide for his children; it is characteristic of our Father that He cares daily for His. "Give us this day our daily bread," teaches that, and the Lord's instruction about the birds and the lilies is to impress it on us (Matt. 6:25-34; Luke 12:22-31). "Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?" Again, "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore; ye are of more value than many sparrows" (Matt. 10:29-31). To guard us from anxious care, we are told that our Father feedeth the birds. To keep the heart calm and confident in danger from enemies, the Lord reminds His own that they are of more value than many sparrows. Yet how slow, surely many a one will say, is he to learn these lessons based on the revelation of the Father.

But the remainder of the petitions are, as just said, personal; and here all is characterized by the most perfect moderation. A sense of dependence, of failure, and of frailty, manifests itself conspicuously in them; while the needs felt are realized as those of others of the same family of faith, who are associated, therefore, in all the petitions. The prayer is, indeed, a family prayer throughout; the expression of a common interest from which no one withdraws himself to walk alone. How well we should be cared for, indeed, if all were thus remembered by all, and the family tie united all the family.

It is not straining the request for daily bread, to make it comprehend also a spiritual application. With the Lord it would be simply impossible, while remembering the need of the body, to forget the immensely greater need of the soul. In both ways also the supply must be continual. The manna must be fresh every morning, and freshly gathered as the morning comes: hoarded, it breeds worms and stinks. There is no release from a dependence, which makes us sensible only of the love which constantly ministers, and keeps us near to the gracious Hand of Omnipotence. It is only treating us as children who are at home with the Father, not to provide for independence or absence from Him. We are not to renew the prodigal's experience, after being brought back from the far-off country; and it is not stint but love that deals thus with us.

And that is the way the Lord would have us spiritually. He never gives a stock of any thing — of grace or of gift — so that we can say, "I have got enough to last me so long, at least." That would be taking us out of the place of faith, and depriving us of the blessing God has for us. He covets to show us what He is, — His power, His love, His unforgetfulness of us. As it is said of the people whom in His love and His pity He redeemed, "He bare them and carried them all the days of old." It is a great thing to get this in a real and practical way for ourselves with God. If He keeps us low down here, — and you know it is His way, in more senses than one, to call and choose the poor, — it is not because His hand is niggard, (God forbid!) but that we may not miss realizing this great blessing of His care. Often all we think of is, having our need met; but how little a thing is that with God! It would cost Him nothing, we may say, to meet the need of a lifetime in a moment; and a lesser love than His would supply it at once, and get rid of a constant burden. But that is not His way. To supply the need is a small thing; but to supply it in such a way as to make us feel in each seasonable supply the Father's eye never withdrawn from us, the Father's heart ever employed about us, — that is what He means. "Give us day by day our daily bread" is the prayer the Lord taught His disciples; and thus we ask Him continually to be waiting on us. Is it not much more than to ask, Give us now, that we may not have to come again?

In such circumstances how the tender care of our Lord for His own shines out most clearly in the petition, “Give us this day our daily bread.” It is easy to have a well-filled purse, and enter a well-stocked shop, and purchase what we need. It is quite another thing to be like the persecuted saints, described in Hebrews 11:32-40, where we read of persecutions, scourgings, imprisonments, afflictions, wanderings in deserts, in mountains, in dens and caves of the earth, when every single meal would be a matter of anxious wonderment, whence it was to come. How unspeakably comforting to have the ear of One, who loves, who knows, who cares, who is omnipotent, and who has the hearts of all men in His power.

Then we have a perceptible difference in the language of the next petition. Luke says "Give us day by day our daily bread;" Matthew had "Give us this day," etc. The believing Jews looked simply at the one day, it might be, before them. It was a definite request for the present exigency. How soon the trumpet of Jubilee would sound, and the true liberty and final return and everlasting possession would come, they knew not; meanwhile they say "Give us this day our daily bread." But the Gentile believer, for whose instruction the Lord was specially providing in Luke, is characterized by a more constant spirit of dependence — "day by day" is the word.* He was never to expect rest, or establishment on the earth, as the other might. His inheritance lay elsewhere; his portion here was to be always that of a stranger. I think that this is strengthened by the mode of its introduction here. The prayer is much later and nearer the close than in Matthew. All hope of Messiah's reception by the Jews was manifestly at an end. Thus, in Luke 9, He had His rejection and death ever before Him, and repeatedly names it to the disciples, both before and after His transfiguration. (cf. 1 Peter 1:11.) In Luke 10 the mission of the seventy follows, as a sort of final message, in which He pronounces woe on the cities which had seen His mighty works but had despised Himself. Grace is then shown as replacing law, and doing what law could not do. The prayer in Luke 11 partakes of the progressive character of the circumstances which surround it.