The Lord's Prayer, line by line

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

Petition 5 of 8 · Matthew 6:11 · The Lord's Prayer

After teaching us to seek God's glory, kingdom, and will, Jesus turns to our needs and tells us to ask, simply, for today's bread. It is a prayer of daily dependence, that we would trust our Father for what we need, one day at a time, and receive even our ordinary food as a gift from his hand.

Give us this day our daily bread.Matthew 6:11 (KJV)

The turn to our needs

Here the prayer turns. Having lifted our eyes to God's name, kingdom, and will, Jesus now bends to the ground of daily life and teaches us to ask for bread. It is a mercy that he does. God cares about the loaf on the table as truly as about the glory of his name. Nothing that touches his children is beneath his notice.

And notice how modest the request is. Not riches, not a full storehouse, not security for years to come, but bread, and only this day's. Jesus teaches us to pray for our needs, not our greeds, and to pray for them freshly each day. It is a small request, and in its smallness it is a great school of trust.

What the words mean

Give us says that even our bread is a gift. We may plant and reap, work and earn, and Jesus assumes we will, for we are to ask God to give and not simply to lie idle. Yet behind the harvest and the wage is the Father who sends rain and sun and life, so that every loaf, however we came by it, is finally received from his hand. To pray give us is to confess that we are not self-made but sustained.

This day and daily press the request into the present. Jesus deliberately keeps it to today. He does not teach us to ask for a year's supply but for enough for now. It echoes the manna in the wilderness, given each morning, enough for the day, and not to be hoarded overnight. God fed his people one day at a time to teach them to depend on him one day at a time, and this petition keeps us in that same daily school.

Bread stands for all our real needs, the plain necessities of body and life: food, shelter, clothing, work, health, the ordinary things without which we cannot live. It is honest and unashamed about the body. Jesus, who made us, knows we are not angels, and he teaches us to bring our bodily needs to God without embarrassment. And our, again, keeps us mindful of others, for we do not pray give me but give us, and no one can pray that sincerely while indifferent to a brother who has no bread.

There is a beautiful restraint in the word bread itself. Jesus does not put cake in the prayer, or luxury, or wealth. He teaches us to ask for enough, not for excess, for what we need and not for all we might crave. In a world forever urging us to want more, this small word retrains desire. It teaches contentment, the deep and rare gift of being satisfied with our Father's daily provision, and it frees us from the endless, anxious grasping that never has enough. To learn to pray honestly for bread is to be quietly cured of greed.

Why it comes here

It is the first petition for ourselves, and it comes only after God has been given first place. That order matters. We do not begin with our stomachs; we begin with God's glory, and then, having sought first his kingdom, we trust him for these things as Jesus promised we could. The prayer enacts the very teaching of the sermon it comes from: seek first the kingdom, and all these things shall be added unto you.

It also stands first among our needs because it is the most basic. Before forgiveness and deliverance are named, the plain daily need of the body is named, as if to say that the God who is concerned for our souls is concerned for our suppers too. He is a Father of the whole person.

What it teaches about God, and about us

About God it teaches that he is a generous provider who feeds his children. The One who clothes the lilies and feeds the birds will surely feed you, Jesus says, so do not be anxious. This petition is the cure for worry, not because it guarantees luxury but because it hands the burden of provision back to the Father to whom it belongs.

About us it teaches that we are dependent creatures, and that this is not a shame but a truth to be embraced. We would rather be self-sufficient, needing no one. But we are made to receive, to open our hands each day and be fed. To pray for daily bread is to accept our creatureliness gladly, to live as children who trust their Father rather than as orphans who must provide for themselves. And it teaches gratitude, for the one who asks God for bread will not forget to thank him for it, and will taste even a plain meal as mercy.

A common misunderstanding

Some think praying for bread means we need not work, as though we should simply wait for food to appear. But give us assumes our labor even as it looks past it to God. We work with our hands and pray with our hearts, and we credit the increase not to ourselves but to him. Trust in the Father is not an excuse for idleness but the soul of honest work.

Others feel the request is too small, even unspiritual, and are almost embarrassed to bring bodily needs to God. But Jesus put it in the prayer he taught, next to the hallowing of God's name. If the Lord thought daily bread worth asking for, we need not think it beneath us. The God of heaven is not too grand to care about your groceries and your rent.

How to pray this line

Pray it honestly and specifically. Name today's real needs to your Father, the ones you are tempted to carry alone, and ask him for them plainly. Then leave tomorrow's needs for tomorrow, as Jesus taught, and receive today's bread with thanks.

Pray it with open hands for others, too. Because it is give us, let the line move you toward the hungry. Pray for those with no bread, and be ready to become part of God's answer to your own prayer, sharing your loaf as freely as you received it. In this way the petition keeps you both trusting and generous, dependent on the Father and open-handed to your neighbor.

The heart of the gospel here

There is a deeper bread behind the daily loaf. Jesus said, I am the bread of life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger. The manna in the wilderness kept the body alive for a day; he gives the life that never ends. When we ask the Father for bread, we are speaking to the Son who is himself the true Bread come down from heaven, broken for us so that we might live.

So this petition, so plain and daily, opens onto the deepest hunger of all and its answer. The Father feeds our bodies with bread and our souls with Christ. And there is a table ahead, the great feast of the kingdom, where the family will gather and hunger will be no more. Every daily loaf is a small foretaste of that day, and every prayer for bread a quiet reminder that our truest food is the Lord who gave himself for us.

The other petitions and more: Our Father which art in heaven · Hallowed be thy name · Thy kingdom come · Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven · And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors · And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil · For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen · The whole prayer · How to pray · Prayer