Our Daily Bread: Teach Us to Pray

If you could ask God to provide one thing for you, every day of your life…what would it be?

Jesus has a suggestion for how you might answer that question—and His suggestion might surprise you.

When Jesus taught His disciples how to pray, He told them to begin with God—honoring the Father and hallowing His name. Then He taught them to pray for others—asking for God’s kingdom and will to come to bear on their lives on earth as it is in heaven.

Later on, He will teach them to pray about forgiveness and deliverance from the evil one.

But wedged between all of these profound prayers, Jesus teaches us to pray for ourselves. And when we do…He says…we should pray about……lunch.

Luke 11:3—When you pray, say Father…give us each day our daily bread.

Talk about a shift in focus! Does Jesus seriously go from the glory and holiness of God our Father— the transcendence of His name, the sovereignty of His Kingdom and will to…bread??

Why would Jesus move from cosmic prayers to something as ordinary as bread? Because the most ordinary prayer in this passage might actually be the most revealing one.

When you read the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life here on earth, you will notice that He asks a lot of questions. Over 300 if you were to add them all up. And a couple times, His questions seem a bit… obvious. He once asked a man who’d been disabled for 38 years, “Do you want to get well?” Or He asked a grieving family who just lost their young daughter, Why all this commotion and wailing?

Jesus asked a blind man, What do you want me to do for you?

I don’t know about you but when I read of these encounters and the questions Jesus asked—it seems a little puzzling. It seems like He’s wanting us to express our needs out loud.

But that’s a big part of what prayer is—coming to God and expressing our needs.

But you ever wonder why? If He knows what we need before we ask Him, why does He want us to ask Him?

I think it’s because prayer isn’t informing God—it’s forming us.

And so I want to approach the next part of the Lord’s model prayer today, not asking what we should pray for ourselves, but rather why. Why should we ask God for daily bread?

I want to suggest Jesus moves us from the big prayers of hallowed be Your name and on earth as it is in heaven to daily bread to remind us of our very real, very personal dependency for God to meet our every daily need.

This simple prayer request forces us to wage war against our natural tendencies to trust in our own flesh, lean on our own understanding, rely on our own selves. And that’s a battle we all face.

Praying for daily bread wages 4 battles against things we fight often. Let’s walk through them.

PRAYERS FOR DAILY BREAD BATTLE AGAINST ANXIETY

…and move us toward trust.

This daily bread prayer—is drawing on a story every Jewish listener would have known. Think back to the Israelites in the wilderness. They had just left Egypt, and now they were wandering in the desert with nothing but sand and sun. No crops. No grocery stores. No backup plan. And naturally— anxiety starts to creep in. What are we going to eat? What if we run out? What if tomorrow there’s nothing left?

And so, God gave them a very practical solution: manna. Bread from heaven. But here’s the catch —they were instructed to gather only enough for each day. If they tried to store it up out of fear for tomorrow, it would rot overnight.

Why would God do that? Because He wasn’t just feeding their stomachs—He was training their hearts.

Exodus 16 tells us that every night they had to go to bed trusting God for their next day’s supply. And every morning the ground was covered with manna.

When we pray Give us each day our daily bread we are learning to trust God one day at a time.

Most of our anxiety comes from trying to live tomorrow’s problems on today’s strength. Ever notice how we do this? It’s 11:30 at night and you’re lying in bed…having conversations in your head that haven’t even happened yet. Or you’re staring at the bank account worrying about bills that aren’t due yet. We stress about things that are completely out of our control. And then you mix in sports, work, health, relationships…it can all feel a bit overwhelming.

But Jesus teaches us to pray a different way. Not, “God, give me everything I’ll need for the next five years.”

Not, “God, guarantee my future.”

Just: “Father… give us today our daily bread.”

In other words:

Give me what I need to follow You today.

Give me the strength I need today.

Give me the wisdom I need today.

Give me the grace I need today.

And tomorrow morning? We pray it again.

Just like the manna in the wilderness, God’s provision is fresh every morning. Which means we can trust that when tomorrow comes, our Father will already be there with what we need.

So every time we pray, ‘Give us each day our daily bread,’ we’re reminding our anxious hearts that our Father already knows what we need—and He will provide. We’re battling anxiety by practicing daily trust.

There’s another battle this prayer addresses:

PRAYERS FOR DAILY BREAD BATTLE AGAINST ARROGANCE

…and move us toward humility.

Asking God for bread humbles us.

Don’t overlook how ordinary this request is. Jesus teaches us to pray for something so simple… bread.

This is humbling. There can be no arrogance when we’re praying for a piece of bread. Jesus is teaching us to acknowledge that we are this needy; that we are this dependent on our Father. At the most basic level of life—we are trusting God, to be our provider.

Let’s go back to the manna illustration.

Imagine the Israelites finally standing on the edge of the Promised Land. For forty years they had eaten manna every morning. Every day they woke up hungry, walked outside, and God had already provided. Forty years of the same thing every morning. At some point somebody had to ask, “Lord…any chance of an omelette and a side of bacon today?”

But in Deuteronomy 8, Moses tells them something surprising. He says God led them through the wilderness and fed them with manna to humble them. To teach them that man doesn’t live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

This was a necessary lesson for the Israelites because Moses knew what would happen once they settled down.

He says that one day they would live in nice houses… their herds would grow… their silver and gold would multiply… and then their hearts would become proud and they would forget the Lord their God.

He drops the hammer in Deuteronomy 8:17 warning them: You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.”

Let me ask you: When you look at your life—your house, your job, your success, your stability—who do you quietly give the credit to?

God…or yourself?

You see, that’s exactly the temptation Moses was warning Israel about and it’s exactly the temptation we need warning about.

Because still today, when life gets comfortable, it becomes very easy to forget where provision really comes from. And if we’re honest…most of us don’t say that out loud—but we live like it’s true. That’s why Jesus teaches us to pray, Give us each day our daily bread.

Because when we pray that prayer, we’re admitting something we don’t like to admit: We are not self-sufficient. I can’t even provide myself with a single slice of bread.

The paycheck, the roof over our heads, the food on our table, the cars we drive, the strength to work, the breath in our lungs—it all comes from God.

Every time we pray for daily bread, we are battling back against the quiet arrogance of thinking we’ve built our lives on our own; it reminds us that we are not self-sufficient—we are God sustained.

Battle #3.

If arrogance says, “Look at what I did.”

Independence says, “I don’t need God.”

PRAYERS FOR DAILY BREAD BATTLE AGAINST INDEPENDENCE

…and move us toward dependence.

Think with me: our natural bent is—I can. I will. I got this. From the very beginning our kiddos would say, “My do it!”Longing for independence—that’s how it goes.

When Jesus teaches us to ask God for daily bread—He’s moving us from independence to in dependence.

And when you really stop and think about where your daily bread comes from, you realize how dependent you really are.

Think about a simple slice of bread. A farmer plants wheat, rain falls, the sun shines, the grain grows, someone harvests it, mills it, bakes it…and eventually it travels on a truck, to the grocery store, and then on your table.

And Scripture reminds us that behind that entire process stands God Himself. Psalm 104 says that He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for people to cultivate—bringing forth food from the earth: wine that gladdens human hearts, oil to make their faces shine, and bread that sustains their hearts.

Or as Paul puts it more directly in Colossians 1: all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Which means—without the Lord—all things fall apart. It all depends on Him!

So when we pray, “Give us today our daily bread,” we’re acknowledging something we forget all the time: even the most ordinary blessing in our lives is provided and sustained by the hand of God.

Like Jesus said in John 15—apart from Me you can do nothing.

We are totally dependent on God for every slice of bread.

Which leads us to our last battle. PRAYERS FOR DAILY BREAD BATTLE AGAINST ANXIETY, AGAINST ARROGANCE, AGAINST INDEPENDENCE and…

PRAYERS FOR DAILY BREAD BATTLE AGAINST ISOLATION

…and move us toward relationship.

One of the beautiful things about the prayer, Give us each day our daily bread, is that it assumes we’ll keep coming back to God again tomorrow.

Jesus didn’t teach us to pray, “Give us bread for the rest of our lives.” He didn’t even say, “Give us bread for the next month.”

Daily bread means daily conversation.

Imagine if a child only spoke to their father once a year to ask for everything they needed. That wouldn’t be much of a relationship—it would be a transaction. But when a child comes back every day—asking questions, sharing needs, talking about life—that’s how a relationship grows.

In the same way, God could have designed life so that we only needed Him once in a while. But He didn’t. He designed us with daily needs so that we would come to Him in daily dependence.

Think about hunger. Hunger never goes away permanently. You can eat a great meal tonight, but tomorrow morning you’ll wake up hungry again.

God could have designed our bodies differently. He could have made it so we only needed to eat once a month…or once a year. But He didn’t.

Instead, He built daily need into our lives.

Why? Because daily need creates daily dependence. And daily dependence invites daily relationship.

Daily bread isn’t just about food—it’s about God drawing us into relationship with Him every single day.

And every time we pray, Father, give us today our daily bread, we are stepping back into conversation with Him.

That prayer slowly breaks the lie of isolation—the idea that we’re meant to navigate life on our own. Instead, it forms a rhythm where we’re pulling up a chair at the Father’s table again. And again. And again. And again.

God designed daily needs so we would keep coming back to His table.

CONCLUSION

William Barclay, in his commentary on this text, recorded an event from the empire of Rome. A Roman emperor came back to Rome in triumph. He was marching his troops through the streets of Rome—streets that were lined with cheering people, and soldiers were stationed at the edges of the streets to keep people in place.

At one spot along the parade route was a platform where the empress and her family were sitting to watch the emperor go by. On the platform with his mother was a little boy, the emperor’s youngest son. And as the emperor’s chariot came near, the little guy jumped off the platform, wriggled through the crowd, and tried to dart between the legs of a soldier and run out to greet his father’s chariot. But the soldier was quicker than the little boy and he scooped him up in his arms and said, “You can’t do that, boy; don’t you know who that is in the chariot? That’s the emperor. You can’t run out to his chariot.” But the little boy just smiled and announced, “He might be your emperor, but he’s my father.”

And that’s exactly what Jesus is teaching us to remember when we pray. The ruler of the universe… the King of all kings…the sovereign Lord over heaven and earth with every resource at His disposal…He is our Father.

And because He is our Father, Jesus invites us to come to Him every single day with every single need—even something as ordinary as bread. Because when the King of the universe is your Father…you never have to wonder if He cares about your needs.

So—what if this prayer became the first words out of your mouth every morning? What if for the for the next 7 days…before you get on your phone…you come to your Father and pray: Hallowed be Your name—Your Kingdom Come—Give us today our daily bread.

Start your day by acknowledging your dependence on Him. Remind your heart that everything you need for today—your strength, your wisdom, your provision, your peace—all comes from the hand of God.

And then the next day…do it again.

When we pray for daily bread, God is quietly reshaping our hearts—moving us from anxiety to trust, from arrogance to humility, from independence to dependence, and from isolation into relationship with Him.

One simple prayer. One day at a time. One faithful Father who never fails to provide. COMMUNION

I think I would be remiss if I didn’t land this plane with communion. And before we take communion together, I’d love for us to go back to something Jesus said in John 6. It was a conversation He had with a large crowd that was following Him around.

He told them:

“Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you…For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

And the people hearing this say, “Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.” And Jesus declares, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry…” All morning we’ve been talking about the prayer Jesus taught us: “Give us today our daily bread.”

That prayer trains our hearts in dependence—day by day, moment by moment. It reminds us that we are not self-sufficient…we are God-sustained.

But that prayer also points us to something deeper.

Because every piece of bread we ask God for…every meal we receive…every provision we enjoy… is ultimately pointing us to Jesus Himself.

Jesus didn’t just come to give us bread. He came to be the bread. The bread that truly satisfies the hunger of our souls. The bread that gives life that never runs out.

And communion reminds us of the cost of that gift.

On the night before the cross, Jesus took bread and broke it and said, “This is my body given for you.”

And then He took the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, poured out for you.”

The bread reminds us His body was given.

The cup reminds us His blood was shed.

So as you hold these elements in your hands today, remember this: The same Savior who taught us to pray for daily bread is the One who is the Bread of Life for us.

Because of His body and His shed blood, our greatest need has already been provided for. Forgiveness. New life. Living hope.

So right now, take a quiet moment to thank Jesus for His sacrifice…and then, when you’re ready— in your own time, eat the bread and drink the juice in remembrance of Him.

PRAY.