By Jeff Ford
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
I’ve had the chance to travel to over a dozen developing countries over the last few years, and one thing I’ve realized is that for us in the West, the prayer “give us this day our daily bread” is often not literal, but for many people around the world, it is a literal prayer for provision. If God doesn’t provide, they don’t eat.
It’s because of this, that we can be tempted to skip over this portion of the Lord’s Prayer as irrelevant to our lives. The important truth that is very relevant to our lives, is that: Jesus provides all that we need for today as well as for eternity.
Think of the teachings of Jesus in Matthew 6:19-20 ESV, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth…but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven…” This is not Jesus railing against savings accounts, but describing the pattern of prioritization that characterizes the Kingdom of God. Earthly treasures are material, here today and gone tomorrow, but Heavenly treasures are eternal. Jesus says of himself “I am the living bread that came down from Heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh (John 6:51 ESV).”
See? Jesus provides all that we need for today as well as for eternity.
While wandering in the wilderness, the Israelites were instructed to gather Manna from Heaven, but only what they needed for the day. Some Israelites would gather more than they needed, only to find it rotting in their tents while others failed to follow God’s instruction to collect a double portion before the Sabbath and were left hungry on the day no Manna fell.
The wilderness was an exercise in trust. Do you trust God to give you what you need for today? Do you trust God with your eternity?
The Lord’s Prayer greatly resembles what’s called the Amidah Prayer, an ancient Jewish prayer the disciples of Rabbi Jesus would have been greatly familiar with. So Jesus isn’t necessarily saying “Here’s a new way to pray.” He’s telling them “You know how to pray, pray what you know.”
What’s missing in the Amidah prayer is this line: “Forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors.” In the Jewish mindset, forgiveness is God’s work, that’s it. To suggest that we have a role to play in the forgiveness process would have been scandalous. It’s not just that we pray for God to forgive us, but we forgive those who sin against us as well, because it’s forgiveness that changes our hearts.
I had the opportunity to sit knee-to-knee with a pastor in South Asia who shared with me how he and his team use food distribution as a method to share the Gospel. The idea is that through meeting physical needs, they can encounter spiritual needs and share how Jesus can meet those needs. In a community with great opposition to the Gospel, they went in boldly. There was one particular man who threatened them with death. Despite his threats, they continued to provide for his physical needs. One day, the man called the pastor and shared that he had a dream in which Jesus asked him to trust Him and repent of the persecution he had participated in. The pastor forgave him and broke bread with him as a brother in Christ the next day.
Through simple provision and forgiveness, we can trust God for today and our eternity, and we can play a small part in God’s redemptive work: Putting the world back together one meal and one act of forgiveness at a time – our true daily bread.