The Lord's Prayer - Ep 10

2026.07.16 Lord's Prayer Thursday

Welcome to the Lord's Prayer podcast by Bridgeway Christian Church. The Lord's Prayer has been recited by Christians around the globe for centuries, but more than a beloved tradition, this prayer invites us to live the way of Jesus, to be shaped by his priorities, to partner with his spirit in bringing the kingdom of God to bear on earth. Every Monday during our summer devotional series, we will read the Lord's Prayer and then members of our pastoral team will offer some devotional thoughts based on the text.

I'm Pastor Brian and today I am joined by Pastor Anthony and Pastor Heather and after I read the prayer, we'll discuss the first petition in the prayer, give us this day our daily bread. Let's pray from Matthew chapter 6 starting in verse 9. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

Pastor Anthony and Pastor Heather, welcome back. Good to see you. Yep, good to see you too.

Thank you. All right, let's jump right in. So, let's transport ourselves back 2,000 years.

We're sitting on a hillside in Galilee while Jesus is teaching us how to pray, when he says, give us this day our daily bread. How is that landing for us among our original audience? What does Jesus expect us to think about? Well, we certainly can't imagine ourselves in jeans and Jordans, right? Let alone as 21st century Americans. So, Jesus's original audience was largely Jewish, obviously, and in a tough spot in life and that part we may not even realize.

So, let's go back to the Beatitudes at the beginning of Jesus' sermon. He says, makarios, blessed. The first word out of his mouth, right? Blessed.

And who are the blessed? The poor in spirit, which, if we're thinking Hebraically and anciently with Jesus, means how good is life for those with diminished physical vitality. And he says, makarios, blessed, are the meek, where the Greek word for meek is perhaps best translated as unimportant. And he says, makarios, blessed, are those who hunger and thirst for things to be made right.

And see, Jesus opens his sermon by addressing his audience in a way that directly identifies their current spot in life, which is the opposite of comfort and ease. And as members of this ancient audience, we don't have a full wardrobe. Our stomachs are grumbling and we're ailing but may not have access to medical care.

And we're Jewish, living under the shadow and boot of the Roman Empire. And you see, in that time, Rome provided tons of food to their citizens, importing grains largely from Egypt, which is basically the breadbasket of the Mediterranean world. And it was a huge and expensive enterprise to keep Rome stocked with food.

Their standing army had to be fed, their gladiatorial games, and the markets needed to be flowing and stocked with the supply chain. And now Judea was under Roman occupation at the time, but non-Romans like us Jews didn't enjoy easy access to the Empire's food provisions. So the ruling powers prioritized their own.

It's, you know, Caesar had a Rome first policy. So when Jesus says, give us this day our daily bread, just the mention of food probably directs our attention back to our grumbling stomachs and the reality of Caesar's rule that we're living under. But our stomachs are also bringing the subplot of the Exodus story to life for us.

Remember, Jesus has immersed us into the story of the Exodus. He's speaking with authority as the new and better Moses, delivering divine instruction on a mountain. So we can't help but identify with our ancestors enduring the wilderness journey between Egypt and the Promised Land.

And like us, our ancestors hungered in the wilderness. And we remember that God performs a daily miracle of provision there, right? Manna from heaven. In Psalm 78, a song that remembers the Exodus in the wilderness may even cross our minds.

We've sung the song since childhood in the synagogue and in communal gatherings. And verse 24 says, Yahweh rained down on them manna to eat. He gave them the grain of heaven.

And so we're listening to Jesus while we long for the grain of Egypt acquired by Rome. But Jesus re-centers our longing on a different source, our Father in heaven. He's the only one we rely on to give us this day our daily bread.

What an incredible example that is of how when we understand the mindset of the original audience of a text of Scripture, how it just helps us get into the meaning that much more, right? You've got people who are kind of on the outside of government food provision, in this case, and at the same time, who have a history of a story of God's continual day-by-day provision. A story that is celebrated, that is read in their synagogues, that is rehearsed at the Passover. Like all of these different ways of remembering these stories of God's provision kind of permeate their society.

So, I don't know, I think it's easy to kind of, I don't know, get a little bit cute with, oh, give us this day our daily bread, when this was a literal, not only a literal need, but also a callback to a time where God literally did provide them daily, like, you can't store it because it's gonna spoil, daily bread. Yeah, yeah. It's such a tangible reminder for them.

Well, now that we've imagined ourselves kind of among the original audience, let's come back to the present. We live in a very different world than ancient Roman-occupied Judea, and yet, you know, kind of the human experience isn't completely different. We still have daily needs, we still live with uncertainty of what the future holds, we still have competing sources of trust.

So, how does praying, give us this day our daily bread, kind of comfort us or even challenge us today? I think it does this in a lot of different ways. First of all, I think we need to remember that food insecurity is one of those things that I think it's easy to forget if you don't experience it, and unfortunately, food insecurity remains an issue here in the United States, that there are many, many people for whom that, give us this day our daily bread, is a tangible, literal prayer. And on some level, this prayer is an invitation to stand in solidarity with them and remind us of the needs of those who experience that.

Additionally, I think this prayer for daily bread really reminds us of the reality of our frailty, because there is the appearance of security all around us, and this can deceive us into thinking we are not dependent on God. I reflect often on just how unbelievably convenient suburban American life in 2026 is. I mean, we all have things that we complain about, but we don't even think about functioning roads, functioning communication systems, plentiful grocery stores where we can get annoyed with the way one grocery store does things and can shop somewhere else.

We have so much, but again, this can, I think, give us a sense of security that is not actually legit, because the truth is, we can have all of these things around us, but they are still temporary, they are still fleeting, and our ultimate dependence is still on God. My community group just recently finished the Practicing the Way Fasting Practice course, which I do not recommend, because you have to fast. And I'm mostly kidding about that, but fasting has become a somewhat regular part of my life.

I've generally fasted about one day a week for the last, I don't know, ten weeks or so, and that has been something that I have been continually drawn back to, is how frail I feel. That here I am with a person with a house to live in, food in the fridge, money in the bank, you know, for the most part, a relatively stable life, and yet if I go 12 to 16 hours without food, I feel so weak. I feel so limited in my ability to do different things, and man, it is really served as this powerful reminder that it does not take much of that appearance of security to be drawn away before I'm actually in a place of real frailty and real dependence.

And it's inspired me to try to kind of keep that mindset, whether I'm fasting or not. Yeah, I think similarly, this part of the prayer is kind of challenging for me to get into that mindset, you know, like we mentioned in the beginning, because I've never really gone without. I mean, I was raised middle class.

Dave and I, along with most of our close friends, you know, we've been super fortunate to have stable jobs, all our basic needs met, and you know, if I'm really honest, I kind of think I have a bit of a broken need meter, you know, like I feel like I have to ask myself whether what I'm bringing to God is actually a need or just a want, and Jesus instructing us to kind of ask God for our daily bread helps me do that, to really kind of learn what is a need and what is a want. And you know, I'm reminded again that Jesus is teaching me to ask Him for that, to not assume that I can just get all those needs met because they always have been. And He's asking me to ask Him for daily bread, not weekly bread, not monthly bread, you know, but daily bread.

And I think He's really teaching us dependence, that every day I'm invited to remember that God is the one who provides. Every day I'm invited to acknowledge that what I have ultimately comes from Him. And you know, kind of like you said at the beginning, that for some people, this prayer is a very real request for food, for housing, for those needs that they have left unmet in very tangible ways.

But for me, it's really more of a reminder that I'm not nearly as self-sufficient as I think I am. And I need that. I need that reminder.

Yeah, I often have a picture in my head of just Jesus as this kind of, you know, wandering homeless guy. And so He's praying this prayer out of His own experience as well, right? So He's not giving us a model that He doesn't follow Himself. Now when we take this verse seriously, just kind of getting back to the question, I think it has a potential to challenge our pride while increasing our compassion.

So I think back in the early 2010s, sensing the Lord's call, my wife and I decided to leave our home states to pursue seminary. And you know, I left a nice-paying job in tech and defense contracting. We could have just ignored the tug on the Lord to pursue this journey and lived comfortably.

My 401k would be amazing right now. But you know, we had some savings. We sold our home.

We moved to Chicagoland. And a few years later, we moved to the Boston area for further grad school. And those grad school years were incredibly special to us.

But financially, they were very lean. It was not comfortable. And my wife and I grew up around a, you know, pull yourself up by the bootstraps mentality and the stereotype that people on welfare or government assistance were lazy and mooching off the hard-working taxpayers.

And there was a clear and loud stigma attached to receiving government assistance. And then on the flip side, there was like a clear and loud arrogance to being self-sufficient. But then there came a time during those graduate years a point when, you know, my wife and me, you know, we're looking at the bank accounts, looking at the journey we knew God had called us to walk, where we had to admit that things just weren't sustainable.

And so something had to give. And long story short, I swallowed my pride and we agreed to apply for SNAP. And you know, and having grown up with a narrative that affixed shame to dependency on social programs, being on government assistance was one of the most humbling experiences for me.

You know, in my own eyes, I became one of them. One of those lazy people that the voices I grew up with disparaged. And you know, and that at least that's how I felt.

And now there's a lot to be said and debated about social and psychological impacts of long-term government assistance and all that. You know, I don't want to open up that can of worms here. But I share my story to illustrate how I had to relearn what it means to receive daily bread on terms that are not mine, especially on terms that are resistant to saying, I need help.

I can't do this on my own. And so the very act of praying, give us this day our daily bread, is a confession of need. And we may not even be cognizant of the fact that when we say, give us and our daily bread, we're confessing a collective need that impacts individuals.

And that's, God loves to answer collective prayer through collective answers. In other words, God loves to dispatch his people to meet the needs of the community. And I've been humbled too often than I can count now in the ways I found myself on the receiving end of daily bread.

And through that experience, I've learned to identify to a degree with the needy and those who are trying to make ends meet, yet life keeps them coming up short. And for some, that felt need is much deeper than what my family ever experienced. So having been humbled myself, I dare not pass judgments, but I'd rather be an answer to someone's prayer for daily bread.

I love that. What a better and healthier and more helpful perspective, right? I mean, I have my own memories of going on WIC after my first son was born, when my wife and I were fresh out of grad school, only like having trouble finding full-time work, part-time jobs, living in Santa Barbara where everything costs a million dollars and we were only there because that's where I'd found a job. And I don't know that I had quite the stigma that—I don't know that I was raised with quite the stigma that you were, but there definitely was a sense of like, oh, kind of this is who we are now.

And I think once you've experienced it, number one, that whole sense of I truly need daily bread, it becomes very real, like you mentioned. And then number two, it really keeps us from that kind of judgmental mindset that can creep in if we've never been there. So our last question, when we read the Lord's Prayer carefully, we notice that the first word is our, as in our Father.

And then the pronouns shift to a direct address to God, your name, your kingdom, your will. And now that we've reached this first petition of the prayer, Jesus resumes the first person plural, give us our daily bread. He doesn't individualize the prayer.

He makes it communal. Why does it matter that I don't simply pray for my needs but for our needs? And what happens to us as individuals when we pray in that way? Yeah, you know, I'm such an American that even though I've read that prayer hundreds of times, I still tend to interpret it individually in practice. Like when I come, you know, kind of with my needs, I'm thinking my needs first, my daily bread, even though it clearly says our daily bread.

You know, and I think that Jesus's Jewish audience would have naturally thought more communally than most of us do today. They had that stronger sense of responsibility for one another, and Jesus is just reinforcing that. But it's so hard for me to remember that reality.

I mean, it's almost like I have to practice saying the word our as I'm praying, because it really is that invitation to not just talk to God about my needs, it's inviting me to bring the needs of those around me before God as well. Considering, kind of like you said, Anthony, not just bringing their needs to the Lord, but also considering how He might want to meet some of those needs through me. Yeah, you know, our American brains loves to autocorrect.

It's, even if I don't do it intellectually, I'm doing it in practice when I'm when I'm honest. And autocorrect is a great analogy. Yeah, yeah, that's so good.

Yeah, you know, the American ethos has long been marked by self-sufficiency. And I think wrapped up somewhere in self-sufficiency might be the virtue of, like, personal responsibility, right? And so, you know, I want to be nuanced about that and recognize that maybe there's some virtue in there, but, you know, self-sufficiency easily loses the sight of the way God created us for healthy dependence on and support of one another. And maybe praying our daily bread can help rewire our American brains? Maybe, I don't know.

I hope to not only be conduits of God's provision to others, but also to be recipients of God's provision through others. And I think we wish we could receive God's provision like manna from heaven, because it bypasses God's use of human agents and the awkwardness we might feel of receiving a fellow human's help, right? But there's a healthy humility and gratitude we can cultivate when we experience God's generosity through others. Now, I remember my late friend Stephen.

He had a knack for hospitality, but he was also a very private individual. He was hard to read sometimes. When he was a youth pastor in a small church, and this was years ago, he was supporting himself and his wife on a very modest salary.

And he found himself in serious financial hardship. They had just enough money to pay for his wife's prescription meds and $20 for tithes that week. And that was all they had until the next paycheck.

And one evening, he was driving to church to lead youth service. His gas tank was basically on empty before he even left the house. And on the drive to church, he agonized over whether to use his tithe money for gas.

Each gas station he approached just taunted him. And as he was about to pass the last gas station before church, he suddenly jerked his car into the gas station, and then just as quickly decided to roll past the pump and get back onto the road. And so his car knocked, ran out of gas, and just coasted into the church parking lot.

His car was a clunker, and it was already about to give up the ghost altogether anyway. But so he leads youth service and gives his $20 tithe that night. Service ends.

He waits until everyone had left so he can lock up, but really he waited longer than usual so that no one would see him walking home. Then his car ends up in the shop where he's now staring at $750 in engine repairs. And there is no way he could afford that.

So fast forward a little bit, Stephen's preaching at the next evening adult service. He decides to open up about his recent financial struggles to encourage the people to trust God in the wilderness seasons of life. Now, no one had a clue what he and Wendy were going through.

Financially, their car being broke down, all that. He didn't tell anyone. Again, Stephen's a very private guy.

So he finishes his sermon and ends in prayer, and when he finishes his prayer and says amen, he opens his eyes and he sees in front of him a line of people had formed. And with one person after the other, the church fills his hands with daily bread, you know, checks, cash, coins. They just start piling it into his hands.

And Stephen's absolutely shocked. He had never experienced God's generosity like this before. Again, he's just too private, maybe even too proud to have ever let that happen.

But when everything was tallied, Stephen had in his hands a set of car keys, two car titles, and get this, 750 dollars, the exact amount he needed to repair his clunker. And that's exactly what he did. He got his clunker back up and running again.

But I think of Stephen's story often. And I miss my friend, but his story illustrates that the hour of our daily bread, like what that really means. And I wish I could have been there to see that beautiful line of people sharing their daily bread with my friend.

You know, that's the kingdom of heaven. That's what that looks like. Yeah, that's a beautiful picture of so much, both acknowledging our need, of communities rallying around people in need, I mean, so much of, I mean, this is an incarnational prayer, right? That we might invite God to call us to be the answer to the needs we see around us.

As we all face times where we invite, we need our communities to be the answer to the prayers that we pray, right? And when we do that, we're really able to tangibly see that it is not just me, it's our. And there's a lot of beauty in that. Well, thank you for joining us.

We appreciate you walking this journey with us. Be sure to check out the show notes for some other resources that'll help you dive deeper into the Lord's Prayer. And we'll see you on Thursday for more prayer.