Food and Forgiveness.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. – Matthew 6:11-12 ESV

Prayer, at its most basic form, is communication with God. It is the child of God speaking with and listening to his Father. There should be a certain degree of intimacy and expectancy in our conversations with God. As Jesus shows us in the model prayer He shared with His disciples, our prayers should begin with an acknowledgement of God's holiness and transcendency, but also a realization of our personal relationship with Him as His children. Because He is our Father, we can come to Him boldly, knowing that He loves us. But we must also come respectfully and submissively, never forgetting that He is God and always ready to subject our will to His. It is this recognition of God as both our creator and Father that prompts us to willingly submit to His rule and reign over our lives. And while we are perfectly free and repeatedly encouraged to bring our requests before Him, we must always do so with a readiness to accept what He deems best. In Jesus' prayer, He seems to teach us to ask God for the basics – “give us this day our daily bread.” This isn't a request for a life of poverty or bare subsistence. It is an expression of dependence upon God for those things that will sustain us in life. Thomas L. Constable, in his commentary on Matthew, writes, “Daily bread refers to the necessities of life, not its luxuries. This is a prayer for our needs, not our greeds. The request is for God to supply our needs day by day” (Dr. Thomas L. Constable, Notes on Matthew, 2008 Edition). When we ask God for our “daily bread,” we our admitting our dependency upon Him. Rather than in prideful self-sufficiency, we admit our reliance upon Him as our creator, sustainer, provider and loving Father. This attitude in prayer expresses a degree of contentment in and satisfaction with what God provides. Paul told Timothy, “Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it. So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content” (1 Timothy 6:6-8 NLT). Sometimes our constant requests of God for more reveal that we really seek satisfaction and contentment in things rather than Him.

But there is another necessity that Jesus would have us recognize. Not only do we need God to provide us our daily needs, we need His constant forgiveness. This particular part of Jesus' prayer has caused some great confusion and consternation. After all, weren't all our sins forgiven by His death on the cross? If so, why must we constantly ask God to forgive us our sins? It is important that we understand that our sins have been forgiven – in full, past present and future. We stand before God as righteous because of the death of Christ on the cross. But we know from experience that we still sin. We have sin natures and a built-in propensity to sin against God. And sin, as it always has done, creates a barrier between us and God. The forgiveness Jesus is talking about has nothing to do with our salvation. That has been taken care of by Jesus. The forgiveness He is telling us to seek has to do with restoring fellowship with God. The word translated “debts” refers to our sins, not our financial obligations to God. Each and every day of our lives, we sin against God. We rebel against His rule and reign over our lives. We lie, deceive, exhibit pride and prejudice, hurt others, fail to love, act selfishly, lust, covet, and refuse to obey His commands. Our confession of those sins brings forgiveness. In asking for forgiveness, we are recognizing the amazing reality that God WILL do just that – forgive us. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9 ESV). An admission of our sins and a willing confession of them to God restores our fellowship with Him. And fellowship with our Father should mean more to us than anything else.

But there is more. Jesus adds an interesting twist to His model prayer. He says, “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12 ESV). This is not teaching us that our forgiveness from God is somehow tied to our forgiveness of others. It is telling us that forgiveness should be so important to us that we are willing to extend it even to those who sin against us. To refuse to forgive others is to show an open disregard for the forgiveness of God. That is why, after Jesus finishes giving His model prayer, He adds, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15 ESV). To refuse to forgive others is sin. It is against the will of God for His children. Dr. Constable adds, “These verses explain the thought of the fifth petition more fully. Repetition stresses the importance of forgiving one another if we want God’s forgiveness. Our horizontal relationships with other people must be correct before our vertical relationship with God can be” (Dr. Thomas L. Constable, Notes on Matthew, 2008 Edition).

Just prior to giving His model prayer, Jesus has taught, “So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24 ESV). There is a point at which our personal relationships can hinder our relationship with our heavenly Father. He has called us to love one another. Our desire for forgiveness from Him and restored fellowship with Him should drive us to maintain our fellowship with one another. “If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11 ESV). Food and forgiveness – two basic needs we all share.and two necessities we should all desire.

Reordered Priorities.

Give us this day our daily bread. – Matthew 6:11 ESV Matthew 6:9-13

What is it you really need? When you go to God in prayer, what is it that you typically ask Him for? Obviously, it is perfectly okay to make requests of God. In fact, we are encouraged to do so in Scripture. Paul writes, “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6 ESV). John makes a similar statement when he writes, “we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him” ( 1 John 3:22 ESV). Of course, John adds an important caveat that we tend to overlook. He makes it clear that the answers to our prayers are tied to God's will. He qualifies the promise of answered prayer with an acknowledgement that it hinges on our understanding of and relationship with God – “whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him” (1 John 3:22 ESV). A little later on in his letter, John makes this relationship between our knowledge of God and our answered prayers even more clear. “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him” (1 John 5:14-15 ESV).

When Jesus provided His disciples (and us) with His model prayer, He purposely began it with an acknowledgment of God's holiness, sovereignty, and kingship. He is God, but He is also our Father. Because He is our King and our adopted Father, our desire should be for His righteous rule and reign in all things, including our lives. We should desire what He desires. We should want what He wants. His rule should directly impact our requests. His will should alter our wants. If we truly believe He is righteous, holy, just and fully in control as our King and loving Father, we will trust Him to provide for and protect us. Which is why Jesus transitions His prayer from asking that God's will be done to a humble request for daily bread. It is well within God's will to ask for our daily needs. But sometimes we confuse wants with needs. We get our will confused with His. But Jesus would have us remember that God's will is always best. God always wants what is best for us. And when we start to think that the things of this world are what really bring us joy, peace, fulfillment and contentment, we miss the point. Which is why Paul told Timothy, “we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (1 Timothy 6:7-8 ESV). Paul spoke from experience. He had learned to trust God for his needs. He had learned the secret of contentment. “for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:11-13 NLT).

When we begin our prayers with an acknowledgment of God's holiness, a self-reminder of our adoption as His children, an expression of desire for His kingdom and will to be done, our requests become much simpler. They become more focused on the essentials and less consumed with the peripheral issues of life. We will tend to ask God for what we need, not what we want. We will find ourselves praying for His will to be done, rather than our own. We will increasingly learn to trust God to give us exactly what we need, when we need it. So that “if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (1 Timothy 6:7-8 ESV). But we will always be tempted to redefine what “food and clothing” means. Quality and quantity tend to become the measuring tools by which we define our needs. How much food? What brand of clothes? Does it include eating out three to four days a week? Just what does our “daily bread” cover? Is a house included? If so, in what neighborhood? What about cars? Income? Retirement account? Savings? It is not that any of those things are wrong. The issue is contentment and a confidence in God's will. It is trusting Him to provide us with what we really need. It is a willful concession to His divine sovereignty over our lives. Because He is our all-powerful God and our all-loving Father, we can trust Him. We can ask Him for anything, but He will ultimately give us what we need. And the more we get to know Him, the more our prayers will line up with His will and our requests will reflect His desires for us. We will want what He wants. We will desire what He does. And we will be content.