God's Prayer Agenda (Pt 2) Series

Last week we began looking at God’s agenda for prayer through the lens of the Lord’s Prayer. We saw that according to our recent survey a lot of us are struggling with prayer. Many of us don’t pray at all and quite a number only pray two or three times a week. I suggested that part of our re-engaging with prayer is to get with God‘s prayer agenda, not just our own agenda in prayer.

God’s prayer agenda begins with lifting our eyes heavenward and praying from a place of relationship with Him, a place of concern for his glory, and a desire to see his Kingdom come into our lives and the lives of those around us.

When we begin with a heavenward focus to our prayers, it can really inspire and transform our prayer life. It also frames the rest of our prayers. We see our earthly concerns with the proper perspective through the frame of eternity. This helps us both to pray with faith and also to pray in the right way.

It’s in this light that the second part of the prayer moves from ‘you’ — God — to ‘us’ and our more earthly concerns.

:DAILY BREAD:

Jesus begins with the simple request to ‘Give us today our daily bread’.

There’s some debate about what ‘daily’ means. The Greek word is 'epiousios' and only occurs in the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew and Luke, and maybe once or twice outside the Bible, so scholars aren’t 100% sure on the meaning. Some have suggested it means, ‘Give us today our bread for tomorrow.’ I don’t think this works, given Jesus’ teaching not to worry about tomorrow. Seeking today’s daily bread is enough.

For most of us in Australia, this might seem a little strange given that the problem we struggle with is obesity, not starvation! Most of us have access to social welfare if we lose our job. Of course, for Jesus’ audience, living was often a daily hand-to-mouth affair. Casual workers were paid at the end of the day and there was no social safety net, so if you got sick or couldn’t find work or there was a drought, it spelled disaster.

Daily bread probably includes all our daily needs (as someone said, our needs, not our greeds). With the housing crisis and rising homelessness, I think praying for a roof over our heads is a very legitimate application of this model!

But for most of us, perhaps we need to seek a more spiritual application for this prayer. In fact, many of the early Church Fathers saw a more spiritual meaning to epiousios.

Origen, a 3rd Century theologian from Alexandrea in North Africa put it this way:

Since some understand from this that we are commanded to pray for material bread, it will be well to refute their error here and to establish the truth about the epiousios (supersubstantial) bread. We must ask them how it could be that He who commanded us to ask for great and heavenly favors should command us to intercede with the Father for what is small and of the earth, as if He had forgotten… what He had taught. For the bread that is given to our flesh is neither heavenly, nor is the request for it a great request…

In the Gospel according to John He says to those who had come to Capernaum seeking for him: “Amen, amen, I say to you, you seek me, not because you have seen miracles but because you did eat of the loaves and were filled.” One who has eaten of the bread blessed by Jesus and is filled with it tries all the more to understand the Son of God more perfectly and hastens to him. Hence his admirable command: “Labor not for the meat that perishes but for that which endures to life ever-lasting, which the Son of Man will give you.” … The “true bread” is that which nourishes the true humanity, the person created after the image of God.

We don’t need to take this to the same extreme as Origen, that thinking of daily bread as physical bread is wrong! But it does add a layer to the prayer because for all of us, our greatest need is for daily spiritual bread. We need that communion with Christ in prayer through the Word and by his Spirit. So if you struggle with your walk with God, can I encourage you to pray this - even if you just recite it, but recite it from your heart. “Our Father in Heaven, give us the heavenly bread that is Jesus.”

:RELATIONSHIPS:

Another reason to see the request for daily bread as spiritual is that Jesus very quickly slips into the spiritual matter of forgiveness.

‘Forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors.’