LD 50: The Fouth Petition

“Give us today our daily bread,” is so comprehensive.

DeYoung’s title for Lord’s Day 50 is Prayerlessness is Unbelief. I’ve thought this for a long time now, and when I saw his title for HC#125 I couldn’t have agreed more.  I’ve thought much about this, because over the years, my prayer life has not kept pace with my increased understanding of the faith.  Consequently, I’ve also been increasingly bothered by my growing sinful negligence in prayer.

Prayerlessness is Unbelief really is a perfectly stated title for Lord’s 50.  Prayer is the clearest, most immediate fruit of your faith.  If faith is an absolute dependence upon the object of your faith (Jesus), then prayer is the rightful expression of that dependence.  In faith, you realize your utter sinfulness before God and cling on to Christ’s perfect righteousness.  You look away from your sinful self to Christ’s obedience.  Prayer is the same: after looking at yourself, you express your total dependence upon Jesus, looking to Him alone for all things.

HC #125 gets into some of these things…

Necessity, dependence, and gratitude sum up of the fourth request of the Lord’s Prayer.  With the fourth petition, “Give us today our daily bread,” our Lord teaches us that we should be prayerfully dependent about all that which we need.  Roughly paraphrased, this request means: give us food consistently and often.  I don’t pray for basic needs much at all, much less consistently and often.  A quick example…

Health.  I can’t ever remember praying thanks for the breaths I take or the relative good health I’ve had all these years.  Few things are more consistent and often than breathing itself.  Maybe a beating heart too.  I just assume that I’ll breathe. Without giving it a second thought, I assume that my heart will keep beating.  And assumption misses the point entirely, because assuming these things just are translates into self-dependence and praylessness.  Exactly, what Jesus teaches us not to do.

There are so many more examples I could discuss, but the point has been made (to me).  The sum total of the content of my prayers tells me that I am not dependent upon Christ for “daily bread”.  You would think as a created being I would cling on to my Creator in dependence of all things, that I would, “give up my trust in creatures and to put trust in God alone.”  It should be a given, but it’s not.  Even more convicting is the converse.  You would think the Creator would not display a prayerful dependence, but Jesus does exactly that.

Paul Miller writes in A Praying Life that Jesus was the most dependent person ever to walk this earth.  Jesus depended upon His Father for everything.   John 5:19 says,

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.

My Savior was completely dependent upon His Father for everything.  Likewise, Jesus is the one who teaches me to pray, “Give us today our daily bread.”  Necessity, dependence, and gratitude is what the Father desires of me in the fourth petition.  Why?  Because I need God for everything, every single second of my life, and that makes for a comprehensive petition.

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Lord’s Day 50

Q & A 125

Q. What does the fourth request mean?

A. “Give us today our daily bread” means,

Do take care of all our physical needs so that we come to know that you are the only source of everything good, and that neither our work and worry nor your gifts can do us any good without your blessing.  And so help us to give up our trust in creatures and to put trust in you alone.