Word of Encouragement (5/7/2026)

Give us this day our daily bread (Matt. 6:11)

We may find this prayer difficult to pray. Why? Because our Lord does not teach us to pray for ten years’ worth of bread, or this week’s worth of bread, or even two days' worth of bread. Rather, we are instructed to pray for a competent portion (WLC 193). We are instructed to petition for the daily providence of God.

Maybe we wish that our Lord taught us to pray for more than a day’s worth of bread. Maybe if we had just that much more, we wouldn’t worry so much. And the difficulty in praying this petition is that we are confronted with how we think about the future. We worry too often about the future because we tend to interpret it through the lens of our present circumstances. Based on what we have, what we know, and what we are able to do now, we can only see the future as burdensome.

But such a mindset overlooks the purpose of this petition: to increase our faith! After all, how accurate is our conception of the future? By what rational principle do we draw such bold conclusions about what will happen tomorrow? So then, how ironic is it that the certainty of our concerns is greater than the certainty of our finite knowledge of the future?

But let us consider One whose knowledge of the future is exactly certain. The preface to the Lord’s Prayer directs our prayers in this way: “Our Father in heaven.” God is indeed the great king and judge, but this petition is brought to him as our heavenly Father. He is the one who is able and ready to help us.

How able and ready is he? This same God spoke the world into existence by the word of his power. This same God opened the mouths of wild animals, made the sun stand still, and parted a great body of water. This same God raises the dead. For this God, is providing for our earthly needs a difficult thing to do? Surely not! To see the wonderful demonstration of his ability and willingness to help us, we need not look further than the cross of Christ!

It is fitting then that we pray for our daily needs to be met by waiting upon the providence of God. Oh that God would increase our faith to trust in his wise governance over our lives and to rely on his tender care for us! If we are swept away in the currents of our worries, drowning in our needs, let the words of the apostle be our resounding reply: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”