Praying Differently, Not Necessarily More
As we begin a new year and think about things we need to work on, a lot of us want to work on our relationship with God. If that’s you and you want to grow in your relationship with God, you have to grow in prayer. Growing Christians are praying Christians.
During the month of January, we’re studying the most famous prayer ever prayed: the Lord’s Prayer. This ancient prayer has taught believers how to pray for thousands of years.
In giving us this model prayer, Jesus’s goal isn’t that we repeat the words like a parrot. Rather, he wants to remake the way we pray, and in so doing remake us. The Lord’s Prayer shows us that it’s not about praying more but about praying differently.
How Does Prayer Work?
But how does prayer work? To grow in prayer you need to know how it works. What materials is prayer built out of? Two weeks ago we saw that prayer begins with praise, then last week we saw that it continues with petitions.
We saw last week that even in our petitions there’s an order that Jesus teaches us. He says that our petitions should begin with God. The first three petitions of the prayer are about God and the second three are about us. So we start with God’s praise then move to God’s priorities.
But then in verses 11-13, Jesus teaches us to pray for ourselves, for things that matter to us. This shows us that our needs are relevant to God, that we should pray for our physical, relational, and spiritual needs. God’s kingdom is the most important thing but not the only important thing.
God Cares about Our Needs
Today we’ll look at verses 11-12 and the first two things Jesus says we should ask for concerning ourselves: daily bread and forgiveness.
The main point of these verses is that God cares about our needs. We’ll see first that we should pray for physical needs and second that we should pray for relational needs.
We Pray for Physical Needs
First, in verse 11 Jesus teaches us to pray for physical needs, and in so doing tells us that he takes our physical needs seriously.
As one writer points out, however, “The danger with the prayer for bread is that we get there too soon.”[1] The temptation is to rush through praise and praying for God’s kingdom so we can get to our shopping list of needs. Praying for our needs is good but Jesus says that they’re not the priority in our prayers.
We may’ve expected him to move from his kingdom to our souls or our spiritual lives. But instead he starts with our bodies, with physical nourishment. Why?
Because our existence in the world is important to God, so we should pray first for the things that keep us alive. Yes, we’ll also need to pray for spiritual needs (vv. 12-13). But we must be kept alive if we want to fight sin and see his kingdom come on the earth. God cares about our lives!
So we pray for bread and anything else we need to live, things necessary for our existence. We pray for necessities, not luxuries. We aren’t promised luxuries, but we are promised that we’ll have enough to live. As King David said, “I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread” (Ps. 37:25).
God will provide for our needs. Of course, sometimes our idea of need isn’t Gods. Our posture should be one of wanting just enough. Poverty and riches come with dangers, which is why Proverbs 30:8-9 says, “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.” So we pray for wisdom to know what our needs are, and that God would meet them.
Food is Not a Given
Notice that Jesus uses the word “give” at the beginning of verse 11, meaning that the provision of our basic needs is a gift from God and not the result of our efforts or ingenuity. God gives bread through things like work, and we can work because God allows us to work.
This reminds us of our utter dependence on God for the most basic necessities in life. It’s easy to forget this in our country. I was at the store the other day and the amount of food just amazed me. There were literally piles and rows of food. It’s easy in this country to think that food is a given. But if Covid taught us anything it taught us that it doesn’t take much to upset the most basic mechanisms that keep goods and services working in this country.
God can stop the rains and the trains any time he wants and no amount of GMO’s or modern technology can stop his hand. Listen to how Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it a generation ago, “We are absolutely in the hand of God, and the supreme folly of this twentieth century is the folly of thinking that because we have acquired a certain amount of knowledge of the laws of God, we are independent of him. We cannot live for a day without Him. Nothing would continue were it not sustained and kept going by God.”[2]
So we pray for “daily bread.” Jesus wants us to pray for immediate needs, not those of the indefinite future. In Exodus 16, the people were hungry and so the Lord sent them manna from heaven every day except the Sabbath. He told them not to hoard the manna and when they did it grew worms. He wanted them to trust him for exactly what they needed every day.
But God Already Knows What We Need?
Some may think, “Why do we need to pray every day for our needs if God already knows what we need?” Right before the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus says, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Mt. 6:8). So why do we pray for things God already knows we need?
Some think that God gives us his gifts of grace in one big lump sum and we just live off them. But it’s not like that because that’d be too dangerous for us. If God did that, we’d be in danger of enjoying the gift and forgetting about God. Rather, as our Father, he wants us to come to him, to speak to him, to seek his company.
One pastor said it’s like “a father put a great deposit for his son into the bank, and the son can only receive a supply each time by writing a cheque. Each time he needs another installment he has to write a cheque. And that is how God deals with us. He does not give it to us all at once. He gives it to us in installments. God is there in grace offering His guarantee, and all we have to do is sign our cheques and present them. That is prayer, it is presenting our cheque, just going to God and asking Him to honour it.”[3]
God knows what we need but he wants us to come to him, to bring our checks to him and humbly ask him to honor them. What father isn’t overjoyed when his children humbly come to him with their needs? Good dads love hearing from and providing for their kids. God is no different. He knows the need, but he wants the engagement.
Desires Aren’t Necessarily Evil
Jesus’ instruction here also tells us that our natural needs shouldn’t be seen as evil. God gave us desires for food, drink, rest, friendship, touch, play, laughter, sex, companionship, meaningful work, and much more. These desires aren’t bad if pursued in God’s way. This prayer reminds us that the Lord wants to meet our needs and that we can take our needs to him in prayer. In prayer the Lord sorts out, straightens out, untangles, and reaffirms these good desires.
The Lord’s prayer isn’t a prayer that our desires would be annihilated but rather that these desires would be satisfied in God’s way and in God’s time.
What specific needs do you long for, hope for, desire? A job that allows you more time to serve others? A spouse who loves and fears the Lord? Friends who’ll encourage and challenge you? Better sleep? Healing of chronic pain? Deeper connection with your spouse? More children? A place to use your gifts in the church? So long as they’re not sinful, your desires aren’t evil. Take them to the Lord in prayer and wait and watch for him.
We Pray for Relational Needs
In these petitions, Jesus is teaching us that God cares for our needs, our physical needs in verse 11 and then our relational needs in verse 12.
Of all the relational needs he could’ve mentioned, he only mentions one, forgiveness. He says we need forgiveness from God and we need to forgive others.
Forgiveness is Unnecessary
One of the things poisoning our culture is a lack of forgiveness. If someone wrongs you or even disagrees with you, you just cancel them and demonize them. There’s also the idea that says, “If it feels good, do it,” which means that there’s no need to forgive because people who hurt us are just expressing themselves. And there’s the belief that tolerance is the highest virtue, so we just sweep hurtful things under the carpet and tolerate people’s hurtful choices.
In this kind of environment you can see why some see forgiveness as, at best, unnecessary, and at worst, a sign of weakness. In our culture, we’d prefer to pretend that we’re not hurt or that sin isn’t real or that forgiveness isn’t a necessary part of human relationships. In this sort of world, we don’t need God to forgive us and we don’t want to forgive anyone else.
But then Jesus comes along and says that one of our basic human needs is forgiveness from God and forgiveness for others. Jesus was a realist. He knows how bad things are in the world, he knows how sin ravages relationships. We need forgiveness because sin breaks things. It breaks our relationship with God and with others, so Jesus addresses both.
Forgiveness from God
Verse 12 starts by telling us to pray for God to “forgive us our debts.” This means that Jesus understands that we’ve sinned against God.
Jesus calls sin a “debt,” meaning that we owe God something. What do we owe him? Because he made us, we owe him our full allegiance and obedience. If we don’t give him this, and none of us do, we’re in debt to him. We’re debtors to God and only he can cancel the debt.
This is why Paul later talks about forgiveness as “canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.” Then he says that God sets our debt aside, “nailing it to the cross” (Col. 2:13-14). We can’t pay our sin debt so God in Christ pays it for us, his blood wipes it out.
Confessing Sin to God
This request for forgiveness implies that we’re coming to God with things that need forgiving. This request implies confession of sin. If you’re a Christian, you know you’re a sinner, someone who’s disobeyed God. But in your prayers before God, are you a sinner theoretically or specifically? In other words, do you ever get around to naming the specific sins you struggle with? We say we’re sinners but then we have trouble finding any. Do you name specific sins in prayer to God?
You may say, “Why do we need to ask God for forgiveness if we’re justified by faith?” Because Jesus isn’t talking about justification here. This prayer is for those who know God as “Father,” those who’ve been adopted into his family through faith in Jesus. This prayer is for Christians.
Jesus knows that as we follow him through this world, we’ll dirty our hands and soil our garments with sin along the way. This is why John tells us to pray for forgiveness and cleansing (1 Jn. 1:8-10). We’re right with God through faith in Christ, but our relationship with him is damaged by ongoing sin. So we pray for forgiveness regularly. As Lloyd-Jones says, “The greater the saint the greater is the sense of sin and the awareness of sin within.”[4]
Sin hinders our relationship with God, our sweet communion with him. Confession of sin is how we come back to him. One writer says, “We come into our Father’s presence as beloved children, ready to feast at his table. Before the meal itself, of course, it is right that we wash our hands.”[5] Confessing sins is how we wash our hands, or prepare to commune with Christ.
“As We Also Have Forgiven”
But Jesus says that our need is not only to restore our relationship with God, but also with others. He says in the next part of verse 12, “as we also have forgiven our debtors.” This clause commits us to actions that back up what we just asked for. “As we also…”, meaning, “God, we need to forgive others the way you’ve forgiven us.”
Jesus makes this point vividly in the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18:21-35.
The point is that, since we’ve received extravagant forgiveness from God, we must also extend extravagant forgiveness to those who’ve sinned against us. The proof that we really understand God’s forgiveness is that we forgive others, that we cancel the debt they owe us.
Jesus isn’t saying that we forgive others to earn God’s forgiveness. He’s saying that those who live in his kingdom forgive because they have been forgiven. Citizens in his kingdom practice forgiveness because they’ve tasted it themselves. Local churches thrive by inhaling God’s forgiveness and then exhaling the life-giving air of forgiveness.
Christians who don’t forgive don’t understand what it means to be a Christian. Listen to how New Testament scholar N. T. Wright puts this: “Failure to forgive one another wasn’t a matter of failing to live up to a new bit of moral teaching. It was cutting off the branch you were sitting on.”[6]
Forgiveness is Costly
Jesus thinks this is so important that he revisits it again right after the Lord’s Prayer (6:14-15). Refusing to forgive is spiritual suicide. He’s saying that if you can’t give forgiveness then you don’t have forgiveness.
Does this mean forgiveness is easy? Of course not. We’re supposed to pray about it because we don’t have the resources within ourselves to truly forgive people who’ve hurt us.
Forgiveness is linked to paying a debt because it’s costly. We’d like to give people what they deserve, to put them in their place, to make them pay. But when we decide not to do that and to instead offer them forgiveness, it costs us. It’s painfully hard. It feels wrong and unjust. But paying someone’s debt for them, so to speak, is the only way to be free from the cancer of resentment and bitterness, and the only way to see ambivalence start to turn into love.
Jesus understood how much forgiveness cost. On the cross, he paid a higher price than we’ll ever be asked to pay. In those moments, the pain and sins of the world were heaped up on him and dealt with forever.
Jesus willingly paid our debt with the riches of his love. And when you understand that he did that for you, you’ll find new resources and desires to forgive those who’ve hurt you.
The Path Toward Healing
Who do you need to forgive? In a sin-soaked world, everyone carries bruises, which is why God calls us “bruised reeds” (Mt. 12:20). Who’s bruised you or hurt you? Forgiveness doesn’t imply complete reconciliation, but it is the path toward healing.
God cares for our needs, physical and relational. He wants to provide for our needs and repair our relationships, first with him and then with others.
He promises to meet our physical needs and our relational needs. He’s the one we need the most, the only thing that will truly keep us alive. Jesus tells us to pray for bread and then he becomes the bread (Jn. 6:30ff).
As we start to “eat on him” by faith, as we start to breath in God’s forgiveness, the cool and clean air of God’s love will start to re-oxygenate our souls and give us the ability to breathe out God’s forgiveness for others.
Have you breathed the cool and crisp air of God’s forgiveness? Bring your sins honestly to Jesus and look to the cross and you will. As you do, you’ll start to find the path toward healing for all your relationships.
Jesus tells us to pray for these things because he wants them for us. Do you want them for yourself?
[1]N. T. Wright, The Lord and His Prayer (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 23.
[2]D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, one volume edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 346.
[3]A. B. Simpson, quoted in ibid., 345.
[4]Ibid., 347.
[5]Wright, 44.
[6]Ibid., 39.