Give us this day, our daily bread.

God not only wants what is best for us by asking us to focus first on Him; He shows He cares about our daily struggles by focusing on our daily needs. But He sets the agenda! Yes, He now ordains that we pray for ourselves. But He knows what is best for us and in what order the needs should be mentioned. The remaining petitions pertain to what we need. God has promised to supply all our needs according to His riches in glory (Phil. 4:19).

Jesus will say later on in the Sermon on the Mount, “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’...Your heavenly Father knows that you need them” (Matt. 6:31–32). So here we are invited to pray for our needs.

It may seem an incongruity: to pray for what God has already promised to supply anyway! But that is the way it is. He invites us to participate in His care for us. There are times when we wonder if God has forgotten. It is comforting to know that He knows this too; hence we pray daily for these essentials to life. The grandeur and glory of God now condescend to our own personal situation.

Imagine this! The great Creator and sovereign God of heaven and earth stoops to where we are. “For this is what the high and exalted One says—he who lives forever, whose name is holy: ‘I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite’” (Isa. 57:15). The Most High God invites us to pray about the smallest of things. But don’t worry about praying over small things; with God everything is small.