Q. 63. What do we pray for in the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread”?

• WSC 104
• Heidelberg Catechism 125

Needed. Jesus taught us to pray for our daily bread, and not to worry about tomorrow (Matthew 6:34). “If we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (1 Timothy 6:8). James 4:3 warns, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” See “Prayers of Supplication for Various Needs and Circumstances” (p. 272).

Bodies. Jesus encourages us to trust God to supply all of our needs: “Do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all” (Matthew 6:31–32). When we ask for our daily bread, it is as if we pray, “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 trust in you alone” (Heidelberg Catechism 125).

God’s Word. It would be better to go for a day without physical bread than to go without God’s Word, the food of our souls: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). Fasting is a spiritual discipline in which we abstain from physical food to deepen our dependence on God’s Word.

Grace. When we hear the Word of God or receive the Lord’s Supper in faith, we are nourished by Christ himself, the Bread from Heaven. John Wesley notes “the judgment of many of the ancient Fathers, that we are here to understand the sacramental bread also; daily received in the beginning by the whole Church of Christ, and highly esteemed, till the love of many waxed cold, as the grand channel whereby the grace of his Spirit was conveyed to the souls of all the children of God” (Sermon 26, “Upon Our Lord’s Sermon On The Mount: Discourse Six”).