What we’ve been doing is we’ve been going week by week through the model prayer of Jesus in Luke 11. As Christians, prayer is so vital to us because we understand and recognize that we do have struggles and we can’t overcome them simply by determination or sheer willpower.

The very essence of prayer is the recognition that I need somebody outside of myself, I need somebody with a power that I don’t have.

In Luke 11, we find a story where the disciples one day are watching Jesus pray. As they watch Him, as they listen to Him connect with His Father when Jesus gets up after He finishes praying, the disciples turn to Him and say “Lord, teach us to pray.” Lord, could You teach us how to do that? Could You teach us how to connect with the Father? We want to know how to do that.

Jesus’ response to the disciples on that day was what we now know as the Lord’s Prayer.

For the last four weeks we’ve been examining the this prayer phrase by phrase.

The first part of the model prayer focuses on God. But now at this point in the prayer – “Give us each day our daily bread” – we make a transition and the focus is now on us. But the order is important. Here’s why.

The starting place in prayer is always the acknowledgment of who God is. It is always the worship of who God is. That’s why the model prayer begins, “Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.” Because when I understand that He is all powerful and when I understand who He is then I’m prepared to pray for my needs.

And in praying “Give us each day our daily bread” we learn to seek God as the answer to our needs.

As a pastor for a few years I’ve observed some barriers that people have when it comes to praying and asking God to meet their needs.

One of those barriers is that some of us deep down are not really convinced that God could love us like that and we still live in bondage to our past and with an overwhelming sense of guilt and condemnation.

The good news is that for us who are in Christ Jesus there’s no condemnation.

Another barrier that some of us have is that our view of God is of a distant deity that is only occupied with the bigger things in life and He doesn’t really care about the details of my life.

Or maybe even more seriously, we are not convinced that prayer really matters. We’re self sufficient.

Rather than prayer being our first response, it’s our last resort.

“Give us each day our daily bread”