Bible Passage: Matthew‬ ‭6‬:‭11‬-‭13‬
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

As a young boy, I used to truly dread the end of the December school holidays and the start of another school year.

I can still remember the sinking feeling in my heart. The knotted tummy. The “Oh no, back to school depression”. The tossing and turning in bed the night before.

The morning blues – after the highs of our December 31 celebrations and our January 1 holiday – still remains a millstone that sinks our spirits as we drag our feet back to school, work and just another year of the same maddening routine.

In yesterday’s devotional, we learnt that the gist of the Disciples’ Prayer which Jesus taught the first followers was be “serious about God” as our Heavenly Father.

We are to increasingly pray and experience the goodness of hallowing God’s name, dwelling in his kingdom and doing his will.

Today, we focus on the second half of Jesus’ life-changing prayer for us.

The gist of the second half of this prayer is: “God is serious about us as his disciples!”

1. A Radical Dependence

Some say our “daily bread” could mean the spiritual bread we so need to feed on for our salvation. Or, more simply, it could mean the physical bread we need for our sustenance.

In either case, the point not to miss is our true need for complete dependence on God for our eternal salvation and our temporal life.

In Jesus’ world, food was a daily provision as most were farmers and daily rated workers in fields. No harvest, no fruit and no work today meant no food on the table for our children.

Today, our sense of daily provision and need for survival is infinitely less as we are paid monthly or biweekly.

In fact, we have moved up the food chain so much that our mutated prayer and manic obsession is now: “Give us today our Retirement bread!”

Our mad obsession with having enough retirement bread is but the tip of the iceberg of a seismic shift to destructive self autonomy and self sufficiency.

May God’s Spirit humble us to accept our real need for complete dependence on God as we live in an increasingly secularised and self sufficient world.

It is a hostile world to disciples who keep reminding our culture of the rightness of having to trust God our good Heavenly Father for every breath of life enroute to eternal life.

Ever so often, God might ordain a failed exam, business, relationship or illness to jolt us with a fresh dose of humility for surrendered lifelong dependence on him. Might he sovereignly will that for us this year?

2. A Radical Lifestyle

Jesus then teaches us to pray about the forgiveness of sins. Why?

We should factor in this sobering reality of living in a fallen world:

We will both sin and be sinned against in this fallen world.

Each sin of thought, word or deed we commit so flippantly against neighbor – whom God graciously created and bestowed upon us – incurs a serious debt against God.

As a new year beckons, have you factored in your propensity to sin and our dire need for forgiveness?

If we don’t, we will fall prey to Satan’s evil – now mentioned at this juncture of the prayer – who works overtime to seduce us to addictive sin while hardening us to crippling unforgiveness.

In ending, we must realise that Jesus was the epitome of this prayer. He wrestled and agonised about submitting to God’s will to lovingly and humbly take divine wrath for nothing he had done but everything we had done against God. And our Lord Jesus willingly submitted.

We should, then, look to Jesus always to emulate him increasingly.

Then, our new year blues and year long challenges might not be so terrifying but be turned by Him into sanctifying moments.

Prayer:
Heavenly Father, grace us by your Son and Spirit to pray for a radical dependence on you and a radical life of forgiveness in Christ our Lord to your glory. Amen.