The Meaning of Matthew 6:11: “Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread”

The people were hungry.

For nearly a month, the people of Israel had been trekking through a barren wilderness. The vast sea of men, women and children had known nothing but slavery and oppression until God stepped in and shattered Egypt to set His people free.

They had seen the supernatural plagues that brought Egypt to its knees. They watched God split a sea in half, leaving them with a dry pathway to the other side. They had seen all these miracles—but at the first sign of hardship, they defaulted to bitter complaints.

On this particular occasion, they accused Moses, their leader, of dragging them into the wilderness to “kill this whole assembly with hunger” (Exodus 16:3).

Their lack of faith led them to reframe a miraculous rescue as an attempted genocide.

God provided His people with bread from heaven

God responded with a miracle. Six days a week, for 40 years, He sent them manna—bread from heaven. The Israelites were to “gather it according to each one’s need” (Exodus 16:16) but not “leave any of it till morning” (verse 19). Anyone who tried to be clever and stockpile extra found a nasty surprise—by the next morning, the manna “bred worms and stank” (verse 20).

The one exception was the Sabbath. Since that was (and remains) God’s day of rest, the people were to gather a double portion on Fridays, the sixth day.

For 40 years, six days a week, the Israelites would get up in the morning and gather their bread for the day. And for 40 years, Israel’s survival depended on God’s providing them with bread in the morning.

When manna stops falling

Fast-forward to the present. 

There’s a good chance you’re not reading this from your tent in the wilderness. In all likelihood, your bread gets plucked from the aisles of your local supermarket instead of being rained down from heaven. It’s been a long time since the now scattered Israelites have depended on manna from above. 

In fact, if you live in the United States, you live in a country where an average of 247 pounds of food is wasted per person per year.

That’s the equivalent of every American taking a pile of food weighing as much as a full-grown panda and throwing it in the garbage. 

Every. Year.

How does this relate to Jesus’ model prayer?

And yet when Jesus Christ gave His disciples a template for praying to God (Matthew 6:9-13), He taught them to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

(He taught them to pray many other things too. For a deeper dive into this model prayer, see chapter 1 of our free ebook Five Tools for Spiritual Growth.)

But this idea of praying for daily bread can feel a little unnecessary in places that throw away mountains of unwanted food. After all, if we’re surrounded by food, why bother praying for it?

The parable of the rich fool

Jesus Christ also told the story of a man who found himself with more food than he knew what to do with. After a bountiful harvest—so bountiful that there wasn’t enough room to store it all—the man resolved to tear down his old barns, build bigger ones and live a life of ease for years.

“But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’” (Luke 12:20).

When we believe our survival hinges on a pile of stuff that can vanish in a moment, we’ll spend our lives fixated about losing our grip on those stockpiles. The man was rich—but overnight, his wealth lost all meaning. What good are barns filled with riches when you’re dead?

It’s a good idea to save what we can, when we can. 

But it’s a dangerous idea to equate stockpiles with security. We can trick ourselves into believing that our possessions will be enough to sustain us through all of life’s difficulties. We can tell ourselves that if we just hold on to enough stuff, we won’t have to worry about anything.

But food can rot. Possessions can be destroyed. Barns can burn, thieves can steal, treasures can lose their value, stock markets can crash, and banks can fail. Entire civilizations can collapse. When we believe our survival hinges on a pile of stuff that can vanish in a moment, we’ll spend our lives fixated about losing our grip on those stockpiles.

The parable of the rich fool reminds us that stockpiles cannot bring security. Stockpiles can actually cause us to forget the true source of security.

Why pray for our daily bread?

The Israelites learned in a concrete, physical sense that without God’s continued provisions, they would perish. It was literally impossible for them to stockpile manna, because it would spoil by the next morning. They were constantly aware that their food, each and every day, was provided directly by God.

It’s much easier for us to forget. 

Our meals for the day don’t fall from the sky. Many people have access to more food than they know what to do with, which makes it incredibly easy to forget that God provides us with that food.

We ask every day. 

The Israelites couldn’t stockpile their daily bread, and we can’t really securely stockpile ours. And even though our daily bread doesn’t fall from the sky, we acknowledge through our prayers that our blessings are provided to us by the God of heaven.

Tucked away toward the end of Proverbs is a prayer that deepens the meaning of praying for daily bread. It is a prayer to “feed me with the food allotted to 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” (Proverbs 30:8-9).

Between the manna in the wilderness, the parable of the rich fool and this concept of having only “the food allotted” to us, we can begin to see why Christians should be praying for our daily bread. It’s God who makes it possible to get the things we need and for us to use the things He’s given us.

Barns full of wealth are no good if we die the day we build them. In having excess, we can easily forget God; in having nothing, we can easily profane God. All of us, from the most capable to the least, ultimately depend on God for our daily survival. 

Not by bread alone

But there’s another layer to this prayer. After their 40-year journey through the wilderness, Moses reminded the people of Israel that God had “humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 8:3).

Jesus Christ would later famously quote part of this passage during His confrontation with Satan in the wilderness (Matthew 4:4). The manna was to help the Israelites see beyond their physical needs. Their need for a spiritual connection with God was more important than their hunger.

When we recognize the Word of God as our source of physical and spiritual life, we see our physical needs as only part of a much bigger picture. That’s still true for us today. 

When Jesus spoke with the descendants of the wilderness Israelites, He told them, “I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die” (John 6:48-50).  

The sacrifice of Jesus Christ opens the door to something far greater than having our physical needs temporarily met. The opportunity to have our sins forgiven and to receive eternal life as a child of God is a gift beyond our human ability to fully understand, and yet that’s what the manna in the wilderness was pointing toward: “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). 

(To learn more about what Christ was saying, read “I Am the Bread of Life.”)

When we recognize the Word of God as our source of physical and spiritual life, we see our physical needs as only part of a much bigger picture.

A choice between worrying and trusting God

Trust in stockpiles can breed worries, but God offers us a different way—trust in Him. Christ tells us, “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on . . . For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.

“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matthew 6:25; 32-34, emphasis added).

If we believe in God, we must also believe His promises. If we make our spiritual diet a priority—seeking His Kingdom and pursuing His righteousness—He promises to make sure we have what we physically need.

Pray for your daily bread. Do your part in earning it, but trust God to provide it. Don’t look to your own possessions for deliverance, but to your Father in heaven, “casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).

Photo credit:
Frazao Studio Latino/E+ via Getty Images

Date Posted: March 26, 2025