PRAYER ROOMS
Tuesdays (online only today)
PRAYER GUIDE
“Give us this day our daily bread.” – Matthew 6:11
Mother Theresa famously said: “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow may never come. We have only today. Let us begin.”
There is only one day we ever live and that is today. Tomorrow is just a today that has not yet arrived. Yesterday is just a today that has receded into the past. The only day we must ever worry about, according to Jesus, is today. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow will worry about itself. Our focus is and ever must be today. This is true in prayer as it is in all of life.
When Israel wandered in the wilderness, God provided manna for each day. Once a week, to honor the Sabbath, God provided two days worth of bread. But every other day of the week, if the Israelites tried to gather more than they needed for today, the bread would rot.
God continues to provide bread for today when we ask. We spend much of our time focused on tomorrow or yesterday, but Jesus wants us to think primarily about today. When we think about right now, and the next hours, about today, our lives come into clarity and focus. And when we pray about today, our prayers are best and most fresh and most potent. They come into the same clarity and focus and specificity.
God is pleased when we pray for ourselves, for those we love, for those around us, those in our church, those in our city. And he is most pleased when we pray for today…for what is needed for all these people today. He pays attention to the urgency of prayers focused on today.
Prayers for tomorrow can wait to be answered tomorrow. But prayers for today must be answered today if they are to be answered at all. Perhaps this is why they are powerful. When we ask God for what we and others around us really need for today, God takes note.
The other reason today-focused prayers are so powerful owes to the fact that God likes to use us as the answers to our own prayers. The only day we can ever answer our prayers is today. So if we are always living in tomorrow, focused on tomorrow, fixated on tomorrow, it is difficult to pay attention to how God may want to use us today.
Thus he instructs us to pray: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Let’s do this now.
For Prayer/Reflection:
- What do you spend most of your time thinking about? Is it today, or tomorrow, or yesterday? Is it the distant past or the distant future?
- Where do most of your prayers fall in their focus? In the future, the past (if that were possible) or today?
- What will enable you right now to focus on today, on being here today right now and praying for what you need today?
- What will help you to release tomorrow into God’s care and your worries about tomorrow into his hands. Do it now.
In Our Time 