Daily Bible Reading 4th September 2026 // Luke 11:1-4
1 Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2 And he said to them, “When you pray, say:
“Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
3 Give us each day our daily bread,
4 and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation.”
The first reason has to do with what we may well call 'battle order'. Christian discipleship is warfare in the spiritual sense, and what we have here could well be described as 'the iron rations of the Christian'. One has only to recall how many things we had to do without during the Second World War, and were content to do without, in the interests of the war effort, and final victory, to realise what a relevant idea this is. In a war effort, and where a victory is to be won, one is glad to make sacrifices and one has to make them (cf 2 Timothy 2:3, 4; Hebrews 12:1, 2). The life of the soldier and of the athlete is essentially and of necessity a ruggedly simple one. In the second place, simplicity comes to one under the discipline of the Cross for this reason: he has access to the bread that satisfies, and by his very calling to a heavenly citizenship he is weaned from the things that the world holds dear, and they hang lightly about him. He does not need to ask for them. He is, in the deepest sense, indifferent to them. Thus Paul, in prison in Rome, could say, 'I have learned.... to be content. I know how to abound, and how to be abased'. The secret? Paul's life did not lie in either having or not having things. He was drinking at a deeper and fuller fountain. Such do not need to ask much, because they have been given something so much better and fuller in the things unseen and eternal. There is a real and pointed lesson for us here. So often, in our desires for 'many things' we are really at odds with our true destiny and our true constitution. The Cross, and the real life of discipleship, makes a man rich towards God - and bread, forgiveness, victory, are among the things that He adds to those who seek first His kingdom and righteousness.