The Time to Pray

by Adriel Sanchez

A mysterious word at the center of the Lord’s Prayer has stumped biblical scholars for centuries. It’s the word epi­ousios in verse 11 of Matthew 6, which is translated daily. The trouble with the word is that no one can seem to trace where it came from. Epiousios was so uncommon in the ancient world that the third-century theologian Origen concluded that the Gospel writers had invented it!

Today, there are dozens of suggestions on how to translate this word, often drawing on the broader biblical story. Every­thing from the bread necessary for existence, to heavenly bread (an idea that can be traced to John 6:51), to the bread of God’s coming kingdom (see Matthew 8:11; 26:29).¹ For now, let me say that I happen to like the word used by most English translations—daily. Like the children of Israel who gathered just enough manna for each day in the wilderness, we are to daily seek God for our needs.

This means that the petition for bread doesn’t just tell us what we’re to pray for, but when we’re to pray. The rising sun brings with it new challenges that God wants you to depend on him to deal with. Each morning we ought to discipline ourselves to approach God in prayer.

Making Time to Pray

Somewhere along the way, many Christians started to equate disciplined prayer with rote or powerless prayer. We think, How could something as intimate as prayer be scheduled? I was shocked the first time I visited a church where someone prayed using a pad of paper. For me, the idea of prewritten prayers, or scheduled prayer, just seemed unspiritual. But it doesn’t have to be. In fact, many of us wouldn’t pray unless we forced our­selves to. From the earliest days, God’s people have been taught that healthy prayer lives must be cultivated through hard work. It takes time, often set-apart time, to ensure that prayer is pri­oritized like Jesus modeled in his own life (see Mark 1:35; 6:46; Luke 5:16; 6:12; 9:28).

Setting apart time to pray is biblical. In Jesus’s day, Jewish people were known to recite daily the words of Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” This confession of faith in the one true God (offered when the worshipper rose from sleep and when they prepared for bed) was accompanied by prayers that magnified God by recogniz­ing his provision and mighty works.² The pattern of individual morning and evening prayer reflected the corporate worship of the tabernacle, where sacrifices were offered to God each morning and evening (Exodus 29:38–46). Consider what the psalmist said, “Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan, and he hears my voice” (Psalm 55:17). Or think about the example of Daniel: “He went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previ­ously” (Daniel 6:10).

It was this “prayer pattern” which Jesus’s first disciples adopted. The early community of faith gathered in anticipation of Pentecost “with one accord devoting themselves to prayer” (Acts 1:14). This same phrase is used in Acts 2:42 to describe the rhythms of the early church: “[they] devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” The apostle Paul encouraged this kind of prayer in the churches he ministered to (Romans 12:12; Colossians 4:2). One scholar observes, “The suggestion that this activity in a Christian context involves a different attitude and manner of prayer from those customary in contemporary Judaism, which had fixed hours and patterns of prayer has no real evidence to substantiate it . . . ”³ In other words, Jesus’s disciples didn’t abandon the pattern of disciplined prayer, but they embraced it!

1. C. Clifton Black, The Lord’s Prayer (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), 150–56. This book gives a summary of the various translations.

2. Paul F. Bradshaw, Daily Prayer in the Early Church (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2008), see 1 and 12–15 for the various kinds of prayer that became normative in the Jewish synagogue.

3. Bradshaw, 23.

Excerpted from Praying with Jesus: Getting to the Heart of the Lord’s Prayer © 2024 by Adriel Sanchez. Used with permission of New Growth Press. May not be reproduced without prior written permission.

Listen to our interview with Adriel Sanchez on SBE here!