Summary
Just What I Need
The fourth petition of the Lord's Prayer—"Give us this day our daily bread"—is the place where Christian prayer most easily gets stuck. We pray it weekly together and often daily on our own, but our hearts tend to camp there, until almost every request becomes some version of asking God for the things we want from this life. A mistaken identity creeps in: we confuse what we need with what we want, and our prayers narrow accordingly.
Consider the parable of Goldilocks. She wanders into the bears' cottage searching for what is "just right"—porridge, a chair, a bed. For a moment, her daily bread seems met. But had the bears never returned, she would have woken to find the chair broken, the porridge gone, and the bed soon outgrown. She would search again, and again, never satisfied. That is the Goldilocks loop: seeking completion in the things of this world and never finding it. Agur's prayer in Proverbs 30:7-9 cuts directly across this loop.
Agur asks two things of the Lord before he dies. First: "Remove far from me falsehood and lying." This is a plea to be kept from vanity and hypocrisy, and it echoes David's prayer in Psalm 51:6—"You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart." Before anything else, Agur prays to be shown what is true and to be held there.
Second: "Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me." Agur asks to be kept from both ditches—not for the sake of comfort, but because he knows what each extreme tempts him to. Riches breed pride: like Pharaoh, the wealthy heart says, "Who is the Lord?" and denies that God has provided anything at all. Poverty tempts to theft, coveting, and cursing God in suffering: "Why has the Lord let this happen to me?" Both ditches end the same way—seeking satisfaction in the world and finding none. Agur prays instead for the middle, where dependence on God remains visible.
Beneath the question of bread is a deeper question: what do we actually need? Regardless of age, station, or circumstance, what every sinner needs is salvation. And salvation cannot be found by looking around at the world or down into ourselves; it must come from outside us. It comes from God alone, who provided the satisfaction for sin Himself. Jesus Christ did not seek out the bed that was just right; He sought the cross. He did not taste the perfect bowl of porridge; He drank the cup of God's wrath, so that we might drink instead the cup of the new covenant in His blood. The tomb stands empty, and He gathers His people under the shelter of His wings.
This is why Ephesians declares, "By grace you have been saved... not a result of works, so that no one may boast" Ephesians 2:8-9. The riches of salvation are not of our making, and the poverty of our sin does not have the last word. The truth comes to us from outside: in the waters of Baptism, in the preached Word, in the body and blood of Christ given in bread and wine. Agur's twofold prayer—keep me in truth, give me what I need—has already been answered in Christ, and because of Him the Christian can finally say, "I have just what I need."
Video citations
- "Just What I Need" 8-3-25 — If you would please open your Bibles to the Old Testament page 575, if you're using a Pue edition of the Bible, we're going to be in Proverbs, Chapter 30, Proverbs, Chapter 30. Before we turn or…