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Bread and Our Physical Needs

Bread and Our Physical Needs

The Source of Our Provision
When all our needs are met and all is well in our lives, we tend to take the credit for what we have, to feel that we carry our own load. We work hard to earn the money we need to buy food and clothes, pay our rent or mortgage. But even the hardest-working individual owes all he earns to God’s provision. Moses reminded Israel that God “is giving you power to make wealth” (Deut. 8:18).
Our life, breath, health, possessions, talents, and opportunities all originate from resources God has created and made available to man. Everything we have is from God: It is He who brings the rain to make things grow, causes the seasons to change, produces the minerals that make the soil fertile, provides the natural resources we use to propel ourselves around, and provides the animals and plants from which we make our clothing and food. Our daily bread—the necessities of physical life—are all from God.
God provided for man even before He created him. After He made and blessed Adam and Eve He said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you” (Gen. 1:29). Since that time He has continued to provide an abundance of food for mankind, in almost unlimited variety.
Yet the Apostle Paul tells us that “the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith … and advocate abstaining from foods, which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with gratitude; for it is sanctified by means of the Word of God and prayer” (1 Tim. 4:1, 3–5). The Word of God sanctifies (sets apart from God) all food, and we sanctify it when we receive it with thankful prayer.
Do you have that attitude? Are you truly thankful to God for your food when you bow your head and say a prayer before a meal? For many of us, sadly, the prayer we offer to God before we eat is usually quick and indifferent—we’re just making sure to do our duty. Such an attitude reveals the sin of indifference and ingratitude for God’s gifts. Thomas Watson, a great Puritan with a heart for God, wrote,

  If all be a gift, see the odious ingratitude of men who sin against their giver! God feeds them, and they fight against him; he gives them bread, and they give him affronts. How unworthy is this! Should we not cry shame of him who had a friend always feeding him with money, and yet he should betray and injure him? Thus ungratefully do sinners deal with God; they not only forget his mercies, but abuse them. “When I had fed them to the full, they then committed adultery” (Jer. 5:7). Oh, how horrid is it to sin against a bountiful God!—to strike the hands that relieve us! (The Lord’s Prayer [London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1972], 197)

Never presuming on the grace of God’s provisions and thanking Him for His daily kindness in meeting your physical needs fulfills the spirit of the petition, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Realizing that God alone is the source of those provisions gives Him glory.


MacArthur, John F., Jr. Alone with God. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1995. Print. MacArthur Study Series.

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