Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread. Matthew 6:9b-11
When we pray to the Lord to “Give us this day our daily bread,’ we are expressing our need to our Abba Father, our Creator, all powerful God, and the One who loves us the most. The Lord is a generous Father, and He knows how to provide for His children in supernatural and natural ways.
When you really think about it, God’s provision is still supernatural even when it appears to come through natural means. For example, the fact that you can plant a tiny seed in the ground and over a period of time see a harvest of abundant fruit is amazing and awesome! A nebulous seed makes it possible for us to have abundance of fruit for our nourishment and enjoyment and farmers use the fruit to make a living out of them. Isn’t that marvelous!? The things that happen in nature are only possible because the Lord has made them so.
God’s supernatural work and provision is a regular occurrence, so many times we take it for granted and lose the wonder. We see His supernatural work so often that they seem normal to us, but we all live a supernatural life because of His mercies that are new every morning. Apart from the Lord keeping order in this world and allowing everything to function properly at His word, we would be incapable of living the life we live.
The scriptures show us God’s creative and supernatural provision for His people that looked very different in various situations. When Elijah saw the widow without food, he told her to go fill up empty jars with oil and sell them (2Kings 4:1-7). Since she was poor, the majority of her jars would have been empty anyway, and those empty jars set her up to be blessed abundantly with God’s provision in her life (See Luke 6:21). She also asked her neighbors for empty jars. While the neighbors may not have known the purpose for the empty jars, they were willing to give her what they had. They did their part naturally, and then the Lord did His miraculous work of filling these jars with oil.
The truth is that we don’t like to suffer lack. We like to be in charge of our lives and know where our provision comes from. Interestingly, when you talk to people who have learned to lean on the Lord for their provision, they seem to have strong faith in God’s provision. They have exercised their faith in uncertain and tough situations, and God has come through for them. As a result, they have greater confidence that God will provide for them again.
When thousands of people followed Jesus in the desert to be taught by Him, Jesus told His disciples to feed them. The disciples didn’t think they had enough food, but a boy with his packed lunch offered his food to be used. I love the faith of this young boy. He did not doubt himself or think that it was stupid to offer his meager amount of food to be used to meet the needs of others. God did His supernatural work using the faith and the food of this young boy to feed the multitudes (John 6:8-14).
The Lord chooses different ways to provide for His children as was in the case of the feeding the Israelites with manna in the desert, choosing a prophet to bring a miracle in empty jars, or using the faith of a young boy and his packed lunch to provide for others. God will choose how He will meet the needs of His people. We are blessed to look to Him for all provision and know that God is able and willing to provide for His children and bless us with His lovingkindness and mercies.
The blessing of His provision gives us also the opportunity to be blessing to others. Many of us feel small in comparison to the needs of those around us, but God can still use us as His instrument to feed those that He places on our path. The number of people we reach is not as critical as our willingness to offer what we have to help others. The important issue is being led by the Lord and allowing Him to use us to be a blessing as we have been blessed generously by Him. You see God sometimes provides through miracles, but many times His supernatural work is doing a miracle by using normal people with normal circumstances to love people, to provide for the needs of others, and be the hands and the feet of Jesus!