Give us this day our daily bread. MAT 6:11

Our text teaches us our dependence upon God. We are dependent on God for our daily bread, for the very food that sits upon our table. It is quite a common thing to say grace before we eat, but in saying grace before we eat, do we really stop to ponder how dependent we are upon the Lord for that very food?

When we realize how dependent we are upon God for a slice of bread, it teaches us the principle that we are dependent upon Him for all things, every necessity of life. We are dependent upon God for the formation of healthy seed to raise the grain to make our daily bread.

Do we realize that when we put seed in the ground, every kernel of seed is a new creation? The seed must die before it will take root; each seed that is planted is a miracle of creation to have life within it, to be able to die to bring forth fruit. We are dependent upon the Lord for the seed that is sown in the field.

Even if people do labor zealously, we are still dependent on the Lord for sunlight, moisture, and protection from all kinds of insects, frost, floods, and hail to raise food for our daily bread. We must realize that we are dependent on the Lord for all things.

In PSA 78:46-48 we read what the Lord did in Egypt to show them their dependence on the Lord for their daily bread, "He gave also their increase unto the caterpillar, and their labour unto the locust. He destroyed their vines with hail, and their sycamore trees with frost. He gave up their cattle also to the hail, and their flocks to hot thunderbolts."

We seldom stop to think about how dependent we are upon the Lord for our daily bread and every other necessity; we've only dealt with some of the ways we are dependent upon the Lord for our food, but we must depend upon Him for every necessity of life.

"Give us this day our daily bread" teaches us the principle that we are dependent upon God for our health, our ability to work to make a living. "Give us this day our daily bread" teaches us the principle that we are dependent upon God for the ability to eat it, to digest it, and receive strength from it to be healthy.

ACT 17:28 says, "For in him we live, and move, and have our being." We are dependent upon the Lord for every breath in our nostrils, and this is what it teaches us: we have to come before the Lord with beggar's language, "give us" a slice of bread.

When we see our dependence upon God, we learn to understand 1CO 4:7, "For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?"