Thesis 37- We must believe and teach our children to believe that God is the one who gives us our daily bread.
It is a common enough argument between those who believe in the sovereignty of God and those who do not. Those who do not, want to know, “If God has already determined all that will come to pass, why pray?” or the slightly less aggressive version, “Does prayer really change anything?” Those of us who believe in the sovereignty of God have good and sound answers to this objection. Often we break into a discourse on primary and secondary causality. We talk about how God ordains means as well as ends. It’s all true, though it may miss the heart of the matter. The truth is that prayer does change things. It doesn’t, of course, change our future. Instead it changes us. We do not, in other words, pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” because we will starve if we don’t so pray. We pray it instead to teach us that it is God Himself who provides our daily bread.
Our temptations are legion here. The serpent provides any number of different substitutes for God in our equation. We may believe that our skills, our diligence, our market savvy provide our daily bread. We may believe that it is our job that provides our daily bread. When our job is in jeopardy, we then tend to worry. We may believe it is the government that provides our daily bread. And so we expect it to ensure the stock market rises, to insure our risky home mortgage. Of course our gifts and our hard work are a part of the way God answers this prayer. Of course the company we work for is a part of the way God answers this prayer. Of course governments can either guard prosperity or destroy it, and so is a part of the way God answers this prayer. None of which changes the reality that it is God who provides our daily bread. When we sit down before a meal and return thanks, we ought, as we open our eyes, be as joyfully surprised as the children of Israel who awoke each morning to see the ground covered with manna.
Evangelicals, especially those of us who are Reformed in our thinking, are often practical deists. Just as deists believed that God wound up the great clock that is the universe and stepped back to watch it all play out, so we believe God wrote the story, His decrees, and then stepped back to watch it all play out. He has indeed decreed all that comes to pass. And He has decreed that He acts in space and time. He puts bread on our table. He meets our needs.
We are His children. We need to know this. Our children are His children. They need to know this. They need to know that as much as they are cared for by their earthly father, their heavenly Father is, in the end, the One who watches over them.