We depend upon the Lord for life, and the Lord teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.” We are to pray for our daily bread, and to realize that it comes from heaven. We have the record that on certain occasions bread came down ready made, as the manna and the giving of bread in the wilderness. Suppose we say, “We are taught to pray for our daily bread, and therefore we will not use means; we will pray, and expect the Lord to feed us right out of his hand with bread already made. If we expect bread in any other way, it shows lack of faith.” I can understand why people think that it does; it is because they leave God out of all the operations of nature, and so they speak of God and nature as if they were two different things. They seem to think that God does some things, and nature some things; then the idea becomes prevalent that nature does more things than God does: and then at last nature does everything, and God is left without any occupation at all. But all those miracles, as we have seen, are to show us that God works in the visible creation; not that nature is God, but that what men call nature, or natural laws, is the working of God. You are all familiar, at least by title, with Drummond’s book, “Natural Law in the Spiritual World.” He simply had the thing turned upside down. Natural law does not work in the spiritual world, but spiritual law works in the natural world; and all the law that is manifest in the natural world is spiritual law. These things show us God.MEDM December 1903, page 300.1

People think that God does not have anything or at most very little to do with providing us with our daily bread. When they have plowed the field, and taken the grain and cast it into the earth, and then have harvested the grain, and threshed it, and ground it into flour and made it into bread they think that they have done it all. But they have really done very little. The birds do not plow nor sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, yet our Heavenly Father feeds them; and we are much better than they; therefore we are to expect that in far greater measure the Lord will feed us. What shall we do, then? Sit with open mouths and wait for the bread to drop in? O, no. The birds are not fed that way, except when they are too young to fly, too feeble to walk; and then it is only by their own parents. But as soon as they get old enough to move for themselves, they have to do just what their parents did,-fly about and gather what the Lord has scattered for them. Now that is all that man does. Man does not do anything more toward getting a living than the birds do. He gathers-reaps what the Lord has strewn. The grain is strewn about, and man gathers it and eats it; but God does all the providing of it; and man is just as directly fed from heaven, from the hand of God, as the birds are. “That thou givest them they gather,” and that is all we can do.MEDM December 1903, page 300.2

God has given us food as the means of perpetuating our life, in order that we may see and trust him. If the life of all men were continued and renewed day by day without any of these means, without our eating bread and drinking water, men would say that they were self-existent. They would think, “We are not dependent upon anybody for life; we are our own masters, and life is inherent in us:” and there would be no means by which you could convince them it is not so. There would be no means of showing them God’s rightful claim upon their obedience. They would say, “I do not owe him anything. I do not receive anything from him. This life proceeds from myself. Why, people say this to a large extent anyhow; they act as if that were the case, when it is patent to every one of us that it is not so. How much more so would it be the case if there were no invisible means for the maintenance of our life?MEDM December 1903, page 300.3

The prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” uttered in faith, is not at all inconsistent with going out and plowing the fields, and sowing the seed, in reaping the harvest, and threshing the grain, and making it into bread. He that prays that prayer in faith, recognizing that it is God who gives him the power even to do that work, will see himself working together with God. The farmer, whether he knows it or not, is a worker together with God.MEDM December 1903, page 301.1

“Now the just shall live by faith.” We live, we say, by eating. True; and if we live in the right way, we eat only to live, the pleasure we get out of it being incidental. It is God’s will that we should get pleasure out of all the things that are right; but the object of eating is to get life, and thereby to recognize God as the giver of life. Then the next logical thing, thee only consistent thing, is that, recognizing God as the giver of life, we shall acknowledge that he is the only one who has the right to say how that life shall be used; and, stronger yet, that he is the only one that has the right to use the life. So we shall acknowledge all the time that it is God that works in us both to will and to do, and the man who recognizes this all the time, and who is consistent with what he sees, will have all his ways right. Why? because he won’t use the life of the Lord, but he will let the life of the Lord use him. Our bodies are to be instruments of the life of the Lord. the Lord is to use our bodies as he will, and then everything that we do will be right; and thus the just live by faith.MEDM December 1903, page 301.2

FOOD AS MEDICINE

What did the Lord give us in the beginning, and what does he still give as the means of healing, restoring us, as our bodies undergo waste; in short, what does God give to man, as his medicine?-Why, the food that we eat; it is man’s natural medicine, is it not? The food and the drink, the sunlight and the air,-they are medicine, medicine which God has put in our hands. God has designed that the food that we eat, should be the means of keeping us in life and health. That being so, it is clear that when by some means or other, through our own fault or through the fault of somebody else, we have failed to allow that life to flow through us unhindered-have dammed up the stream-and there has come stagnation, congestion, disease, we are to be healed by coming to our senses, and recognizing that the life comes alone from God, and accepting his gifts which convey life to us,-coming into harmony with them. The Lord does not pander to people’s laziness, and so he does not do the thing which he has given to man the power to do for himself. He did not roll away the stone from the grave of Lazarus. The people could do that as well as not. Why should they sit there with their hands folded, and allow the Lord to do that he had given them power to do? Then Lazarus came forth, bound around the head with a napkin. You know as well as I do that the Lord could have brought Lazarus out of the grave with the napkin taken off and laid aside just as well as he could do what he did do. But he did not roll the stone neither did he take the napkin off. He said, “Loose him, and let him go. They could do that by the power that he gave them: but there was a certain thing that they could not do. That is there was power above the measure of power they had received, and the Lord exercised that independently.MEDM December 1903, page 301.3

Jesus raised the ruler’s daughter. Then as soon as she had come to life he commanded that they should give her food. Why?-In bringing her to life he had exercised the power and the life which was entirely beyond their comprehension or their power to co-operate with. Then when he had come to the point where they had the means of life which God had put into their hands, he let them go on and use it. He brought the damsel back to life, but in that weakened condition that she was in before she died. Then having brought her to life, and healed the disease, he told them to give her something to eat, so that she could recover her strength. He could have brought her to health, and made her perfectly strong, so that she would not have had any need for food-not for a while, at least-just as he could keep us alive without eating at all; but when he had brought her to that point, then it was a simple thing: Give her something to eat, and she will get her strength again.MEDM December 1903, page 301.4

All these things show that God works through means. In the greatest miracle, that of raising the dead, the Holy Spirit is the means by which the life is bestowed. The Lord has given life, and shown it everywhere. Now we are to see it, and find out the ways in which the Lord’s life manifests itself, and come into harmony with its workings, and we shall live,-and that is living by faith. And it is thus only that the Christian should live.MEDM December 1903, page 302.1

November 1903