Yemi worked in the procurement department of a large manufacturing company in Ikeja, and he knew the expense claim process better than almost anyone in the building. Every naira spent on company business had to be justified. You filled in the claim form in triplicate. You attached the original receipt, never a photocopy. You wrote the purpose of the expenditure in the box provided, got your line manager’s signature, and submitted it to Accounts on the fifteenth of the month. If anything was missing, the form came back with a red circle around the problem. If the receipt was faded, you were out of luck. Yemi had once been refused four thousand naira for a taxi fare because the driver had written the receipt in pencil.
He did not resent the system. Companies need controls. But one evening it struck him in a way it never had before.
He had come home tired and was sitting in the parlour when his eight-year-old daughter walked in holding up one of her school sandals. The strap had snapped clean off. “Daddy,” she said, “my sandal has cut.” That was all. She did not fill in a form. She did not attach a receipt or explain the purpose of the expenditure. She did not wait until the fifteenth. She did not wonder whether she had been good enough that week to deserve new sandals. She simply held up the broken one, told him what was wrong, and went back to her homework, perfectly confident that the matter was now being handled.
The next afternoon, Yemi bought her a new pair on his way home from work. He did not think twice about it. She was his daughter.
It was later that night, when he knelt by his bed to pray, that the contrast hit him. He realised he had been praying like a man submitting an expense claim. He would list his needs carefully, attach whatever evidence of faithfulness he could think of (the tithes paid, the vigils attended, the good deeds done that week) and then wait anxiously to see whether the claim would be approved. If it was delayed, he assumed something was missing from the paperwork.
PunchlineHe had been approaching his Father as though He were the accounts department.
The prayer begins with “Our Father”
When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, He gave them a pattern that has shaped Christian prayer ever since. And He put the request for provision right in the middle of it:
“After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:9-11).
Notice the order. The prayer does not begin with bread. It begins with a relationship. Our Father. Before a single need is mentioned, the one praying is reminded who he is talking to and who he is in relation to Him. Then come the Father’s name, the Father’s kingdom and the Father’s will. Only after all of that does the prayer turn to daily bread.
That order teaches us something essential about provision. God’s provision for His children is rooted in relationship. It flows out of who He is to us and who we are to Him. Bread is asked for, plainly and without embarrassment, but it is asked for by children, from a Father. The need sits inside the relationship.
Notice too that the prayer asks for daily bread: enough for today. In the wilderness, Israel gathered manna each morning, and any that was hoarded overnight went bad (Exodus 16:19-20). God was teaching His people to depend on Him day by day. The request for daily bread keeps us returning to the Father daily, and that daily return is itself part of the gift. A child who is fed every day by his father learns, meal by meal, that he is loved.
“Your Father knoweth”
Jesus returns to this theme in Luke’s Gospel, in words addressed to disciples who had little money and an uncertain future:
And seek not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind. For all these things do the nations of the world seek after: and your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things. But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you. Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
“Your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.” The foundation of provision is the Father’s knowledge. He does not need to be informed of your needs. He does not need to be persuaded that they are real. He already knows, and He knows as a Father knows, with personal concern.
Then Jesus says, “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Every phrase in that sentence is tender. Little flock is the language of a shepherd for vulnerable sheep. Your Father is the language of family. Good pleasure means that it delights Him. God is not a reluctant provider who has to be talked into giving. It is His joy to give. And what He delights to give is larger than food and clothing. It is the kingdom itself.
This changes the inner atmosphere of our requests. We still need food, rent, school fees and work. We still bring those needs to God plainly. But we can bring them without first promising some achievement that will make us worth caring for. We ask as children, not as applicants.
This passage must never be used to shame a person who cannot meet their basic needs. Jesus is not saying that people who struggle for food lack faith. He is calling a community of disciples to trust their Father together, and the very next verses tell them to sell what they have and give alms (Luke 12:33). The Father’s care for His children is meant to flow, in part, through His other children. Telling a hungry brother to trust God while refusing to share what you have contradicts the very love that Scripture describes.
How much more
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus uses an argument that every parent understands:
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?
Picture a father whose son comes to him and says, “Daddy, I am hungry.” What kind of man would hand that child a stone? Or give him a snake when he asks for fish? Even the most ordinary, imperfect father knows how to give good gifts to his children. Jesus calls these fathers “evil,” meaning sinful and flawed, and yet even they do not mock their children’s hunger.
“How much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” The argument moves from the lesser to the greater. If a flawed human father provides for his children, how much more will the perfect Father provide for His?
Yemi did not hesitate for a second over his daughter’s sandals. He did not need to be persuaded. His love for her made the provision automatic. And he was an ordinary man with an ordinary salary and an ordinary measure of patience. How much more is your heavenly Father moved by your needs?
This also guards us against a misunderstanding. The Father gives good things. A wise father does not give his child everything she asks for. If she asks for a sharp kitchen knife to play with, he will refuse, and his refusal will be an act of love. Sometimes our requests are reshaped by the Father’s wisdom. Sometimes the answer comes in a form we did not expect. But His welcome does not change, and His intention toward us is always good. Asking, seeking and knocking are the activities of a child who trusts that the Father’s door will be opened.
NuggetYou do not approach the Father as an applicant submitting a claim. You come as a child, and His provision flows from who He is to you.
The Shepherd’s table
David, who had been a shepherd boy before he was a king, wrote the best-loved description of God’s provision in the Bible:
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Look at how the psalm begins. “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.” The relationship comes first, and the provision follows from it. David does not say, “I have enough, therefore the Lord is my shepherd.” He says the Lord is his shepherd, and therefore he will not lack. The provision is a consequence of the relationship.
Every line that follows describes what the shepherd does. He makes me lie down. He leads me. He restores my soul. He is with me in the valley. He prepares a table. The sheep’s part is simply to belong to the shepherd and to follow. A sheep cannot plough a field or store grain in a barn. It is entirely dependent on the one who cares for it.
Notice too that this provision does not depend on comfortable circumstances. The psalm includes “the valley of the shadow of death.” It includes “the presence of mine enemies.” The table is prepared right there, with the enemies looking on. God’s provision is His care within difficulty. That is important, because some of us have been taught to recognise God’s provision only when everything is going well. When the business is growing and the bills are paid, we feel like His children. When the money runs short, we wonder whether we have fallen out of favour. Psalm 23 refuses that whole way of thinking. The Shepherd is at His most present in the valley.
He that spared not His own Son
The greatest argument for God’s provision in all of Scripture comes from Paul in Romans 8. After building to a climax about God’s saving purpose, he asks: “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).
Paul’s logic is simple. God has already given the greatest gift He could give. He gave His own Son, to die for us. If He was willing to do that, is there anything He will withhold that we truly need? The cross is the Father’s proof that He is for us. Every lesser provision is guaranteed by that greater one.
We need to read “all things” in context. Paul is assuring us that God will not fail in His purpose to bring His people into the fullness of life with Christ. Just three verses later, he lists the hardships believers may face: “tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword” (Romans 8:35). Famine is on the list. Nakedness is on the list. Paul knew these things personally. He does not say they will never happen to God’s children. He says that none of them can separate us from the love of Christ.
So our understanding of God’s provision must be large enough to survive a difficult season. If we identify God’s love only with the absence of lack, we will not be able to explain the lives of many faithful people in Scripture, or in our own churches. A delayed payment, a lost job or a business that has failed should not be allowed to rewrite the meaning of the cross. The Father who gave His Son has not stopped being your Father because the month is lean.
There may still be practical matters to address. A household may need a clearer budget. A worker may need to develop new skills or look for another opportunity. A church or ministry may need to stop promising what it cannot sustain. These are not signs of unbelief. They belong to responsible dependence on God. And prayer gives us room to ask for both the provision and the wisdom to handle it well: Father, help me meet this obligation. Show me what needs to change. Make me willing to receive help without hiding behind an appearance of success.
Provision that flows through the family
When Paul wrote to the Philippians, he was in prison, and they had sent him a gift through a man named Epaphroditus. His thank-you note contains one of the most quoted promises of provision in the Bible, and its context is very revealing:
Now ye Philippians know also, that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as concerning giving and receiving, but ye only. For even in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my necessity. Not because I desire a gift: but I desire fruit that may abound to your account. But I have all, and abound: I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, wellpleasing to God. But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
“But my God shall supply all your need.” Many of us have claimed that verse for ourselves, and rightly so. But notice who Paul was writing to and why. The Philippians had been sharing in Paul’s needs from the very beginning. When no other church supported him, they did. They sent help to Thessalonica “once and again.” Now they had sent another gift. Paul calls it “an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, wellpleasing to God.”
So the promise of supply in verse 19 comes within a relationship of partnership. The Philippians had given to meet Paul’s needs, and Paul assures them that God will meet theirs. Provision flowed in a circle: from God, through His people, to one another, and back to God in thanksgiving. Paul is careful to keep it free of any sense of transaction: “Not because I desire a gift: but I desire fruit that may abound to your account.”
Paul says something similar to the Corinthians:
And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things , may abound to every good work: (As it is written, He hath dispersed abroad; he hath given to the poor: his righteousness remaineth for ever. Now he that ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness;) Being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness, which causeth through us thanksgiving to God.
God is able to make all grace abound toward you, so that you have “all sufficiency in all things” and may “abound to every good work.” The purpose of God’s provision is larger than private accumulation. He supplies seed to the sower and bread for food, and He enriches His people so that their generosity causes “thanksgiving to God.”
We need to hear the language of sowing and reaping within that purpose. Paul encourages willing, cheerful giving, and he trusts God to sustain generous people. He does not authorise pressure, guaranteed financial returns or promises that a particular donation will purchase a particular miracle. When giving is turned into a transaction, where I give in order to obligate God to give me more, it has been pulled out of the relationship and put back into the accounts department. A father does not need to be paid before he will feed his children.
Paul also says in the same letter that giving should be “according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not” (2 Corinthians 8:12). Generosity can be joyful and wise at the same time. It does not need to be built on panic, as if withholding an amount you cannot afford will cause God to abandon your household.
John gives us a vivid picture of how this works. When a great crowd followed Jesus into a remote place, He turned to Philip and asked, “Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” (John 6:5). John adds that Jesus said this to test him, “for he himself knew what he would do” (John 6:6). Philip did what most of us do. He calculated. Two hundred pennyworth of bread, he said, would not be enough for everyone to have even a little. Andrew found a boy with five barley loaves and two small fishes, and then immediately doubted their usefulness: “but what are they among so many?” (John 6:9).
Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and handed them to the disciples, who handed them to the people. Everyone ate as much as they wanted, and twelve baskets of fragments were gathered afterwards. Notice the shape of it. The provision came from Jesus, but it passed through a boy’s lunch and the disciples’ hands. The disciples’ calculations could not produce the bread, and their limited resources did not set the limit of His ability. Yet they were invited to take part in distributing what only He could supply. That is still how the Father’s household works.
If you are in need, come without shame. Tell the truth about your situation, to God and to the people who can help. Receive what is given with gratitude. If you are not in need at the moment, look around. The widow down the street, the student who cannot pay his fees, the family who lost their income: a fair wage, a meal, a bag of rice or help finding work may be the Father’s answer to a prayer you never heard.
When the brook dries up
During a terrible drought in Israel, God sent the prophet Elijah to hide by the brook Cherith, where ravens brought him bread and meat morning and evening. It was an extraordinary provision. And then, “it came to pass after a while, that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land” (1 Kings 17:7).
Imagine what Elijah might have thought as he watched the water shrink day by day. Have I done something wrong? Has God forgotten me? But God had not forgotten him. He sent him to a widow in Zarephath, a town outside Israel, in Sidonian territory. When Elijah arrived, the woman was gathering sticks at the city gate:
And she said, As the LORD thy God liveth, I have not a cake, but an handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse: and, behold, I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die. And Elijah said unto her, Fear not; go and do as thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son. For thus saith the LORD God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the LORD sendeth rain upon the earth. And she went and did according to the saying of Elijah: and she, and he, and her house, did eat many days. And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD , which he spake by Elijah.
She was not a wealthy patron. She had one handful of flour and a little oil, and she was preparing a last meal for herself and her son before they died. And yet God had chosen her house as the place of His provision, for Elijah and for her family together. The barrel of meal did not run out, and the cruse of oil did not fail, “according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by Elijah.”
Several things stand out. First, God’s provision changed form. The brook drying up marked the beginning of a new chapter of His care. Sometimes, when a familiar source of income disappears, we assume God has abandoned us, when He is actually leading us somewhere else.
Second, the provision came through a relationship and through people. God could have kept the brook flowing by miracle. Instead, He brought a prophet and a widow together, and both were sustained. Provision in Scripture very often arrives through ordinary human hands: a widow’s kitchen, the Philippians’ gift, a boy’s five loaves and two fish.
Third, the widow’s story must be told carefully, because it has often been misused to pressure poor people into giving money they need for food. Elijah’s word to her was a specific prophetic word in a specific situation, backed by a specific promise from God. It is not a formula that any preacher can use to tell a struggling widow to empty her purse into his offering. The point of the story is God’s faithfulness to the desperate, not a technique for extracting gifts from them.
Paul learned contentment within all of this. “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound” (Philippians 4:11-12). He had known hunger and he had known plenty. Contentment did not forbid him to seek a better situation. It simply freed him from postponing all gratitude until the better situation arrived. We can seek improvement while refusing to treat the present limitation as evidence that God has stopped being our Father.
Yemi told me that the night of the broken sandal changed the way he prayed. He did not stop bringing his needs to God. If anything, he brought them more often, and more honestly. But he stopped attaching his receipts. He stopped listing his tithes and vigils as though they were evidence for a claim. He began his prayers the way Jesus taught, with Our Father, and he found that by the time he reached the request for daily bread, his anxiety about it had already begun to settle.
He also noticed something else. A few weeks later, an elderly widow in his church, Mama Ebere, mentioned after service that her landlord had increased the rent and she did not know how she would manage. Yemi had heard requests like that many times before, and usually he had said, “We will pray about it.” This time, he went home, looked at his budget, and paid two months of her rent. He did not tell anyone. He said it felt like the most natural thing in the world, as natural as buying sandals for his daughter. The Father had provided for him through people all his life. Now he could be one of the people.
Perhaps you have been praying like someone submitting an expense claim, anxiously attaching your evidence and waiting to see whether you will be approved. Put down the form. You are not dealing with the accounts department. You are speaking to your Father, who knows what you need before you ask, who delights to give, and who has already given you His Son.
PunchlineHold up the broken sandal. Tell Him what is wrong. Then go back to your homework in peace.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- In what ways have you approached God like an “accounts department” rather than as a Father?
- Why do you think Jesus put “Our Father” before “Give us this day our daily bread”? What does that order teach you?
- How does Romans 8:32 change the way you think about the needs you are facing right now?
- Have you ever experienced a “brook drying up,” a familiar source of provision ending? How did you interpret it, and how did God lead you afterwards?
- Who around you is in need at the moment, and how might the Father’s provision reach them through you?
This Week
Pray the Lord’s Prayer slowly each morning this week (Matthew 6:9-13), pausing after “Our Father” to remind yourself who you are speaking to before you continue. When you reach “Give us this day our daily bread,” name your specific needs for that day plainly, without listing reasons why you deserve them. Then, before the week ends, identify one person in your church or community with a practical need, and meet it quietly, as an expression of the Father’s care.
A Prayer
Our Father in heaven, thank You that You know what I need before I ask You. Forgive me for the times I have approached You like a claims office, attaching my good works as evidence and waiting anxiously for approval. I come to You today as Your child. Thank You that You spared not Your own Son, and that with Him You freely give me all things. Give me this day my daily bread. Teach me contentment in every season, wisdom with what You entrust to me, and humility to receive help when I need it. Make me generous, so that Your care for others can flow through my hands. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.