My phone rang at work and when I picked it up, on the other end was an old college friend. After a few moments of catching up, he said to me, “We are bringing our football team through your town Friday afternoon and we would like to eat there. Is there any place to feed 50 players and coaches at a sit down meal at 3:00 p.m.?” I asked him what they wanted to eat and he said, “A small hamburger patty and a baked potato.”

That Friday afternoon I went to the restaurant to meet my friend. We then sat down with the other coaches and talked about our high school football teams. Specifically, I wanted to know if they did their pregame meal like this every Friday night when traveling. My friend said, “Yes they did.” He also said, “We have to travel a long way from home on game days so we need to feed our players a pregame meal, and a post game meal.”

‘An army marches on its stomach’ is a saying that is attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. To be able to fight well, an army must eat well. A football team is very much like an army and they must also eat well. The Christian man or woman in God’s army also needs to eat well.

In John 6:48 Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.” In the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, the Our Father, we say, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Jesus loves to use words and phrases that can have two meanings and that is the situation with, “Give us this day our daily bread.” I used to think this meant we were to pray for our daily food and to be thankful for it. But Jesus also means for us to come to him everyday to get the bread of life in our fellowship with him while we read the Bible and pray.

New research polls show that 77% of Americans think the nation’s morality is headed downhill. But only 20 out of 100 Americans read their Bible on a regular basis. And out of those 20 who read their Bible regularly only five read their Bibles more than four times a week.

More than half of Americans think the Bible has too little influence on our society. That means that over 50% of Americans want the Bible to have more influence on our society. But only 5% read the Bible more than 4 times a week? The majority of us know the answer to our problems yet we refuse to read the answer to our problems? So instead we are hungry, for the Bread of Life.

Those pictures you see of starving people in Africa where they are so skinny you see all the bones of their bodies? God most likely sees Americans spiritually, as a starving people. We are seated at a banquet but refusing to eat from the Bread of Life!