My father loved to take my brother and me out for breakfast. Dad’s “go-to” breakfast order for his two boys was steak and eggs. When we were in route to a construction site for a day’s work or on the road for a hunting or fishing trip, dad always found joy in our smiling faces when he looked across the table at us as the waitress waited to take our order and said, “Steak and eggs, boys?”

Working people and those who hike mountain trails looking for the right fishing spot or the hideout for a trophy buck need the kind of food that will sustain them in the endeavor. I’m not sure what my brother and I would have thought if our father had turned to a waitress and said, “Yes, we will each have an unbuttered slice of wheat toast, half a grapefruit, and a glass of water.” My brother and I would have asked each other, “Who is this alien life form that looks like our father?”

God is not meager towards His children. He orders from a menu created from the desires of our hearts working in conjunction with His will. He knows what we need to sustain us through the difficult stretches of life. When we pray, what we need is placed on our plates. We get blinded to that sufficient reality when we believe our Lord will accomplish less than He promised or when we choose to follow an anorexic version of spirituality that somehow forgot there are more feasts in the bible than fasts.

A great deal of the sorrow and lack we experience comes from a negative expectation about God and His love for us. It is not an assumption to believe the Lord is always willing to order the best spiritual meal for us. That is His nature. He is not a scrooge when it comes to His kids. The Lord doesn’t look at a life-menu and calculate the cost of His blessings for His children. He has already paid the price for all things on the Cross. He wants us to learn how to feast in His presence, not starve under the influence of a meager religious spirit.

Today, the Lord wants us all to believe in and expect a steak and eggs version of our relationship with Him. That way of thinking will empower our lives with hope and expectation no matter what we have been called to pursue or what challenging task we might be facing.