I have always enjoyed the writing of Abigail Dodds, and this lovely, unique book is no different. Below are a few of my favorite passages.

What we consume spiritually affects all of our life, whether our thoughts, our words, or our actions.

That’s why this book has bread recipes in it — because it’s part of how God helped me learn the enjoyment of good works and the benefits of simple things done with love in the name of Jesus and for his glory.

Only God’s word has scraps that can truly satisfy. His word is so nourishing, so powerful, even the nibbles grow us up in him, albeit more slowly than if we were to gulp and devour.

None of the instructions and commands and prohibitions of God may be pulled apart from him. We may not doubt him — his character and his love — which means we may not doubt the instructions born of that love. We aren’t being given arbitrary commands from an automated god. We are being given loving, good commands from a loving, all-powerful, all-knowing, holy God, even when we don’t yet fully understand the purposes behind them.

When we walk through any season of wilderness, the greatest danger is not the scorching heat of the trial or the horrible dryness of the ground; it is that we would be blind to the God who sees us. The greatest danger is that we would begin to believe our wilderness is out of his plan, away from his providing hand, and obscuring his line of sight. We must never believe such deadly things.

Danger lies all around in worldly comfort, earthly riches, status, fame, and independence, but the wilderness is free of those traps. It gives us one thing we desperately don’t want: the bread of adversity; but it also gives us an abundance of something we desperately need: eyes to see our teacher and ears to hear his word and receive it as our food — “This is the way, walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:20)

Leaven is hidden. You can’t see it once it’s mixed into the dough. Similarly, spiritual leaven works in secret, in the heart, mind, and soul. Leaven is a change agent. It doesn’t leave dough the way it was. It works its way through it and turns it into something else. Spiritual leaven changes people and groups of people — it doesn’t leave them as they are — whether for good or ill… Have you pondered what sort of leaven your life might be passing on? What flavor is being picked up by those nearest to you?

Meekness is “the silence submission of the soul to the providence of God concerning us.” (Matthew Henry)

This is the ground of discipleship. It is that we bring people to the bread of the presence. In their encounter with us, they encounter the Lord Christ. Walking alongside others to bring them up in the Lord is the fight for fellowship — not mainly fellowship with one another but mutual fellowship with God. Whose presence is most prominent? There can be no nurturing of the faith of other Christians if the presence of the Lord is not more weighty and real than the presence of one another.

When we take on the task of making disciples of Jesus, we become the occasion for a fork in the road in the lives of others…. We carry Christ within everywhere we go.

God wants us to live by every word that comes from his mouth, which is different from merely knowing all the words. He wants us to live by them — that means to receive them, to trust them, to bank everything on them, to count them more precious than our own thoughts, and to obey them with every fiber of our being.

God’s words are not vain; they are not empty; they are not false. They are true from the tiniest detail of your everyday minutiae to the biggest events in history. They shape and fashion; they cause and create.

God’s word is a place for receiving.

Better to have God’s word be a daily, regular meal than to ping-pong from feast to famine as you are beholden to whatever is (or isn’t) offered in formal study or spoon-fed to you by the famous.

Rather than try to master each book of the Bible or conquer more and more Bible studies, we must remember that we don’t get hold of the Bible; it takes hold of us. It’s important to know and objectively understand what each book of the Bible says, but the reason we want to know it is so that we would be molded by it. Those who are not digesting God’s word, who are not truly taking it in to the innermost parts for transformation, are often more concerned with mastering the text than with being masters by it. Come back to your first love. Remember that Jesus is Lord and that there is great happiness in obeying his word.

Maturity in the Christian life is greater and greater childlikeness.

The more we can forget ourselves and our overbearing manners and simply receive the bread of life with the joy and delight of a child, the more honor God gets. When we are satisfied by his bread, that is, his Son, he is honored and glorified.

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