Shell set environment variables for command

I want to run a program in Terminal and set its environment variables. According to my research one can do this using: VARIABLE="value" VARIABLE2="value2" run_program Now I'd like to set a variety of variables using a configuration file. Indeed, I could inject variables into the active shell using: . program_variables.config I then can use echo $VARIABLE in the terminal. Anyway, when I now run . program_variables.config run_program I cannot access the variables within the program. I also tried separating the two parts with ; and &&. After thinking about what's happening there I had the following ideas: cat program_variables.config | xargs run_program cat program_variables.config | tr -d '\n' run_program and a few more. I didn't write the called program myself so I cannot change the behavior how variables are read. Any ideas how I output the file as if I would have written its content in the shell myself?