Worry - Part 6
Today and Tomorrow
Matthew 6v34
18th August 2012
We saw last week that as Jesus was coming to the end of His teaching on worry in Matthew 6v25-34, He said:
Matthew 6v33
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
Following on from those words, He concluded by saying:
Matthew 6v34
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble
of its own.
How much time and energy do we waste worrying about the future? Thinking about what might happen?
We can't live in the past. We can't live in the future. We can only live in the present. "One day at a time" has become a bit of a cliche (as well as a song title) but it remains very good advice. Today has its problems and it its opportunities. And if we don't focus on today, we won't handle them well.
To the degree that we believe verse 33, we will live out verse 34. To the degree that we actually believe that we can engage 100% in serving God and seeking to live holy lives, confident that God will provide for the future, we will stop wasting our time and energy worrying, and start living.
God is all-powerful, isn't He? And God loves us, doesn't He? Will we trust Him? Every Christian knows (doctrinally) that we can trust God for the future. But do we?
Psalm 139v16b
All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
Psalm 23v6
Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
for ever.
We have a choice: we can spend our time and energy seeking to protect and enhance our own well-being, or we can dedicate our lives to His kingdom and His righteousness, and trust Him to care for us. It's a simple choice but it's so hard to live out a consistent response. We vacillate between living for God and living for ourselves, between trusting God and trusting our own efforts and cleverness. That's strange, when you think about it. Is God more powerful and more clever than me? Oh yes, a billion times more! So why don't I consistently trust Him to lead me forward?
Some Christians have never really given God the credit for being in control of the future. They continue to try to work out their own futures, based on their own limited wisdom and strength. Others trust God, more or less, most of the time, but have bad days.
If you're like me, you've got the doctrine of the omnipotence, omniscience and love of God, you're OK with trusting God in theory, and you're OK with trusting God while everything's going well, and you're even OK with trusting God some time after you've adjusted to something going "wrong". But you hit a kind of internal panic button immediately when something goes "wrong". (The question of whether, in the providence of God, anything really goes wrong for a Christian must wait for another time. The short answer is "no" but sometimes it feels like "yes").
At that moment, we can forget two obvious rhetorical questions, "Has God suddenly lost control of the universe?" and "Has God stopped loving me?" (the answer to both is, of course, "No") and start to worry. And we can lose touch with God.
The Good News of the Kingdom of God is that we are invited to know God's forgiveness for our sin and to become His followers. Worrying causes us to stop following God and revert to living as we did before we were born again - trusting in our own resources and trying to fix our own problems. When we notice this happening:
Philippians 3v6-7
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your
requests to God.
And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ
Jesus.
May God renew in us the faith to trust Him, and seek His leadership, and follow Him, even on the bad days.