“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
- Matthew 6: 25-34
Being anxious and overwhelmed by worry sucks. Sometimes the bills stack up, the refrigerator gets more and more empty and we spend our entire commute praying the fumes in the tank last long enough to get us where we're going and not to be stranded on the road. And that is here in the United States where eating rice and beans instead of fast food and steaks or walking a mile in the sun after running out of gas or living in a homeless shelter with a roof and three meals a day is seen as suffering. Never mind that there are Christians, full of faith, who love Jesus and are loved by Jesus, in areas of the world that will die today at the hands of people who hate them because of their fate, who will die today because of exposure to the physical elements of the world, and yes, who will die today because they do not have enough water or food to survive.
Yes, there are Christians who have and who will die because their physical, earthly needs have not been met. Contrary to popular "christianity," there are no promises in the Bible that our physical needs will be always and every time provided for, and your faith doesn't change the equation there either. There is no promise that there will be jobs, shelter, food, water, that the bills will be paid or anything else that is this realm only. In fact, unless the Lord comes back first, every one of us will reach a point where the very basic need of another breath of air and a heartbeat will go unmet.
Well sheesh, aren't I just a ray of sunshine this morning? This doesn't fit in with the prosperity gospel well does it? Now, if what is written above is true, how is that supposed to make me not worry? I'm more anxious than I was before! I was fighting for the faith to trust God to bring me the job, to keep the lights on, to remove the threat, to....... I wasn't doing a very good job, but I was trying to hold on and trust that the miracle would come and everything would be OK, that everything is fine, even though it doesn't feel that way. Now how am I supposed to trust God?
Well, I get it. That feeling might be fear and doubt ruling us, but it could also be an innate understanding that when we are holding onto faith for earthly needs we are trusting for the wrong things. There are things that God didn't promise. We are to ask God for our daily bread, but there's no promise that we get it. And yet, if we take another look at the passage about worry from Matthew and see what Jesus is saying it just might help with the anxiety. I got asked yesterday how I can be so optimistic, and I replied that I am not.
I'm not at all. I do trust God, mostly, and I do believe that there will be food on the table, lights in the house, gas in the car, and yes, even a job I can't see yet. But it's not because I am believing for those things for the sake of those things. What is Jesus saying here?
Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
That's the promise. When we seek Him we will find Him. When we go after the purpose and plan of God, it will be brought about. If I place relationship and the purpose of God as my first priority I can trust God to bring me to a place where I know Him more and more, where His purpose is more and more fulfilled in my life. I can also rest assured that every need, spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, and other, that arises will be met for that purpose. If my being miraculously healed, or miraculously pardoned or miraculously provided a job, food, drink, clothes, etc. will bring Him more glory, help further His purpose in my life and the lives of others, bring me into deeper relationship with Him and help me to bring others into deeper relationship with Him, then those miracles will occur.
But if those deeper relationships and furthering purposes will be brought about through my starving to death and not getting a single one of those miracles then the need that will be met is the need for me to be able to see that He is with me, that He cares and loves me, even when the healing doesn't come. There are Christians in heaven today who were saved nearly 2000 years ago after witnessing the peace and joy with which some Christians stood and faced the lions that were about to rip them apart. We don't like to think about that. We like to think about the witness for God's glory we can be and have when everything goes our way and looks and feels wonderful. We like to think about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego dancing in the fire with Jesus without being burned more than God's greatest glory and triumph coming as Jesus hung between heaven and earth, feeling forsaken, suffering and not one of the needs outside of what was needed to help Him fulfill the Father's purpose of making a way for me and you to have relationship with Him being met. In fact, every need Jesus had outside of that purpose was emphatically and dramatically denied.
Here is what we are promised. We are promised a life worth living. We are promised a life so much worth living that it will cause others to want it, even if what they are seeing is us ripped apart by lions. We are promised that if God needs us here doing something for Him that not even death can get in the way. If He needs us fed, no famine can empty our bellies. No prison, no bondage can't be broken. Nothing can separate us from Daddy. And most of all we are promised that He will be there with us and for us in every situation and that to starve to death with Jesus is a better and more fulfilling and satisfying situation than to eat like a king in opulence and comfort and without a care in this world without Him. We can trust God to make that true for us and in our lives.
Whether or not the money shows up before the lights go off depends. Sometimes it happens. It does. I have seen the material needs on this earth met over and over again in miraculous ways. But it's not about that. It's about the eternal. We get mixed up and think if we seek God first, His purpose and kingdom, that these things of food, clothes and Cadillacs will be given to us. But that is not what it says and that just makes seeking the things of God first a round about way of seeking the material first. We can't trust God to honor chasing the material need, but we can trust Him with the eternal and spiritual needs. And yes, sometimes, more times than not actually, that includes keeping us alive and meeting our physical needs. But let us chase Him, His purpose and our closeness to Him no matter what may come rather than the things of this world. If He really becomes our first and greatest treasure to seek, then we can trust and rest assured that the need will always be met.
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