WORDS FOR LIFE - Word for Today
August 26, 2018
Matthew 6:34 (p. 679)
Introduction:
So I don’t believe in coincidences but I believe wholeheartedly in God-incidences! I’d been thinking about this message from Matthew 6:34 for a little while…and I got Chinese food for lunch…After I was through, I opened the cookie (my dog Buck loves them) and this is what I read…
SHOW PICTURE OF FORTUNE
“All you have is today - there is no such thing as yesterday or tomorrow.”
I’m not gonna live my life on the advice of a fortune cookie…or buy a lotto ticket to use the numbers on the other side, but I thought it was pretty cool to receive this on the same day I’d started to pray and think about Matthew 6:34 being Words for Our Life.
As you’ve already heard…this is what Jesus says, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of it’s own.”
I find it absolutely amazing when I get a fortune cookie which is in full agreement with Jesus!
The context of this teaching by Jesus is “Do not worry about your life…Don’t stress out about stuff.”
I remember when I was 34 and had my first heart attack…someone gave me this book by the author Richard Carlson, PHD…It was called, “Don’t sweat the small stuff…and it’s all small stuff.” It’s subtitle said, “Simple ways to keep the little things from taking over your life.”
And it was a really good book with some single insightful ways to deal with stress and worry.
It opened up with this statement:
“One of the mistakes many of us make is that we feel sorry for ourselves, or for others, thinking that life should be fair, or that someday it will be. It’s not and it won’t. When we make this mistake we tend to spend a lot of time wallowing and/or complaining about what’s wrong with life. “It’s not fair,” we complain, not realizing that, perhaps, it was never intended to be.”
“We live our lives as if they were one big emergency! We often rush around looking busy, trying to solve problems, but in reality, we are often compounding them.”
Our disappointment comes about in essentially two ways. When we’re experiencing pleasure we want it to last forever. It never does. Or when we’re experiencing pain, we want it to go away - now. It usually doesn’t. Unhappiness is the result of struggling against the natural flow of experience.”
Here’s the truth…stress and worry are two very real struggle for most of us, even very committed Christians…worry involves our thoughts and those thoughts become the catalysts that affect our emotions…stress.
All of us deal with stress on a daily level…whether it’s timelines for our job, trouble with our kids or grandkids, illness or a million other things that can affect our thoughts and emotions…but here’s a very real truth:
Before a violin can produce beautiful music, stress must be applied to the strings…but if you pull them too tightly they’ll snap.
Jesus gives us some amazing words for a life with the right balance…between the proper tension to play beautiful music for God’s glory or snapping.
His first word of instruction is…
I. TRUST GOD FOR TODAY
You can almost see Jesus smiling as He says, “Doesn’t today have enough trouble without borrowing tomorrow’s.”
[There was a woman who was terrified her home would be burglarized…Every single night she struggled with insomnia and worry. Even noise caused her to awaken her husband so he could check it out.
One night her husband heard a noise and went downstairs to surprise a burglar…the husband looks at the guy and says, “You’ve got to come upstairs and meet my wife. She’s been expecting you for 10 years.”
Corrie Ten Boom says, “Worry does not empty tomorrow of it’s sorrow, but it empties today of our strength.”
Worry is the tension Satan uses to tighten the strings of our life well past the healthy point.
In these 10 verses in Matthew 6…verses 25-34 Jesus uses the word “worry” 6 times…It’s the Greek word “Meteorizoma.”
It’s where we get the word for meteor…shooting stars.
Ancient astronomers observed that meteors weren’t located in outer space or in the earth’s inner atmosphere…weird huh? Why would Jesus choose a word like this? It literally means… “Caught in between…traveling as objects of midair.”
Meteorizoma figuratively describes what “worry” does to us. It leaves us hanging in midair…caught in the middle, suspended in space…instead of going somewhere…just wasting energy…until we crash into something…or someone.
What am I gonna eat? What am I gonna drink? What am I gonna wear? What am I going to do to fix this problem? How am I gonna pay that bill? How am I gonna fix this problem right now?!!
And instead of praying, trusting, and waiting “We become the fraternity of the fruitful, the army of the anxious, the brotherhood of the bothered and sisterhood of the stressed.”
Listen I get it…when all Hell has broken out around you it’s hard to remember that Heaven is pulling for you!
We walk a tightrope between legitimate concern and sinful worry…between pleasing the Good Shepherd and pleasing the sheep.
Jesus makes it very clear that as the world runs after all these things…our focus cannot be on “how can I fix this!!!” It must be on “who can guide me through this!”
Do I trust God to be with me today? Or do I spend my energy “caught in midair” worrying about tomorrow?
One of the most convicting stories in the New Testament, or at least for me, is found in Luke 10…It’s right after Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan to a Pharisee who’s trying to trip Him up:
LUKE 10:38-41 (p. 725)
Oh man I understand Martha’s stress…I understand the pulled tight strings of getting stuff done while others sit on their butt…but I also understand a more important truth…Jesus is here! He wants a relationship with me more than my service…or before my service. I need Him more…not less when things need to get done…If I don’t realize this and seek Him, it makes me mad at my brother and sister and that’s super unhealthy.
By the way…I think scripturally Jesus also expected Mary to get up and help after her time with Him.
No wonder Jesus said, “Seek my Kingdom first, seek righteousness first…and then God will take care of all those things we worry about.”
Let me end today with some practical advice from God’s Word…
II. SOME SPIRITUAL WEAPONS TO FIGHT THE BATTLE WITH WORRY
First of all “Pray through your planning.”
[When Kari comes to me with a problem the very first thing I do is to start planning on how to fix it…It doesn’t matter if it’s the AC unit at our house of one of our grandkids being bullied at school…But I’ve learned she doesn’t want me to instantly start spouting off ideas…she wants to talk to me first…have some connectivity with me and also be able to get rid of some of her concerns.
When Jesus says, “Pagans (or unbelievers) run after all these things and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.” (v. 32)
Unbelievers try to get things with their own energy and power…They try to fix things on their own…Children of God have a Father that knows what His children need…we’re to get right with Him first…talk to Him, listen to His council, share our stress…cast our anxieties on Him…and trust Him…we believe He can give wisdom when we lack it, peace when we are in the storm, understanding and patience to wait…and cover it all with grace.
This doesn’t mean we don’t plan…it just means we pray before, during, and after the plan.
2. “Guard your joy.”
Archibald Hart said, “Worry and Joy cannot co-exist. Worry extinguishes the fire of joy.”
Jesus said, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life.”
Worry and stress aren’t going to add any hours to our lives, but they’ll take a whole bunch away from them.
Worry according to Henry Ward Beecher is “rust on the blade.” Worry turns small problems into irrational fears…and Satan is the god of fear…like the person in Proverbs 28:1 “who runs when no one is chasing them.”
God’s Word says, “The joy of the Lord is our strength.” (Neh. 8:10)
Sorrow isn’t worry…grief isn’t worry…but worry causes weariness of the soul…and if “joy” in the Lord is our strength…Satan will continually make us focus on the negative and stressful things instead of fixing our eyes on Jesus, His grace, His forgiveness, His love, and His provision in the past.
Let me end with one final challenge.
3. Don’t let worldly people establish your priorities.
While we are people of the Kingdom of God…we are surrounded by the kingdom of the world.
This world chases sports and leisure better than most believers seek first God’s Kingdom and His righteousness. And many times believers get caught in the stampede. They worry…they feel guilty…the distance away from righteousness gets wider and they worry…stress. They know it’s wrong, but don’t know how to break free.
Start today…lead your family…seek God…make His righteousness your first priority…Understand there will never be joy and peace for the child of God outside His will.
