I am grateful to be back this morning, after
some time away. I appreciate
Jordan and David leading worship last Sunday, and it was a bit adventurous
after Jordan being in the hospital most of last Saturday night with Lilly’s
injury. So allow me to begin by
thanking our church staff, who work so hard to minister to and lead this
congregation. Much of the work of a
church staff is not seen, it does not conform to regular and scheduled hours,
and it is often stressful and, at times, discouraging. Thank you for praying for us and
encouraging us, and please continue to do so.
When I have a Sunday away I look forward to
attending church. I enjoyed
sitting in the next to the last row in a church last week, and as I sat there a
lot of thoughts and questions entered my mind as I got to be an observer for a
change. A number of questions went
through my mind, among them these two questions – if I were sitting out in the
congregation every week, what would I
want to hear, and, perhaps more importantly, what would I need to hear?
Those questions got me to thinking quite a bit
about my upcoming messages. I have
not been preaching in a series for several months, which is unusual for
me. Instead, I have loosely
followed a theme – connections –
until I felt led to go in another direction. In recent weeks I was beginning to wonder why I had not yet
felt compelled to go in any particular direction, other than from week to
week. I finally felt that
prompting in recent days.
Beginning next week we will enter a four-week
series I have titled Your Life. The four messages will be –
Your Life Matters
Your Life Has A Purpose
Your Life Has A Future
Your Life Is A Gift
Now, to this morning’s message – Do Not Worry About Tomorrow. Um, yeah, right.
Today’s Scripture text is a familiar passage,
which I turn to every few years, and the verses lead to the final verse, verse
34, which is what I want to focus on this morning.
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry
about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will
wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?
26 Look at the birds of the air; they do
not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds
them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
27 Can any one of you by worrying add a
single hour to your life?
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See
how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.
29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in
all his splendor was dressed like one of these.
30 If that is how God clothes the grass of
the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he
not much more clothe you—you of little faith?
31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we
eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
32 For the pagans run after all these
things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.
33 But seek first his kingdom and his
righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow,
for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
The genesis for this message came from some
words of a friend of mine, who in recent months has said time and again that take no thought for the morrow (he likes
to use the King James Version) may be the most important of all the words of
Jesus. Each time I’ve heard my
friend make the statement about the importance of those words I’ve bristled a
bit, because I do such a lousy job of living out those words that I’d prefer to
ignore them. After months of hearing him make that claim I finally felt moved
to preach on those words because, for one reason, it requires me to work out in
greater detail what I think about them and how I apply – or should apply – them
to my own life. And, to respond to
my friend, I don’t know that I would list these words as the most important of
Jesus’ sayings, but I would put them in the top 10, and maybe top 5.
Now, I want you to notice something very
important about this passage, and I’ll give you a hint about what it is – it’s
in the title of this message. What
does Jesus tell us not to worry about?
Tomorrow. He does not say do not worry about today.
Have you ever noticed that?
I believe Jesus acknowledges, when he says to not worry about tomorrow, that there are many matters in
life that provide genuine cause for worry and anxiety. Jesus is not saying that we either should not or do not worry; he is
recognizing the reality of our worry about many matters in life, but tells us
that we should not put upon ourselves more worry that we need or can manage.
So, what I am not going to do is to offer a
three or four step plan that guarantees you will never again worry. That is patently unrealistic. Instead, I will speak more to what I
would call worry management, and I
will break down this verse into three categories to which I will speak – Attitude, Control, and Life View.
1.
Attitude.
Most everyone falls into one of three
categories when it comes to attitude – an optimist, a pessimist, or a
realist. A realist is someone who
lives in between an optimist and a pessimist. And in each of those categories there are subcategories. Under pessimist you can be a grouch, a
whiner, a complainer, or general irritant. Under optimist you can be unrealistic, naïve, or oblivious.
At the Salt & Light Festival two weeks ago,
after our band finished playing, a gentleman came to speak with me and gave me
this wristband that I have worn since then. It says Live Joyfully. I like that message, and I wear it to
remind me that I cannot always control my circumstances – or many things in
life, and we’ll talk about control in a moment – but I can control my attitude.
I believe this is one of the foundational
principles Jesus is speaking of in this passage – attitude. Don’t
be controlled by fear, don’t be controlled by anxiety, don’t allow your
circumstances to determine your attitude, he is saying. But how often do we do just that? How many times do we get up in the
morning, ready for the day, ready to take on the world, ready to conquer the
world, and the moment you step get in the car someone cuts you off and in just
a moment you go from a positive, uplifting attitude, to wanting to commit an
act of road rage? It doesn’t take
much to change our attitude, does it?
But Jesus is telling us that we must control our attitude. Attitude is one of the few things over
which we have control, which leads to our second point –
2.
Control.
I really love the Serenity Prayer. For years I had a medallion on my keychain that had the
prayer etched on it. It belonged
to my father and several years ago I passed it on to Nick. You know that prayer, I’m sure. Written
by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, sometime in the early 1930s, it says – God, grant me the serenity to accept the
things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know
the difference. Simple and to
the point, it offers us some important truths. It tells us, for one, that not everything is within our
control. In fact, we all
understand that a great deal of life is not under our control, and that is one
of the reasons why we experience so much worry and anxiety, isn’t it?
To some extent, every one of us is a control
freak. Do you agree? If you don’t agree, you’re most likely
a real control freak, because they
are usually in denial. In fact,
I’ll go off script here a bit, against my better judgment. I can be such a control freak that…do I
really want to say this? Well, now
that you’re wondering what I’m going to say I guess I should go ahead and
continue! I have to place the
towels in our linen closet a particular way. I have been very proud in recent days that I have not
rearranged the manner in which Tanya placed the towels in that closet. Don’t look in her direction, because I
haven’t even admitted this to her!
Are any of you that much of a control freak? Thank you to the few who are willing to cautiously raise
their hands – it’s good to know I’m not alone!
All of us want to control our surroundings, our
circumstances, our life events, and almost every other facet of life. And don’t feel there is anything wrong
with you for wanting to be in control because it is one of the most natural
states of being among humanity. But
here’s the problem – we aren’t able to control much of what happens to us in
life. We can control some things,
to a certain extent, such as our health and the date at which we retire. Somewhat. But we can’t control every aspect. We have no power over market downturns that wreck a
retirement plan or portfolio, we have no control over the downsizing or closing
of the company for which we work and the impact it has on our retirement
planning. We can work hard to care
for our health so that we can live as long and healthy as possible, but we
cannot control the distracted, texting driver coming our direction that looks
down and drifts into our lane of traffic or the unwelcome news that a doctor
shares about test results.
Jesus spoke to an audience of people who had
very little control over their lives.
They struggled mightily for their daily existence. Their life span was not very long. Almost half of children did not live to
10 years old. To make it to my age
would be quite an accomplishment. They
did not have time or resources to take vacations or to enjoy even a few
luxuries. They had no real
conveniences in life. No cell
phones, no internet, no satellite TV, and no 24-hour news channels. They had no
control over their political destiny, as Rome controlled everything. They did
not have the opportunity to elect their leaders. Okay, maybe they were better off in that respect. They were people who had little choice
but to endure what life brought to them, and what life brought to them was
hardship, struggle, and difficulty.
They had many reasons to be bitter, they had many reasons to be
discouraged, but in the words of Jesus they found hope. God was concerned, Jesus said, about
their daily needs, such as food and clothing. While many people believed their lives had little or no
meaning and that their lives mattered little, Jesus told them their lives did
matter and their lives had meaning.
We grow up with the idea that we are valuable and that are lives matter
and that we can accomplish great things.
Not the people in Jesus’ day.
They had little, if any, hope.
But Jesus gave them hope!
They did not have to be defeatist in their attitude and they did not
have to be pessimistic about their future because they had hope.
3.
Life View.
I am the king of worry. It would surprise me if anyone could
outdo me when it comes to worry.
Too often, I find myself thinking more about problems than possibilities
in life, which keeps me stuck in a short-term view of life.
If you can dream of and believe in a present
and a future that has meaning and purpose, you can take the longer view of
life. If you see no real future,
and certainly if you have no hope of anything after this life, it’s difficult,
if not impossible, to escape a defeatist view of life. If you think this is all there is, you are more likely to pursue a life of
self-indulgence and self-satisfaction.
You’ll live in the moment – rock
and roll every night and party every day, as the song goes. That should not be the mantra of our
lives! Neither should sayings such
as you only go around once in life so
grab all the gusto you can!
That leads to a shallow and self-indulgent life that is of little or no
benefit to anyone else. Faith
always, always, takes the long view of life, the eternal view.
So there you have it – worry management. Are
we going to worry about tomorrow?
Yes, we probably are! But
will we be trapped and controlled and ultimately defeated by that worry? No! Allow the power of God to free you from the prison of worry
and anxiety!
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