jesus says dont worry about what you are to eat

Is there a sin prissy, middle-class Christians commit more than than the sin of worry?

You wake upward x minutes afterward than y'all had hoped and anxiety already starts to creep in: what if I'thou late? What virtually traffic? What's the weather condition similar? Yous pass by the mirror and worry that your face up has more wrinkles than it used to. You rush downstairs and because you are in a hurry yous let the kids swallow any they want, and so then you showtime to worry if sugar really does cause cancer. As you get the kids ready you realize i of your boys didn't do his homework-over again. You lot worry if he'south always going to get his head screwed on directly, and as you driblet the kids off y'all worry that they may fall in with the wrong crowd or fall off the monkey bars.

One time yous become home y'all pull up Facebook simply to unwind. At that place y'all read virtually how crawly everyone else'south kids are and all the amazing cupcakes your friends make and you worry that you might be a failure as a mom. Later in the morning yous feel that pain in your human knee again. You worry about having to become knee replacement surgery and whether your insurance volition encompass that and how y'all'll pay for information technology and who will take intendance of the kids if you are laid up for a month. Then you worry that maybe the hurting is something worse, so you cheque all the medical web sites and realize you lot probably have a rare example of whooping cough that's spread to your appendages.

Hours later when the kids are in bed you plough on the television to forget about the day. Equally yous flip through the channels and get caught upward on the news you start to worry near the economy and the polar vortex and the ascension in crime in your city. You worry about the racial divisions in this country and how you'll talk to your friend who run across things a little differently and maybe you lot worry whether the police force would treat you fairly or you worry about the safety of your brother who is a constabulary officeholder. Then you plough off the Idiot box and talk to your hubby and worry about his coughing that doesn't seem to become better and worry the layoffs they're having at piece of work. And finally equally you lay down for the night you lot feel a tremendous sense of anxiety and you lot don't even know why. For reasons you tin can't fifty-fifty understand, you offset worrying about life and kids and your parents and your church and your health and flying and driving and sleeping and eating and a general fear that the days alee could be actually bad.

Can you lot relate?

Jesus can help.

Worry may be the nigh common sin among your "regular" folks in the church. Now, you may recollect that'due south not very encouraging. "Corking, I worry most everything. And now on top of my worrying I am going to feel bad nigh worrying and I am going to worry about that." Simply be encouraged: If worry is just a part of your personality or part of being a mom (or a student or a businessman or whatever), God may not practise anything to help you. But if worry is a sin, then God can forgive you lot for information technology and aid you overcome it.

Matthew 6:25-34 is one of the Bible's great passages on worry. Three times Jesus says "do not be anxious" (25, 31, 34). Only he doesn't stop there. Jesus is interested in more than handing down commands. He wants to get at our hearts. And then he gives 7 reasons why we should not be anxious.

Reason #i: Life is besides important (Matt. 6:25). We need to become our priorities straight. Does it actually matter that y'all take the expert things in life; fancy food, fancy drinks, fancy apparel. Are you living your whole life for a little tag on the back of your pants or the inside of your shirt that makes you experience absurd? Are you going to wait back on your life and wish you had been more than fastidious about your article of clothing choices? Isn't life nearly more than than only a clump of cells trying to get sustenance, trying to feel good, trying to look good.

We alive in an age where people freak out about food. While most people in the history of the earth have worried most whether they will get anything to consume, we worry about the kind of life the chicken lived before we ate information technology. I'one thousand non proverb nosotros shouldn't be concerned with how animals are treated. Simply let'due south remember that life is more than food and the body is more than than clothing.

Reason #2: Yous are too important (Matt. half-dozen:26). We not only insult God when we worry about nutrient and dress and money, we insult ourselves. Worry says to the globe, "I'm not valuable." Anxiety is an barb to the kindness of God and the worth of men and women fabricated in his image. Permit the birds and squirrels exist your preachers. God'south feeding them. When you see them peering at you through the window, they're saying, "What are you looking at? Trust God." When yous hear the birds sing, they are singing a song to remind y'all of God's provision. God takes care of lilliputian animals; he'll take care of y'all.

Reason #iii: It doesn't do any good (Matt. six:27). Accept you always looked back on the difficult times in life and thought, "I don't know how I would have made it through that if I hadn't worried?" Nobody reflects on the past and concludes, "Coin sure was tight, but worry actually pulled me through." "Junior High was difficult. I but wish I could have worried more." "The diagnosis was frightening, but then I got all my friends to worry with me."

If we all took a few seconds correct now and worried almost making car payments, paying off the mortgage, beingness without insurance, we're wouldn't live one 2nd longer. I oasis't checked this with the doctors I know, merely I don't call up they ever stand up at the bedside and say, "Well, ma'am, it doesn't look proficient. all nosotros can do at this bespeak is worry."

Human being knows non his time. Information technology is not for united states of america to direct our steps (Jer. x:23). All our days have been written in God's volume earlier whatsoever of them come to laissez passer (Psalm 139:16). You and I demand to admit we are powerless over some things. I am powerless to do all sorts of things. I can't make someone believe the gospel. I can't raise the expressionless. I tin can't sit down at the crib all night making sure the baby is breathing. And I certainly can't live one more nanosecond than I am supposed to alive.  No ane has e'er lived an hour longer because they worried about when they were going to die.

Reason #4: God cares virtually y'all (Matt. half-dozen:28-thirty). God makes the wild flowers grow. Why? Because he wants to. Because they're pretty. Because he's artistic. Considering he likes beauty. Because he wants people to relish them. Considering he cares nigh flowers. And he even cares about grass. The grass is going to die. Your lawn volition exist brown. Information technology will be cold, frozen, expressionless–probably is already. But in a few months, it will all come back. And you won't accept anything to do with it. Maybe you'll plant some more than seed. Maybe yous'll get a lawn care specialist out to help make things super slap-up. Merely fifty-fifty if you exercise cipher, the grass will come back. Because God is God and he likes green grass.

Do y'all come across what Jesus calls worriers? He calls united states of america "little faiths." Our worry is an insult to God's character. When we worry nosotros are not assertive the truth about God. We are doubting that he sees, that he knows, that he cares, that he is more than able. Religion is more than a vague notion that Jesus existed and we are going to heaven if we ask him into our hearts. Faith is a applied way of looking at the world. Biblical faith extends to all of life, not merely to the conservancy of our souls. When we worry, nosotros are telling God, "I don't trust yous to run my life. I don't recall you're really in control. I had better worry most these things. I need to do everything to take care of myself, because I'm not sure you will." But think about it: God takes care of wild animals. He takes care of wild flowers. He even takes intendance of grass. Why wouldn't he accept care of you?

Reason #5: Pagans worry (Matt. 6:30-32a).  Some of us worry so much, we might as well be atheists. We are living like God doesn't really exist. That's what pagans practise.

A heathen doesn't have to be somebody who worships idols and sacrifices frogs. A infidel is somebody who thinks life is almost what y'all volition eat, what you will beverage, what you will wear. Pagans call up that life consists in the abundance of one's possessions. Pagans spend their money and hoard their money like there was no God in the universe watching over them or watching out for them.

Let me break correct hither because some of you are asking the question the rest of us are afraid to speak: "But what if God doesn't take intendance of me?" What about Christians starving to decease? What about Christian'southward being driven from their homes? What about the thousands of expert Christians who will die this year from cancer or machine accidents or cardiac arrest? Doesn't God promise to take care of them too?

Those are fair questions–and questions that wouldn't surprise Jesus or any of the writers of the Bible. Revelation speaks of a set number of martyrs. Paul told the Romans that even in hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword, and slaughter they would be more than conquerors. Jesus told his disciples, "You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to decease. All men will hate you lot because of me. But not a hair of your caput will perish. By standing firm yous will gain life" (Luke 21:16-nineteen). Jesus never told his disciples that being a Christian was a become out of suffering free card.

So tin we count on God or non?

Starting time, nosotros demand to remember the context. Jesus is talking about people serving mammon instead of God (Matt. 6:24). In Luke'south account in Luke 12, Jesus is talking near rich fools building bigger barns and worry-worts storing up treasures on earth. His point here is that nosotros won't die on account of over-generosity. That's the first to note.

Merely that's only function of the respond. I remember the rest of the reply is plant in verse 32: "Your heavenly Father knows that y'all demand them." What is "them?" Verses xxx and 31 suggest the "them" is food and potable. And what do we need these things for? For life. God knows what we demand to go on on living. . . . so long every bit he wants united states of america to live. God knows that nosotros need clothes, nutrient, and drinkable to live and he will give us all the clothes, food, and drink to live until he wants united states to die.

This is based on a profound theological truth: God is not stupid. God sees us. He knows we are hither. He hasn't gone out for lunch. He isn't taking a nap. He'due south not similar a parent who loses a child in some other part of the grocery shop. He is for yous, not against y'all. Jesus doesn't hope all your wildest dreams will come truthful, merely he does hope that God will give yous what you need to glorify him and to alive out all the days he has written in his book.

That may sound sort of dumb, but it is really profound. There is more to life, Jesus is proverb, than living. We are going to die. So don't make it your goal in life to simply stay live; you'll fail at that. Nosotros are here to do more than avert death. "God volition give you all the nutrient and drinkable and clothes you demand to live," Jesus says. "And when I want you lot to stop living, you'll terminate living. I'm in control. Yous were put here for a reason bigger than to simply live." Exist consumed, 5. 31 says, with the kingdom. Be consumed with seeing God'due south reign and dominion over your life, and family, and church, and the lost peoples of the world. You're not a pagan later on all.

Reason #6: The kingdom matters more (Matt. 6:33). Jesus wants to set the worry wort free. When we have prissy cars, boats, tractors, and houses, nosotros worry near them. What if an blow happens, or lightning strikes, or a thief breaks in? Jesus says "How about a better treasure? Why not lose yourself for the things that last?" Equally Randy Alcorn puts it, "You lot can't take the money with you, but you tin send it ahead."

Don't go rid of all pursuits: replace your heathen pursuit with a pious pursuits. Exist consumed with the kingdom. Be consumed with seeing God's reign and rule over your life, your family, and your church. Spend yourself for the lost people's of the world. Brand information technology your priority to innovate more people to the King, get more people in the kingdom, railroad train people to live under the potency of this King and his kingdom.

Jesus may non make your life easy. Only he will brand your life blithesome. He wants to gear up u.s. free from pursuing all the dead ends we've been driving down. If you lot live for money, you have reason to be anxious. If the almost important thing in your life is your career, that tin get bad. If your health or your looks or your kids are your real passions, you may be colossally disappointed. You take reason to fret. But if you lot seek start the kingdom, yous tin't lose.

Reason #7: Tomorrow will be anxious for itself (34). Today'southward grace is for today's trials. And when tomorrow's trials come, God will have new grace waiting for you at that place.

Anxiety is living out the time to come before it gets hither. "The steadfast dear of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him" (Lam. 3:22-24).

What will happen tomorrow?

I tin can give you a thou things we don't know–medical reports, accidents, jobs, tests, dates, babies, criticisms, hard conversations, fifty-fifty decease. Nosotros don't know what will happen tomorrow. But here is one thing you and I can count on: there volition exist new mercies from the Lord when we go in that location.

How can I cease worrying? Look to Jesus. But likewise look at Jesus. He sees. He knows. He cares. He is a sympathetic high priest. And he volition never leave you nor forsake you.

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Source: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/the-cure-for-worry/

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