Don’t Worry About It

“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.  Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?  Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.  Are ye not much better than they?”  Matthew 6:25-26

The Bible commentator, Matthew Henry, wrote, “There is scarcely any one sin against which our Lord Jesus more largely and earnestly warns His disciples, or against which He arms them with more variety of arguments, than the sin of disquieting, distracting, distrustful cares about the things of this life, which are a bad sign that both the treasure and the heart are ‘on the earth’; and therefore He thus largely insists upon it.”  The above verses were part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus had just previously stated that a man “cannot serve two masters”.  He was emphasizing the fact that God must take precedence over all others.  He must be first in our lives.  It is for this reason that Jesus urges us to “take no thought for our lives”.  Jesus is not saying to not think about other things like our families and daily responsibilities, but what He is saying is that we should not burden ourselves with worry and concern over the things that God has promised to provide to His children.  To worry and fret over what one eats and drinks and over the clothes one wears shows a distrust of God and His ability to provide.

I imagine it must be frustrating for Jesus when we worry and agonize over things of which He has already promised to provide.  Part of our distrust comes from depending on other people to fulfill promises they made to us, and then they do not follow through, even if it was unintentional.  Sometimes we let strained relationships with others influence our relationship to the Lord rather than allowing our relationship to Him affect our dealings with others.  It all comes back to the matter of putting Him first.  Oswald Chambers wrote, “…the great concern of the life is not God, but how we are going to fit ourselves to live.  Jesus Christ says, Reverse the order, get rightly related to Me first, see that you maintain that as the great care of your life, and never put the concentration of your care on the other things.  It is a severe discipline to allow the Holy Spirit to bring us into harmony with the teaching of Jesus in these verses.”

There is an old saying that is used to illustrate how people should regard food:  “Eat to live, don’t live to eat”.  Unfortunately, too many folks in the U.S. and other developed countries have not adhered to this principle.  People overeat for a variety of reasons: as “comfort food”, because of anxiety, or because food tastes so good, it is difficult to have self-discipline.  For some folks, food is just about the only enjoyable thing left in their lives.  However, overindulging in food can lead to health problems such as high blood pressure, cancer, and diabetes.  There is nothing wrong with enjoying what we eat.  God gave us so many choices and flavors, but we need to have self-control and keep food in its proper relationship as we journey through life.  Does God have control or does food have control?  Of course there are those who have what is now termed as “food insecurity”, that is, they are having to go without food because of job loss and other reasons.  God will always provide for those who trust in Him.  Jesus desires us to take our emphasis off the earthly matters and look to Him and His kingdom.  Paul said in Romans 14:17 that “…the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”

Jesus then used the birds of nature to illustrate God’s promise to care for His own.  Man can learn a lesson from the smallest of creatures that God has made.  Even Job recognized the value of paying attention to nature, reaping from it the lessons of life.  He stated, in response to his so-called friends as they rebuked him for his complaints about his afflictions, “But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee: and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee” (Job 12:7-8).  Since God is the Creator of nature, it only stands to reason that He gave us nature to teach us.  Everything God made has a purpose.  He made man a little lower than the angels and gave man dominion over His creation, including the animals and plants (Hebrews 2:7; Genesis 1:26).  Therefore, as the angels, the higher beings, and the animals and plants, the lowest beings, are both subject to and dependent upon God, why would man consider himself free from God and His laws.  If man views himself as independent and self-sufficient, the he has no recourse except to worry and fret over his life and the sustenance of it.  Jesus said that if a little sparrow falls to the ground, God takes notice of it (Matthew 10:29).

As much as God cares for the birds and animals that He created, He cares infinitely more for His human creation.  The birds don’t wring their little birdy feet and fret over where they will find their next worm.  They just do what God made them to do:  seek and find what God provides.  If He cares for them with such compassion, does He not also care and provide for us even more so?