by Donna L. Watkins
Read these words afresh from Matthew 6 and allow them to impart their power into your soul and spirit:
" No man can serve two masters:
for either he will hate the one, and love the other;
or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.
Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
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?
Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
And why take ye thought for raiment?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field,
which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven,
shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
Therefore take no thought, saying,
What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
....for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness;
and all these things shall be added unto you."
Is this for real? How do we walk through life not thinking of our needs? The media bombards us with more and more that we need to have. People around us tell us we need to get things. We work to get a check so we can get food and clothes and stuff. How do we get our continual focus off of daily activities and the worries of life?
God offers a way out! Matthew 6:33 is the recipe: "But seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be adde unto you."
If I change my focus off of daily frustrations and trying to meet my own needs, and focus on God, seek His face and seek to know Him .... then all of these "things" will be added unto me.
Seems God could do a better job of providing things than I can anyway, but yet we take control of our own lives and set our list in order and move forward to check it off. In control of our own lives ... but yet we've given our lives to God and He has promised in many ways to provide for us.
He's asked us to trust Him and He will take care of us.
Power is an evil thing. We take power over our lives when we are given the example of powerlesssness by God and Jesus. God came to earth as a powerless baby -- Jesus went to the Cross as a powerless man. Obedience brought the power of God to Earth and through His power much is accomplished - not by our power or control.
Oswald Chambers is a favorite of mine and he has a way of making you look at a Scripture in a whole new light. From "My Utmost for His Highest" by Oswald Chambers:
Immediately we look at these words of Jesus, we find them the most revolutionary statement human ears ever listened to. "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God."
We argue in exactly the opposite way - "But I must live; I must make so much money; I must be clothed; I must be fed." The great concern of our licws is not the Kingdom of God, but how we are to fit ourselves to live. Jesus reverses the order: Get rightly related to God first, maintain that as the great care of your life, and never put the concern of your care on the other things.
" Take no thought for your life....." Our Lord points ou the utter unreasonableness from His standpoint of being so anxious over the means of living.
Jesus is not saying that the man who takes thought for nothing is blessed - that man is a fool. Jesus taught that a disciple has to make his relationship to God the dominating concentration of his life, and to be carefully careless about everything else in comparison to that, Jesus is saying -" Don't make the ruling factor of your life what you shall eat and what you shall drink, but be concentrated absolutely on God."
Some people are careless over what they eat and drink, and they suffer for it; they are careless about what they wear, and they look as they have no business to look; they are careless about their earthly affairs, and God holds them responsible.
Jesus is saying that the great care of the life is to put the relationship to God first, and everything else second.
It is one of the severest disciplines of the Christian life to allow the Holy spirit to bring us into harmony with the teaching of Jesus in these verses.
Right now, consider becoming a lily of the field. Toil not, spin not. It's so peaceful not to spin - not to have your mind swirling with thoughts and things to do and worries about the future and past.
God will take care of it if we take our hands and mind out of it and rest in Him and focus on who He is and who we are in Him. That's where the true power is.
Be a lily!
I'll see you in the field :-)
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