HCC Monthly Harvest Seed
Matthew 6:25-34 - “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? 28 “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; 29 and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
I love the opening verse do not worry about your life. What part? Any of it.
Health, finances, relationships, jobs, family and children and grandchildren. God cares about it all.
All of us deal with worry at different times throughout our life.
Worry is part of the arsenal of our enemy. It is designed to steal from us. Harm us. Wear us out. It is used to cause us to deal with things in our mind when we may never ever have to deal with them at all.
Worry is designed to control our thoughts and emotions. It is the dread that convinces us of things that aren’t real. It is designed to come across as fact and is the evidence of a deep fear that things won’t turn out well, that there will not be enough, and that the worst will happen.
It causes us to internally live the worst possible outcomes when God is calling us to trust Him for the best that He has for us. It causes us to experience trauma that most of the time never materializes. How many people suffer from PTSD because they entertained vain imaginations that never became a reality?
Worry can be impossible to turn off on our own. It can affect hours and days of our lives. It is a disruptive force. It will affect our sleep, our attentions span, and our creativity. Worry will affect our relationships. Putting us on edge, causing us to smother those that we love or preventing us from getting close to anyone.
It will rob you of your joy and your confidence. It will make you suspicious of people. Worry is at the root of many health problems. It is a thief.
The goal of worry is o cause us to distrust God, His word, His goodness and His faithfulness. One of the significant results of worry is a profound lack of peace.
Worry is just another word for fear.
Fear has many names, Worry and Anxiety are just two of them. I looked it up and Worry comes in so many flavors that it has 118 synonyms or other words that help to describe the way we express worry. Worry can range from simple concern to an overriding preoccupation that paralyzes your life.
We need to understand that worry is something that we learn to do. Because worry is something that we learn to do it is something that we can unlearn.
Worry is our response many times to life and the things that we can’t control when they don’t go our way. Worry is something we learn to do from experience. Someone once said that “Worry is really our personal irritation with God” because he didn’t do something when we thought he should do it and the way he would do it. This is why worry often leads to anger and frustration. Not just with people but with God.
Matthew 6:27 (AMP) - And who of you by worrying can add one hour to [the length of] his life?
Worry doesn’t add one hour to our day and can’t make us change our stature. As a matter of fact, What Jesus is saying is that worry doesn’t change what is. Worry is actually proven to make people look smaller and worry causes us to waste the precious time we have. Worry doesn’t lighten the load of life it actually increases the weight. This is why they call it being – “Weighted down with Worry”.
There are two quotes that I love about worry.
~ Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.
~ Worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but it gets you nowhere.
One of the things that this verse teaches us is that – Control is an illusion.
We don’t have control. To think that we do is to fool ourselves.
It takes a great deal of faith to live this life. God is in control! This is our hope!
One of the great truths of the Bible is that God invites us to exchange our fear and worry for His peace.
Philippians 4:6-7 - Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Fear is the opposite of peace. The opposite of chaos is calm.
John 14:27 - Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
Jesus is offering us HIS peace. This is a marvelous exchange.
He says – “Let not your heart be troubled.” This means that we allow either trouble or HIS peace into our life.
My prayer this month is that we will enter into a deeper understanding and reality of living in His Peace. May God bless you and your family this summer.
Remember that you are loved.
Pastor Marvin and Dawn