Trusting God For Today

Trusting God For Today

 I was thinking recently about how so many of us, including me, often keep running head of today into tomorrow. The result is that, even though the only time we are living in is today, we do not fully live today.

 In Matthew 6:34 Jesus said “do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Jesus was telling us to live today and deal with today’s problems and to not worry about what might happen tomorrow. This came at the end of a larger talk in which he was telling us not to worry.

 Let me quote a few other things he said in that talk.

 “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 important than food and the body more important than clothes? 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? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” Matthew 6:25-27.

“So do not worry saying ‘what shall we eat?’ or ‘what shall we drink?’ or ‘what shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things and your heavenly Father knows that you need them; but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.” Matthew 6:31-33.

Jesus was saying a number of things. First of all he was saying that there is evil in the present moment, and that the evil that we face today is enough for us to face. We don’t need to borrow trouble from tomorrow —trouble that may well never come! Secondly Jesus is saying that God, whom he called our Father in heaven, is not only powerful but even more importantly, he loves us! We need to trust that a loving God will take care of us in the future! Thirdly we need to seek God as the most important thing in our lives. Jesus says that if we will see God first, not the things we worry about, God will add the other things we need to us!

The human mind is able, through worry, to move a “tomorrow” that exists only in our worry or in our imagination to today. Consequently, we have the problem, today, of having to deal with things which are not real and which may never happen, and we want God to help us! But God has commanded us not to worry and take no thought for tomorrow. When we worry, we disobey God‘s instructions, contained in Scripture, and we pollute today with the worries of our imagination and then we want God to help us!

He has already helped us through his word! “Don’t worry,” he says. If you have trouble doing that, ask his Spirit to help you and fill the place worry occupies by seeking him and his kingdom above all else.

Winfield Casey Jones is a retired pastor and can be reached at wrjones2002@gmail.com. This column first appeared in the Pearland and Friendswood Reporter news. 

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