Jesus says in Matthew 6:34, "So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will
care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Now this can be a
comforting verse to read but it can also raise the question -- How do I put this in
practice? How do I apply this practically to my life and actually stop worry? And
worry can be such a joy-stealer. It can rob us of our peace and our energy and
our time. I want you to know something about me -- I don't have to know the future
in order to stop worrying about it, and it's not because I'm more intelligent,
it's not because I'm smarter or anything like that, it's simply because I know God
and God knows the future, and I trust Him. And if you've seen any of my other
videos you've probably seen my most popular video "Stop Worrying." Now I'm not
at all retracting the message of that video but based on some comments on the
video I think some people may have missed the point of the video.
It's my prayer for my videos not just that they would help people feel better,
though that's not a bad thing -- my main prayer for people watching these
videos is that they would be able to hear from God. So what was the point of
the stop worrying video? There's a moment in the video where I say, "If we're
worrying, then we've missed the one thing." That was the point, the one thing. And the
one thing that I talked about in the video is sitting at the feet of Jesus.
I'm talking about abiding in Christ, learning from His word, spending time in
His presence, and hearing from Him. So how do we apply this practically and
actually stop worrying? In the verse I just quoted in Matthew 6:34, Jesus tells
us don't worry, but what's cool is the verse directly before that -- Matthew 6:33.
He actually gives us the prerequisite for living a worry-free life and it's
simply this; "But seek first His kingdom and His
righteousness and all these things will be added to you." He's saying when you're
seeking first His kingdom by allowing God to be the navigator and ruler of
your life and when you're seeking first His righteousness, by fully relying on
the grace of God through faith, then you don't have to worry. Why? Because that is
when God personally takes responsibility for your future. Does that mean that God
is gonna start making everything go your way? Not necessarily. But one of the
amazing things about prioritizing your your relationship with Christ is that
God actually begins to adjust your desires so that the other things don't
even matter as much anymore. When we are making our relationship with
Jesus the most important thing in our lives,
temporary disappointments don't seem to faze us as much as they used to. Why?
Because no matter what happens in this life we will never be separated from the
love of Christ. And I'm not just spouting out verses and truths, I've seen this
ring true in my own life. When I first got this YouTube channel started I was
trying to be obedient to God, and I was trying to start writing books, and I was
trying to start making these videos and I was using some of my time I could have
been working, and I'm still doing that now, but I was using some of my time I
could have been working and making money for me to support my family to do what I
believed God was calling me to do. And so we were kind of tight
financially. We were having a few financial problems and there were some payments
that we were having to make that we couldn't necessarily make; and it's
because we were -- me and my wife were first newly married, we were living in our
first rental house, we were in the season of having our first child and trying to
make medical payments for that. And I just remember one week in particular
when I'm talking to my wife and I'm asking the question: How are we
gonna pay for these things? Where are we gonna get the money from?
But we prayed together and I prayed on my own as well and we just believed that
God was gonna provide because I was doing what I believed God had called me
to do, what He was asking me to do. And my wife came up with this idea; she said,
"Okay you work from home right now, we've got two vehicles, one was given to you by
your parents, one was given to me by my parents, why don't we try to sell one of
the vehicles?" And I said, "Yeah that's a great idea except that we don't actually
have the titles for the vehicles, so we couldn't sell them," and she's like, "Well
we could try to sell -- you know, my parents still have the title for mine -- we could
try to sell it back to my parents." And I thought, "Wow that sounds like a bad idea,"
just because -- you know there may have been some pride in there, mixed in, and
stuff -- but also it was like, I don't want to reject this gift
they've given us of this vehicle and I feel like that would be saying, "Oh thanks,
but no thanks, we'll take some cash instead," you know.
And so I didn't want to do that and I just told my wife, I said, "I can't do that
I'm sorry, I can't," you know, the only way, and this is what I said, I said, "The only
way I could possibly do that is if they came to us and offered it." And they
didn't know that we were going through -- that we were having financial issues at
the time, and so I told her, "Don't say anything about this -- you know, I
don't -- like, God is gonna provide, there's gonna be a way that we're gonna make it
work." And her parents, her mom and dad, actually
came down, they came down to South Texas where we were living at the time, that
next weekend. And at the end of their visit, right as they were
walking out the door, her dad looked at me and he said, "Before I go, I feel like
there's something that God wants me to ask you."
And he said, "I want to ask you if you want to sell the car back to us."
And in that moment I just, I had to sit down because I remembered exactly what I
had said, the words that came out of my mouth that there's no way I was gonna
sell it, or even ask them unless they said it first.
And I knew that that was God coming through for us because we were being
obedient and we were doing what we knew that He was asking us to do during that
time. And at the end of that year I looked at our finances and I could
clearly see the money that we were paid for that car exactly covered the
payments that we needed to make. One of the reasons I love being an author is
because I always know how the story ends; even if the conclusion of the story is
not on paper yet, it's still as certain in my mind is it ever will be. Even when
the characters in the story have to go through some impossible situations, even
if the moment seems hopeless I don't get worried. When I'm writing a story, even if
all hell is breaking loose in the middle of that story I still don't get worried,
instead I get excited. Do you know why? Because even if things look difficult on
the current page, a few chapters later things begin to turn around and I look
forward in anticipation at the miracle that has to happen for the characters to
move from a place of desperation to a place of victory.
If you feel overcome with the point of the story that your life is in right now
you need to remember something -- God isn't worried. He's not worried because He
knows how the story ends. He's already read the final page, in fact, better than
that, He's already written the final page.
Philippians 1:6 makes this amazing statement, "For I am confident of this
very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of
Christ Jesus." And the greatest thing about God being the author of life is
that when it seemed like all hope was lost, God stepped down into His own story
and He allowed himself to be crucified on a cross. I would say that He saved the
story. 1st John 4:14 says, "We have seen and testified that the Father has sent
the Son to be the savior of the world." If you're dealing with worry today I
encourage you push all those other things aside. Prioritize your
relationship with Christ, seek first His kingdom and His
righteousness and when you start to do that, God Himself strips that worry from
you and He replaces it with the peace that you need.