Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Plan Long But Worry Short


Bill Rice Ranch - First Light Devotionals  

Matthew 6:34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
 

 

 
If you were to take all of your possessions and stack them in one place, how much space would it require? Well, for some of us it might require a postage stamp. For others, it might require a pole barn or maybe a hanger. What about Richard Branson, the multi-billionaire dollar entrepreneur? He owns a number of ventures and businesses. I wonder how much space it would require to hold all that he owns. There's a sense in which the space it would take to hold all of your stuff and the space it would take to hold all of Richard Branson's stuff is the same space. It's the little 24-hour time period called "today."
 
Whatever problems or possessions you own, you're going to hold them in today. You don't own tomorrow, and you've lost yesterday. All you have is today. Yet, so many times we're planning so far ahead that we worry and cram all of tomorrow's worries into this little space called today. I'm not against planning, and I don't think God is either. But one of the dangers of planning is substituting planning for trusting God. One of the results of planning can be to drag tomorrow's problems into today. You can regret the past, but you can only worry about the future: we often do.
 
In Matthew 6 Jesus is talking about worry, priorities, and putting God and His kingdom first. In Matthew 6:34 He says, "Take therefore no thought [anxious worry] for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." God's grace is sufficient to this day. The problems that God allows for this day will not overflow this day. It may feel like they do, but they do not because God's grace is sufficient just as the problems are sufficient.
 
In Matthew 6:11 Jesus is giving us a prayer in order to teach us and He says, "Give us this day our daily bread." Most of us have never prayed for daily bread because we have bread for today, tomorrow, and the next day. If we don't have things planned out how we're going to have bread for the next 45 years, we worry.
 
John Rice used to say, "I live a hand to mouth existence: God's hand to my mouth."  Now, I'm not advocating carelessness in a sense of being lazy and not planning, and neither is God. But the Lord Jesus is telling you that your problems will not overflow this day and that God's grace is sufficient for this day and in this day.


Prayer Requests:
-Youth/Junior/Deaf Week II- June 22-27

 

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