Cleaning Out the Closets of Worry to Make Room for Other Things
25 “So let me tell you: don’t worry about your life—what to eat, what to drink; don’t worry about your body—what to wear. There’s more to life than food! There’s more to the body than a suit of clothes!
26 Have a good look at the birds in the sky. They don’t plant seeds, they don’t bring in the harvest, they don’t store things in barns—and your father in heaven feeds them! Think how different you are from them! 27 Can any of you add fifteen inches to your height just by worrying about it? 28 “And why worry about what to wear? Take a tip from the lilies in the countryside. They don’t work; they don’t weave; 29 but, let me tell you, not even Solomon in all his finery was dressed as well as one of these. 30 So if God gives that sort of clothing even to the grass in the field, which is here today and on the bonfire tomorrow, isn’t he far more likely to clothe you too, you little-faith lot? Matthew 6:25–30, Kingdom New Testament by N.T. Wright
There was a speaker at the Global Leadership Summit last week that said we have 400 emotional moments every day. 400 times where our emotions hit us and we react. That means that about 25 times an hour we have the whole Inside-Out movie playing in our heads. Jesus knew that about us, not just because He was God, but because He was also a man. Jesus Himself had the same thoughts, and He knew how many of them had to do with food and clothes.
He also had the backing of the scriptures. A lot of people haven’t read the whole Bible to be continuously encouraged by the way God cared for Gomer, Nehemiah, Daniel, Abigail, Leah, and Hagar. God has been caring for people and miraculously providing for people for a really long time! Reading these stories and telling one another the modern day ways that God provides help us to not fear and worry about such things. When I have fear, I can think of how God provided for this person and this person and this person and it increases my faith.
Culturally speaking, most of us have such easy lives that we can spend half of our morning wondering about our lunch choices and half of our afternoon thinking about dinner. Shopping for clothes to cover ourselves can be classified in a list of hobbies and the clothes we own we give away while they are still good enough to be sold in a store!
But none of these are the reasons Jesus tells us not to worry. It’s not for our own abundance that we can have confidence in tomorrow, but in God. God has provided for us, and He will continue. Fear can go stay in a budget hotel while the Body of Christ takes care of one another. One way or another, Jesus has promised to provide for us. We no longer need to worry about that, so let’s spend our 25 emotional moments an hour on other things God shows us.