There are times when I read the Bible, and Jesus strikes me as an out of touch hippie who would need a lot of help making it in our world today. He’d be a like a foreign exchange student from a jungle or mountain village who needs to learn how a modern economy works with credit cards, jobs, and bills. Don’t get me started on taking Jesus to a supermarket…
I exaggerate, but you know what I mean. We read Matthew 6 where Jesus says, “Do not worry about money, clothing, food, or anything material,” and we wonder whether he could really be serious. Has Jesus seen our checking account? Has he noticed how tough it is to find a job out there?
We can’t just toss a net in the nearest lake and subsist on fish around a campfire. That may have worked in Galilee, but the majority of us are stuck with mortgages, rent, student loans, bills, and daily expenses. Most days, worry seems warranted.
Jesus is nudging his way into the most personal necessities of our lives. He’s looking at our bills, our meals, and our jobs. And he’s telling us to go against our better judgment by not worrying about them. Jesus is more than a nice Savior who wants to save us from our sins. He wants to have a say over a daily lives and most basic needs. Discipleship must change our priorities, needs, and desires.
In the previous verse, he warned us that we could not serve both God and money, and therefore, we need to choose God first. In doing so, our only option is to forsake all worries about our material needs. That’s jarring for me, especially in a slow economy where I need to scrap and fight for every piece of my income. Others face uncertain work situations, daunting job searches, or a crushing pile of debt. How can we freely worship God when our circumstances demand some kind of worry or concern?
Worry can act as a signal that something may not be quite right in our lives. If I begin to worry about money, work, bills, or anything material, that’s a good indicator about my priorities. I have an opportunity to ask, “What am I seeking first?”
I’m a big fan of to do lists. I often make them long and unrealistic, providing plenty of opportunities to avoid the stuff I don’t want to do. My to do lists generally indicate what I need to accomplish for my work, though sometimes I don’t include things that I know I should be doing on a regular basis.
Here’s what happens: I get worried about the state of a project or something urgent comes up, and so I redouble my efforts. Time has to be drained from somewhere else. I usually protect my exercise time, my sleep, and a little bit of leisure time, and therefore, the time with God suffers. It’s not a conscious choice, and it’s not on the official list either. I just start skimming off time from God. Of course, I end up worrying about everything anyway, even if I spent more time on whatever project it is.
This taps into some key questions we need to ask ourselves regarding worry:
1. Do we believe God knows what we need?
2. Do we believe he will give us what we need at the right time?
3. Do we believe his Kingdom and righteousness are worth seeking ahead of our “needs”?
Making God’s Kingdom first and breaking free from worry is an instant change. Much like yeast working its way through bread, God’s Kingdom advances in our lives, revealing the places where we need to surrender, trust in him, and seek his Kingdom first by faith, even if we have to wait before returning to our to do lists.
We gradually learn to place God and his Kingdom at the top of our to do lists, realizing that before we need anything else, he is our living water and sustaining bread. We are starving without feeding on him first and foremost. The trick is making ourselves believe that we need God more than financial security.
When we land in difficult situations, sometimes of our own making, we want to be confident that God will swoop in to save us. In all honesty, we just want him to make things better NOW. The general narrative we hope for in our lives is that of progress and increased security. We want things to get better. We don’t want to deal with uncertainty.
The hardest thing for me to grasp these days is that God isn’t all that concerned with progress as I define it. The security I crave in the material realm is what he wants me to find in him. The size of the house or pay check that come with these things doesn’t really matter to a certain degree. In God’s eyes, the big, important stuff on Earth is just a detail, a minor point in the larger scheme of things. He’s far more concerned that we learn how to listen to him, discern his will, and then respond. He’s a God who told us to worship him and him alone before all else.
God is a loving parent who does not spare us tough love. If we’re seeking our security elsewhere, he’ll let us work through it until we find him. He doesn’t force himself on us, though he is always there. And if we need a time of searching, he’ll wait for us until it’s over. God does not always indulge us, but he does not abandon us either. It’s tempting to paint God as distant when, in reality, he’s just denying us what we want because we rejected what he’s offering.
He is offering us himself. He wants us to seek and worship him first. That is where our security and hope come from. In the process of finding him, we may discover that the things we once craved or feared are no longer of great importance. The only guarantee is that those who seek God and his Kingdom first will have their basic needs met. As we learn to seek him first, he is patient throughout the process.
If we are seeking what we want, who knows what kinds of selfish things we’ll ask God to do. Our prayers will be filled with words such as “I,” “me,” and “my.” When we are seeking God’s Kingdom first, we’ll be able to pray with the proper confidence, perspective, and requests. We may be looking for a job or watching the balance of a checking account dwindle, but when we pray, we can seek God first and make his Kingdom our top priority before letting him know what’s going down. We can ask God for things, but we just shouldn’t make those things our God.
