For Thought and Meditation - Sunday, May 21

[Pine Baron]

Good morning all. A great message to close out the week. Have a safe and blessed day.

Having God’s “Unreasonable” Faith
By Oswald Chambers

Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. —Matthew 6:33

When we look at these words of Jesus, we immediately find them to be the most revolutionary that human ears have ever heard. “…seek first the kingdom of God….” Even the most spiritually-minded of us argue the exact opposite, saying, “But I must live; I must make a certain amount of money; I must be clothed; I must be fed.” The great concern of our lives is not the kingdom of God but how we are going to take care of ourselves to live. Jesus reversed the order by telling us to get the right relationship with God first, maintaining it as the primary concern of our lives, and never to place our concern on taking care of the other things of life.

“…do not worry about your life…” (Matthew 6:25). Our Lord pointed out that from His standpoint it is absolutely unreasonable for us to be anxious, worrying about how we will live. Jesus did not say that the person who takes no thought for anything in his life is blessed— no, that person is a fool. But Jesus did teach that His disciple must make his relationship with God the dominating focus of his life, and to be cautiously carefree about everything else in comparison to that. In essence, Jesus was saying, “Don’t make food and drink the controlling factor of your life, but be focused absolutely on God.” Some people are careless about what they eat and drink, and they suffer for it; they are careless about what they wear, having no business looking the way they do; they are careless with their earthly matters, and God holds them responsible. Jesus is saying that the greatest concern of life is to place our relationship with God first, and everything else second.

It is one of the most difficult, yet critical, disciplines of the Christian life to allow the Holy Spirit to bring us into absolute harmony with the teaching of Jesus in these verses.

Wisdom From Oswald Chambers

It is not what a man does that is of final importance, but what he is in what he does. The atmosphere produced by a man, much more than his activities, has the lasting influence. Baffled to Fight Better, 51 L

[buckwheatpaul]

This is a concept that has to grow on you....but once you have Jesus on your heart and on your lips that concept blooms and takes over!

[GhostHawk]

Matthew 6:25-34 ESV / 54 helpful votes
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ..

This can be a hard one, being brought up to plan for adversity. Letting go of that part of my control is hard. But I am working at it. I do believe that if you lay your burdens down, pick up his yoke, he will take care of you.

But I also believe that he helps those who help themselves.

[square butte]

Amen to this - It's in the air today. Work'n on it - Been work'n on it - Still work'n on it

[USMC87]

Amen!

[Wayne Smith]

Matthew 6:25-34 ESV / 54 helpful votes
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ..

This can be a hard one, being brought up to plan for adversity. Letting go of that part of my control is hard. But I am working at it. I do believe that if you lay your burdens down, pick up his yoke, he will take care of you.

But I also believe that he helps those who help themselves.

That last statement is not biblical. I believe it is more accurate to say that God helps those who keep their responsibilities. But it never says He will do for us what we need to do - it says once we start doing what He gives us He will help us, in fact make it possible for us to do it.

[WRideout]

I once heard a Jewish woman being interviewed on the radio, give her opinion about Sabbath. She said that it is not about denying oneself, or even giving proper respect to God but rather for that one day, we can do nothing to provide for ourselves, and must depend on God.

Wayne