Thursday, January 26, 2017

Is Your Hope In The Here And Now Or The There and Then?



If God so clothes the grass of the field…, will He not much more clothe you…? —Matthew 6:30

{CHAMBERS} “A simple statement of Jesus is always a puzzle to us because we will not be simple. How can we maintain the simplicity of Jesus so that we may understand Him? By receiving His Spirit, recognizing and relying on Him, and obeying Him as He brings us the truth of His Word, life will become amazingly simple. […] Every time we lose ground in our fellowship with God, it is because we have disrespectfully thought that we knew better than Jesus Christ. We have allowed “the cares of this world” to enter in (Matthew 13:22), while forgetting the “much more” of our heavenly Father. “Look at the birds of the air…” (Matthew 6:26). Their function is to obey the instincts God placed within them, and God watches over them. Jesus said that if you have the right relationship with Him and will obey His Spirit within you, then God will care for your “feathers” too. “Consider the lilies of the field…” (Matthew 6:28). They grow where they are planted. Many of us refuse to grow where God plants us. […] Jesus said if we would obey the life of God within us, He would look after all other things. Did Jesus Christ lie to us?”

{ELGIN}  What is the “much more” Jesus was referring to exactly?  I guess the interpretation depends upon the culture that you live in.  In our culture, living lives of relative ease, "much more" can look like the angst you feel over buying a new house with four bedrooms and three bathrooms because each of your children needs a room of their own.  Or it could look like a family in a third world country wondering if they will have something to eat when a new day dawns.  Christians in the U.S. live in a world of HGTV and the Food Network, trying to figure out which phone plan is best and whether we need to buy a bigger TV with 4K resolution.  Somehow, I don’t think that is what Jesus was talking about.  I think, more than likely, Jesus was referring to our being confident that God is sovereign.  Having confidence that God loves us and that His expression of that love is Jesus Christ. 

When you strip away the trappings of this world that make us different from each other, we stand equal before the God of heaven.  When a mother and father have a child who has an illness that can take its life.  The size or resolution of their TV is not even on the radar of their lives.  We should be less concerned with feathering our nest and be more concerned with putting God first in our lives.  God will take care of us.  He has already proven that in Jesus.  We tend not to primarily think of our lives in terms of the “then and there” but more in the “here and now”.  But, if we can put the “here and now” in the context of the “there and then” how we respond to the circumstances of day to day living will change.  (Philippians 4:6-7) “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”  What you ask God for is a reflection of where your devotions lie.  So put another way, what Jesus was saying in Matthew 6 was – “Trust God” see Proverbs 3:5-6.

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