http://bible.com/116/mat.6.34.nlt
So don’t worry about tomorrow,
for tomorrow will bring its own worries.
Today’s trouble is enough for today.
Life Application
Planning for tomorrow is time well spent; worrying about tomorrow is time wasted. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference. Careful planning is thinking ahead about goals, steps, and schedules, and trusting in God’s guidance. When done well, planning can help alleviate worry. Worriers, by contrast, are consumed by fear and find it difficult to trust God. They let their plans interfere with their relationship with God. Don’t let worries about tomorrow affect your relationship with God today.
Hope
Do we realize that we can lift our worries to the Lord? Do we realize that we have hope in His promises? Do we believe that He loves us and is always with us? Who can help us if not the Lord?
Yes, we lift our concerns to the Lord and seek His guidance, His will for our lives today.
Faith
Sometimes, many times, His answers, His way is going to challenge us to do things outside our comfort zone. This is Faith, to step outside our comfort zone, to put our trust in Him, and to step out onto the waters when He calls us, or to cling to Him when we feel lost in the valley, or to praise Him for the opportunity to share in the sufferings and trials and persecution that He went through as we bear our cross.
Yes, walking faithfully takes more strength than we have on our own. Yes, daily I am stepping forward and I’m not where I used to be, but daily I am humbled further as my eyes are opened to how high his righteousness is, how wide the chasm is between my filthy rag works that are nothing but vanity disguised – and I am encouraged seeing His work through me that is truly righteous and filled with His glory.
Love
You see, it isn’t about my love. It is about His love. His love overflowing my cup and spilling or onto others.
It isn’t about my thoughts or beliefs or doctrines. It is about His Word, His Truth, His will, and His Kingdom.
My life when surrendered to Him is a living sacrifice, not to build anything for myself, not to gain or acquire any praise or honor from others, not to seek any reward for myself – but to sing His praises with the testimony of my life.
Any loving actions, words, thoughts, love – it is His, not my own, as He takes my heart and makes it His, as He lives through me.
This is the gospel, not that I say that Jesus Christ lives in me, not that I can speak His words, not that I can see my faults and correct them, but that I can see past the faults of others, that I can love and serve others – with open eyes, with mercy and forgiveness, with love – His love – pouring out of my life and touching the lives of others.
Without love, I am nothing.
Call to Action
If I have found Hope in the living waters and the blood of the Lamb, if I am Faithfully feeding daily on the bread of life and walking upright trusting in the Lord, and if I am full of the fruit of the Holy Spirit, that meat that is the undeniable testimony of Jesus Christ alive and living in me, what room is left in my life for worry?
When we are busy with the work at hand, there is little time left idle enough for us to waste in worry about tomorrow. So we must wake and be alive today. We must seize the opportunity to make a difference today.
Because we will not always be here and have the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others. Each day offers us opportunities to love and to plant seed of love in this world. We don’t know how many more weary days are ahead until we will fly away to glory.
Awaken our hearts, Lord. Awaken our souls, to sing of your great Love in our life today!
Harold J. Ballinger 