Jesus is saying that you cannot use worry to accomplish your goal. It’s futile to worry.
And if you try it, all it will do is ruin your life and you will never accomplish anything with it where it’s inconsistent, it’s irrational, it’s ineffective.
Now in verse 28 30 it’s illogical. Listen to this. So why do you worry about clothing?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow? They neither toil nor spin.
And yet I say to you that even Solomon in all of His glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Now, if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you?
O you of little faith Jesus perhaps was standing where the lilies of the field could be seen.
And he says to them, look at these lilies, they don’t even toil, they don’t spin and look how they are adorned.
He says they’re more beautiful than all of the beauty of Solomon, great kingly robes.
And if your father in heaven would take such great care of the lilies of the field.
Do you not think he cares about you.
If God takes care of that, which only has a short lifespan, they grow and then they’re destroyed.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you know the Lord Jesus Christ, your eternal, if God will take such great care of the temporal, don’t you think he’s going to take great care of the eternal introducing Dr David Jeremiah’s newest 365 day devotional every day with Jesus inside this beautiful leather soft volume, you’ll find 365 daily inspirational readings from Dr Jeremiah every day with Jesus is yours in appreciation of your gift of any amount in support of this program.
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How can I be sure my salvation?
How can I overcome temptation? How can I get victory over worry?
How can I find forgiveness? Is there only one way to God?
Why do Christians have so many problems? Why don’t my prayers get answered?
Is there a sin God cannot forgive? What is faith?
What is the greatest commandment?
How can I get victory over worry?
Hello, I’m David Jeremiah. Wondering if that question might apply to you right now?
Whether we call it concern, worry, fear or full blown anxiety.
None of us knows what the future holds and there are question marks in all of our lives, but there’s a difference between not knowing the future and worrying about the future.
It’s the difference between living in peace and contentment or not.
God wants us to live in peace and you and I want to live in peace ourselves.
So in today’s message titled, how can I get victory over worry.
We’ll discover the biblical answers to this important question.
Today’s message is the third in our series called 10 questions Christians are asking.
So if your heart is worried even a little, then you’ll want to join me for today’s edition of turning point.
Let God turn your question marks into exclamation points with Dr David Jeremiah’s book.
10 questions Christians are asking inside Dr Jeremiah has gathered 10 spiritual questions he has found weighing on believers hearts and minds during his lifetime of ministry questions that you may have to like, how can I be sure of my salvation?
Is there Sin God cannot forgive?
Why don’t my prayers get answered and more then take your study deeper and reflect on discussion questions at the back of each chapter on your own or in a group.
10 questions Christians are asking is yours in appreciation when you support this program with a gift of any amount and if you give $50 or more, Dr.
Jeremiah will send you the 10 questions Christians are asking study set inside.
You’ll find Dr Jeremiah’s book and his current teaching series on your choice of CD or DVD album plus a 10 questions Christians are asking bookmark only available in this study set, replace your doubts with confidence, order this book and study set.
When you support the ministry of turning point.
Today, worry itself is a concern over the future.
Worry is concerned about something that we cannot do anything about that.
We cannot even be sure about one who worries looks off into the future.
But the problem with the person who does that is twofold. First of all, the future is not here.
And secondly, the future is not his, no one but God knows its true shape.
And according to the Bible, worry is concerned over the unknown and uncontrollable future.
Remember the day Jesus met with Mary and Martha.
If you want to know the poster child for worry in the New Testament, it had to be Martha Jesus addressed her.
He said to her, Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things and that is what describes so many of God’s people today.
We’re worried and troubled about many things. Now, let’s get it straight.
We live in a world that makes it very easy for us to worry.
Can I get a witness, all this stuff that’s going on in our country today and around the world, the diseases, the wars, all of it.
If we allow ourselves, we can get consumed with worry about all of that.
But when worry takes over in our lives, men and women as Christians, it makes it very difficult for God’s word to have any impact on us.
In fact, when Jesus was teaching on the sewing of the sower and the seed, he said that sometimes when the word of God is sown in the hearts of people, it falls among thorns and these thorns grow up and they choke the word of God out of the heart And in detailing who those thorns are in.
Matthew chapter 13, 1 of them is the cares of this world.
Jesus said, when you get so caught up in the cares of this world, it will take you away from your ability to hear and understand and profit from the word of God.
Chuck Swindoll says that worry pulls tomorrow’s cloud over today’s sunshine.
So if there’s one place in the Bible where you’re going to find out what the Bible says about worry, it will be in this passage in Matthew chapter six here, Jesus uses the term worry six times and the expression don’t worry three times.
Here’s the, don’t worry versus verse 25 chapter six of Matthew.
Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink or about your body.
What you will put on Matthew 6 31.
Do not worry saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear?
Matthew 6 34. Do not worry about tomorrow.
So if you want to have the distilled teaching of Jesus on the subject of worry, it comes in two words, don’t worry.
Now, before we deal with jesus’ thoughts on this, I want to tell you first of all, what he is not saying, some people read the old translation that deals with the subject of anxiety.
And in the original King James version, it says this, be careful for nothing.
And I know a lot of people who live that way, don’t you? They’re careful for nothing.
That was kind of my life first when I was a young person, you know, carefree.
Jesus is not telling us when he says, don’t worry that we should never plan that.
We should never be concerned about the future that we should never be strategic in the way we live our lives.
Ladies and gentlemen, Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness planning what was going to happen next?
He planned for the last supper. He tells us don’t ever enter into a project unless you count the cost.
Jesus was a planner. So he’s not talking about do away with all planning.
You know, I know some preachers that live like that. You asked him, why don’t you study?
Well, I just open my mouth and the Bible says, the Lord will fill it.
Well, you can only try that two or three times on one congregation and you’re working somewhere else.
You know the problem with all of this thought about not taking this seriously is wrong.
Jesus is not only not talking about not planning, he’s not saying that we shouldn’t have concerns how many of, you know, it’s right to have concerns God has given to us the mechanism in our body so that when things happen, we’re alerted adrenaline flows, we know what to do.
Your child runs out into the street where there’s traffic.
You need to be concerned about that and go into action.
But men and women, there’s a great deal of difference between worry and concern where he sees problems, concern, solves problems where he lives in the unknown future.
Concern lives in the present. And you need to understand the difference between those two. Jesus is a masterful teacher.
So he’s going to give us five things about worry that we need to know.
These are so central to this sub.
And when I put the study Bible together that many of you have actually listed them in a sidebar.
So they would always be next to this passage.
I believe this is so critical to where we are today with so many people.
Um you know, in anxiety even among God’s people.
So Jesus said, here’s what you need to know about worry. Worry.
First of all, The Lord Jesus said is inconsistent. Read with me the 25th verse of the 6th chapter.
Therefore, Jesus said, I say to you do not worry 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.
The point is that God would not have given us life and he would not have created our bodies without seeing to the provision of those things that are necessary to sustain us.
If you believe in a creator, God, you also must believe in a sustainer God or you’re not consistent.
Jesus said, first of all, worry is inconsistent.
If God has given you life and your body, he will help you with the other things that go with it.
Now, secondly, Jesus said that worry is irrational.
Verse 26 look at the birds of the air for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns.
Yet your heavenly father feeds them.
Are you not of more value than they God Almighty provides for the birds, don’t you think he’ll provide for you?
Are you not much more valuable than the birds? Worry is inconsistent and it’s irrational.
But here is the whole core of it. The middle point of the five is the key point. It’s ineffective.
It doesn’t work, worry never accomplished anything and it never will.
The only thing it does is destroy the person who does it and listen to what Jesus is saying in verse 27 which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his statute.
What Jesus is saying, why are you doing something that doesn’t work? He’s saying a Cubit was 18″.
He’s saying you can’t worry yourself into being 18″ taller than you are. I’d be over seven ft by now.
It’s futile to worry.
And if you try it, all it will do is ruin your life and you will never accomplish anything with it where it’s inconsistent, it’s irrational.
It’s ineffective. Now, in verse 28 and 30, it’s illogical. Listen to this. So why do you worry about clothing?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow? They neither toil nor spin.
And yet I say to you that even Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Now, if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is thrown into the oven.
Will he not much more clothe you?
O you of little faith Jesus perhaps was standing where the lilies of the field could be seen.
And he says to them, look at these lilies, they don’t even toil, they don’t spin and look how they are adorned.
He says they’re more beautiful than all of the beauty of Solomon, great kingly robes.
And if your father in heaven would take such great care of the lilies of the field.
Do you not think he cares about you?
If God takes care of that, which only has a short lifespan, they grow and then they’re destroyed.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you know the Lord Jesus Christ, your eternal, if God will take such great care of the temporal, don’t you think he’s gonna take great care of the eternal?
And finally, this is kind of what you might call in your face grace.
Here, this last one, this is really a hard one, but I have to share it to you because this is what Jesus said.
Worry is irresponsible. Therefore, do not worry saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear for?
After all these things, the gentiles seek. But your heavenly Father knows you need all these things.
The word gentile in the text is often translated by the word Pagan.
It’s a reference to anybody who doesn’t know God or doesn’t follow God. Jesus’ words are stunning.
He says, when you worry, you act like a pagan, you act like somebody who doesn’t know God.
You act like you don’t have a family and you don’t have a father. You act like you’re an orphan.
This is what they do before they know God. Now, you know God, now you’re a part of God’s family.
Here’s your father, you’re in his family.
So don’t live like you don’t have a father because you do don’t act like you’re an orphan because you’re not, let me just say something to you all because this is so profound and so simple.
It is amazing to me how many of God’s people go through the problems of life that create worry in their own hearts and never ever tell God about their problems.
I think some Christians are embarrassed to go before the throne in heaven and say, Lord God, I’m having a real struggle here and I need your help.
I believe if you read the Psalms of the Old Testament, you’ll see David pouring out his heart to God in every imaginable situation you can come up with and they aren’t veiled prayers.
They’re not nice prayers, their gut level prayers. Lord God, I need help.
So let me just suggest to you, you have a father in heaven, you have a family on earth.
Both of them are created to be helpful to you and don’t try to do all this by yourself by worrying because it’s gonna get, you know, where you’re in the family, ask yourself who you are, step up and be counted as a child of God.
So that’s Jesus take on worry that’s given to us to help us understand it.
Remember it’s inconsistent, it’s irrational, it’s ineffective, it’s illogical and it’s irresponsible. And that’s why Jesus says, don’t do it.
But now in a loving way, he helps us, not only to understand worry, but he gives us a couple of things to help us overcome worry.
This is really the core of what I want to say to you today.
First thing he says is commit your life totally to Jesus Christ, Matthew 6 33 but seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.
So the word at the beginning of the verse needs something before it. So it would read like this.
Don’t worry but seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.
You get up in the morning and say, Lord, this day is yours. My Children are yours.
My wife is yours. My ministry is yours. My health is yours and you give it to God.
You see, if you give it to God, you can’t keep reaching in and taking it back, you give it to God and say, I’m gonna trust you with it.
And the next thing you know, you’re worrying about it. What you’ve done is taking it back from God.
No, Jesus is absolutely right. He says, commit your way to the Lord, give him everything and trust him.
And I remember hearing about a businessman who’s going through some rough times in his business and he was a warrior and he was keeping up at night and he was getting ulcers and he wasn’t gonna make it.
If something didn’t happen, it was just burning him out.
One day, he walked into his office at work and as he walked in something hit him, he saw his desk and behind the desk, the big chair that he sat in during the day and he paused in front of that desk and he said, Lord God, you sit in that chair, you be the CEO of this company.
You called the shots today. I’m giving it all to you.
And he visualized in his mind, the Lord Jesus Christ, sitting at the chair of the CEO in his company.
In essence, that’s what we all have to do. Who is seated on the throne of your life.
It’s either you or God. If it’s you, you’re gonna worry a lot.
But if you can learn how over the long haul to put your life in the hands of Almighty God, that’s the first step.
That’s the long view. Now, Jesus is going to add to that what we might call the short view.
And the short view tells you to concentrate your energies on living one day at a time notice, verse 34.
Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about its own things sufficient for the day is its own trouble every day we have in life is going to come with some adversity.
Something’s design that will make us anxious.
So in order to avoid being overwhelmed, Jesus says, we need to teach ourselves how to live in day, tight compartments, live every day unto itself.
Because if you start living tomorrow, it’s not gonna work.
What does it mean to worry about other things than the things that happened today?
Well, do you know some people I know they dwell on all their tomorrows.
There’s a powerful verse in the scripture in the Old Testament that I’ve sort of claimed as a verse for me.
And here’s what it says, Deuteronomy 33, as your days. So shall your strength be now?
There’s probably some other ways to interpret that. But here’s what I get from that as your days.
So your strength will be. So, don’t dwell on your tomorrows and don’t dwell on your yesterdays.
Oh, how many people ruin their lives with a faulty yesterday.
When you look over your shoulders and you begin to dwell on the yesterdays of your life, you will usually settle down on one of three things.
You will worry about your sins that you’ve committed, which is crazy because God’s already promised that if you ask him to forgive you, he puts them as far as the east is from the west and removes your transgressions from you.
Some 103 verse 12, the Bible says he buries him in the deepest sea.
Puts a sign up outside says no fishing here.
So don’t worry about yesterday’s sins if they’re forgiven and don’t worry about yesterday’s successes.
I know a lot of people who’ve had a great deal of success in the past and it isn’t being replicated in the present.
So they worry about yesterday’s successes. Don’t do that. And then some people never get over yesterday’s sorrows.
And I say this delicately, but I want to say it I think if you lose your husband, there’s a proper time to mourn him and sorrow.
I’m not trying to be indelicate about this.
But almighty God left you on this earth, not to be a sorrow.
Er He left you on this earth to serve Him and you need to do what you do to mourn the loss of a loved one.
However that is and then draw a line in the sand and say it’s time for me to get on with my life and serve God because he left me here for a purpose.
I promise you that’s what your spouse would want you to do. So you can’t live in yesterday’s sorrows.
You can’t live in yesterday’s successes and you can’t live in yesterday’s sins. You gotta live today in this day.
I have a little thing that I wrote down. I keep close at hand.
I know I’ve shared this with you before, but it’s worth repeating.
One would be warrior pictured it this way.
I was regretting the past and fearing the future and suddenly my Lord was speaking. My name is I am.
He paused and I waited. He continued when you live in the past with its mistakes and regrets.
It is hard for I am not there. My name is not.
I was when you live in the future with its problems and fears, it is hard because my name is not.
I will be. But when you live in this moment. It is not hard for I am here.
My name is I am Jesus is telling us to focus our concern on today to put our concerns, efforts and energies and all that we have into this day.
This is the key that will lock the door on worry and open the door to peace.
Focus your concern upon this day.
Give this day to the Lord sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof and your strength will be sufficient for each day sufficient unto the day are the strength that God gives you.
I’ve lived many weeks when I didn’t know how I was going to make it through Monday, but I did.
And then Tuesday came and my energy was replenished and I was able and by the time I got the Thursday or Friday, I was living on the top of the mountain.
We don’t ever want to assess how things are going to be three or four days from now based on how we feel today, just live your day.
Give God the glory and the next day you will be fine.
I read about a pastor who was on a long cross country flight when the first sign of problems began to flash, all of us have experienced this fasten your seatbelts.
Then a few seconds later, a convoy said we won’t be serving the beverages at this time.
We’re expecting a little turbulence, be sure your seat belts are fastened and then the storm broke, cracks of thunder could be heard.
Even above the roar of the engines, lightning lit up the darkening skies.
And within moments, the plane was like a cork being tossed around on a heavenly ocean.
One moment, the airplane was lifted up on the currents and the next moment it dropped as if it was going to crash to the earth.
The pastor confessed that he shared the worry and fear of those around him.
He said, I looked around the plane, I saw that a lot of passengers were upset.
Some were crying, many were praying.
He said, then I saw a little girl, she had tucked her feet beneath her.
She sat on her seat and she was reading a book, everything around her was going crazy.
And there she sat with her little small world, calm and orderly.
Sometimes she would close her eyes and then she would read again and then she would straighten her legs but worry and fear weren’t in her at all.
So the pastor couldn’t believe it.
He couldn’t figure this out and he decided to figure it out himself. So he waited until the plane landed.
And when he got to its destination, he waited in the area outside of the, of the gate and all the passengers were hurrying to disembark.
And he asked the little girl if he could speak to her for a moment and he asked her why she had not been worried while she was in the midst of the storm.
And the little girl said, because my daddy is the pilot and he’s taking me home and she was in perfect peace because she knew her father was trustworthy.
And she wasn’t worried at all.
Recently, in our church, we had the funeral for a woman who was tragically killed in an accident on our campus.
I’ll never forget her husband gave a word in the service. Very unusual.
And he said at the end of his speech, that people had asked him many times how he was dealing with this.
And he paused for a moment and he just said, I trust in God in the midst of all that we face, isn’t that it?
And that I am sure is why we have this wonderful verse from Isaiah.
You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed upon you because He trusts in you in the midst of our storm.
We need to look up and notice that the cockpit is occupied and Almighty God is in control and we can rest secure in Him.
This ship we’re on is rocking right now with all the stuff that’s happening in the world.
But we can learn to have that quiet peace that little girl had.
If we put our trust in the Lord Dr Jeremiah will return in a moment with one more inspirational word to close today’s program right after this.
Let God turn your question marks into exclamation points with Dr David Jeremiah’s book.
10 questions Christians are asking inside Dr Jeremiah has gathered 10 spiritual questions he has found weighing on believers hearts and minds during his lifetime of ministry questions that you may have to like, how can I overcome temptation?
Is there only one way to God?
What is faith and more then take your study deeper and reflect on discussion questions at the back of each chapter on your own or in a group 10 questions Christians are asking is yours in appreciation when you support this program with a gift of any amount.
And if you give $50 or more, Dr Jeremiah, I will send you the 10 questions Christians are asking study set inside.
You’ll find Dr Jeremiah’s book and his current teaching series on your Choice of CD or DVD album.
Plus a 10 questions Christians are asking bookmark only available in this study set, replace your doubts with confidence, order this book and study set when you support the ministry of turning point today.
And now with one last word for today’s program, here is Dr Jeremiah, the world is chaotic and searching for peace.
Yet even in today’s environment, the Bible says peace can be ours.
God’s holy Spirit can manifest Christ’s life in our life, providing his peace and his freedom from worry.
But to have his peace, we must know Christ by faith. His holy spirit must live in us.
And I pray that is already true in your life.
If not allow me to help by sending you to free resources from Turning Point.
One is a booklet called Your Greatest Turning Point and the other is our monthly devotional magazine called Turning Points.
These two resources will help you know Christ and grow in your spiritual life just as they have for thousands before you.
We will gladly send them to you free of charge. If you will contact us here.
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Next time you can get on your knees before God in the privacy of your room and pour out your heart to him and tell him what you’ve done and ask Him to forgive you and He will do it join us next time for Dr Jeremiah’s message.
How can I find forgiveness here on turning point.