Worry-Free Living

Matt 6:25-34

I’m not too much of a worrier, but the things I do worry about I do a real good job with! When I entered the ministry, I worried and still do worry a lot about the people I am responsible for. Am I meeting their needs, guiding them, ministering to them properly. In fact for many years, I had Matt 6:34 right above my computer.

Have you really looked at that verse? Depending on the day you have been having, it has different meanings. If life is going pretty smooth, then the first part seems to jump out to me. “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” That’s right, no need to worry about what tomorrow might bring. However, when life isn’t going so well, the last half always jumps out at me. “Each day has enough trouble of its own!”

When we are worrying people, we worry about today AND tomorrow. Have you ever realized that in a real sense, worry is telling God that we don’t believe he can handle our problems?

PRAYER

I. Dealing with Worries

A. 5 questions to help us deal with worry

1. As you read this passage, 5 questions come to mind to help us deal with worry appropriately

B. What is really Important?

1. I am a day planner type of person

2. I like to organize my day and tasks from the most important to least important.

3. That really sounds good on paper, but half the time I spend getting caught up in the urgent and not the important.

4. What I mean is that I get thinking, that this has to be done right now.

5. So I focus on the task I think has to be done right now instead of the task that is really important in the scheme of the week.

6. There are always urgent things call for our attention, but are they really important things?

7. Jesus uses this passage to say, focus on what’s really important.

a) It isn’t fashion, or good meals

b) It’s your relationship with God

C. How much control do I have over things that worry me.

1. I once read that 90% of what we worry about is beyond our control.

2. If that is true, why worry about something you can’t do anything about anyway?

3. I can relate to the analogy Jesus used in Vs 27.

a) Vs 27 can really be interpreted in 2 ways in the Greek.

b) One hour to you life

c) One cubit to your stature

4. The Jewish people at the time of Christ were shorter than most people of the world and the men were always looking for ways to appear taller.

5. In light of this, Jesus could very well be talking about height rather than the length of our lives.

6. I know exactly how they would be feeling!

7. The answer to the question is that no amount of worry is going to make you grow an inch taller, so quit worrying about it.

D. Isn’t it best to live in day-tight compartments?

1. Think about your worries.

a) How many of them are centered on what happened yesterday or what might happen tomorrow?

b) If it happened yesterday, it’s too late to do anything about it.

c) Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

d) Think about how what people worried about on Sept 10 changed dramatically on Sept 11.

2. Jesus says tomorrow is tomorrow, deal with what you need to for today.

E. Isn’t our God big enough to handle the toughest situations anyway?

1. That’s the heart of this passage.

2. God is big enough to handle all the things you are worrying about.

3. He can deal with them when you cannot.

II. Practice the Presence of God

A. A parallel passage from Paul

1. READ Phil 4:4-9

2. Let’s look at some advice Paul gave us on the subject of worry.

B. Prayer

1. If you want to feel the presence of God, begin with prayer

2. You don’t have to be in a church building, don’t have to say special words or use a monotone.

3. Just talk to God.

4. I practice what Norman Vincent Peale calls arrow prayers. Short prayers shot off to God whenever I have a need or occasion to share something with God.

5. In traffic, in the elevator, shower, at the desk, anywhere is fine for arrow prayers.

6. However, I would suggest not closing your eyes if you are driving and praying.

C. Praise

1. The second thing Paul focuses on in this passage is praise

2. Build your prayer requests from an atmosphere of praise and thanksgiving.

3. Our small group in Indianapolis kept a prayer journal. We had two columns; one was prayer requests, the other was praise and recognizing answered prayers. After a year, it was cool to look at how many of our prayers God had answered.

4. We tend to thank God for saying yes to our prayers, but we also need to thank him for saying no.

5. Sometimes we can look back and be very glad Jesus said no to a certain prayer.

6. One writer shares that he prayed every day as a child for God to answer a specific prayer and God always said no. As an adult he was so glad God said no. You see his prayer was that he could have teeth like Grandpa’s that he could take out at night.

7. God knows best.

D. Peace

1. In vs 7 Paul talks about the peace of God that guards our minds.

a) He uses a military term that has the picture of a place being guarded by a garrison of soldiers.

b) That’s a great peace to have, knowing that God has his soldiers all around your spirit protecting you.

2. That’s the peace that allowed Jesus to sleep through a great storm.

3. That’s the peace you see in many people who have nothing, but God.

4. Absolute contentment in the God who is taking care of them.

5. Real peace.

E. Poise

1. When I first began preaching as a teenager, was absolutely terrified every time I stepped into the pulpit.

a) I wasn’t very good.

b) As a youth minister I preached a little more often wasn’t quite as scared and did a little better at presenting the material.

c) Now I preach every week, I am still a little nervous every time I am up here, but I know I have improved tremendously since my teenage years because I preach all the time now.

2. That’s the same with our spiritual walk.

a) The more we study, pray, and live a life that gives itself over to God the better we become at doing it.

b) We can study about religion all we want, but it doesn’t become a part of us until we start living our religion.

c) The more we do it, the more poised we become.

III. Relinquish Your Life to God

A. If you want to sum up what Paul and Jesus are saying, you can use the word relinquish.

1. Ruth Senter writes: Relinquishments calls for a reversal of our natural bent. It means I must be willing to live without some one, some thing, some status, some right, some security. No wonder when Jesus talked about “losing one’s life” as a guarantee for “saving it,” his disciples did not understand. Such reasoning ran contrary to their natural way of thinking.

2. Let go of the controls and let God take control.

3. He’s a much better driver and he knows where we need to go.

4. When we can do that, we can deal with worry much more effectively in our lives.