Don't Borrow Trouble From Tomorrow

“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day [is] the evil thereof.” (Mt 6:34 AV)

That last phrase throws a lot of people.  To use a modern phrase, we might say, don’t borrow trouble from tomorrow.  The trouble you have today is enough.  Jesus is not telling us to live a careless life with no plans for future problems.  We know some things are certain.  We can predict other things with rather certainty.  We know winter is coming.  Never thinking of it and waiting until there is a foot of snow on the ground before we unpack the shovels or buy salt is simply foolish.  This is not what Jesus is advising.  That type of advice runs contrary to the book of Proverbs.  Rather, we should prepare as best we can for what might be coming tomorrow.  However, the advice of our Savior is to not be preoccupied by what tomorrow might bring.  No matter how much preparation we make, tomorrow, with its trouble, will come.  So, living in the fear of tomorrow when we have adversities of today is adding to our stress unnecessarily. As John Gill wrote, “It is very wrong to anticipate trouble, or meet it before hand; if it was for no other reason but this, that every day’s trouble is enough, and should not be needlessly added to, by an over concern what shall be done for tomorrow; or how shall the necessities of it be answered, or the trials of it be endured.”

Obsessing about tomorrow can sap energy needed for today.  Winter is coming upon us.  Last winter, we had a rough time.  The first serious snowfall was a wet and heavy one.  The crews waited for several days before they came out and cleared the streets.  By then, the snow had packed down into ice.  Where we live, we have a crew that comes out and clears around the church property.  But they can do only so much.  If the city is not on top of clearing the streets, it becomes impossible for my crew to do their job.  What could have been done with equipment must now be done by hand.  Such was the case with us.  I pastor a small church.  I have very few who can help.  I am getting up there in age.  I remember shoveling as best I could and not having a good time of it.  What should have been a four foot wide sidewalk became an eighteen-inch one.  All of that snow had to be cleared by hand.  As I worked, it became evident this was not going away in one day.  I knew, because of the forecast, I would be out shoveling for several days.  Our church was also going through growing pains and my wife was recovering from cancer surgery.  All this heaped on my soul.  All I could do was to think of what might come tomorrow.  More snow.  More doctor’s appointments.  More struggles to grow a small city church. Etc.

Our LORD tells us to take one day at a time.  Prepare as best you can, but live one day at a time.  This is the key to getting through some of the hardest times of life.  There is a saying I heard while living in the south.  When describing a daunting task, they would say it was like eating an elephant.  One bit at a time.  That is how we have to look at life sometimes.  Life is too hard to live it all at once.  It has to be lived one day at a time.  Don’t worry, the trouble for tomorrow will come.  The trials of next year are unavoidable.  As the LORD gets you through today’s challenges, He will do so tomorrow, next week, next year, and for the rest of your life.  We cannot borrow trouble from tomorrow.  If we do, we will not be able to navigate the trouble of today.  God is here now.  He will be there then, as well.

Don't Ever Forget

“For the eyes of the Lord [are] over the righteous, and his ears [are open] unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord [is] against them that do evil.” (1Pe 3:12 AV)

Every once in a while, I need to be reminded of this truth.  There is an important thing to remember here.  When Peter states the LORD’s face is against them that do evil, he is not inferring every and all evil.  Otherwise, the face of the LORD would be against everyone and no one would have the eyes and ears of the LORD.  Peter is stating the simple fact those who love the LORD have the ears and eyes of the LORD even if they fail.  But those who have rejected the love of God have inherited the enmity of God against their soul.  Having clarified this, the truth for us this morning is to remember that we have God’s eyes and ears.  If we have received Jesus Christ and our LORD and Savior, then the ears and eyes of God are open to our needs and our prayers.  We can forget this.  Or, at the very least, fail to appreciate the full implications of it.

If we are not careful, we can live rather isolated from the presence of God.  Not that He has gone anywhere.  He is in all places and at all times.  What we can often do is live in our own little temporal world, forgetting an eternal God is always there, waiting and watching that He might have an intimate relationship with the souls whom He created.  We are so temporally minded that we often forget the presence of God has gone nowhere.  We can become overwhelmed with circumstances or guilt to the point we think God has abandoned us.  He can no more abandon His children than a loving father, his child.  It matters not what we have done, or failed to do.  God loves us with an everlasting love.  Our behavior may require His chastening hand born out of love, but He will never leave nor forsake.  That is His promise to us!

Prayer is a funny thing.  The Bible tells us that faithless prayer is useless prayer.  The most important truth to remember when approaching God is found in Hebrews chapter eleven and in verse six.  “But without faith [it is] impossible to please [him]: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and [that] he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” (Heb 11:6 AV)  When we go to God in prayer, we must believe that He is.  Or putting it another way, we must believe He exists.  Even more pertinent, we must believe He exists to know us and love us.  God is self-sustaining and eternal.  He would exist with or without creation.  But He created to know and love.  He created to shed His grace on all those who come to trust in Him.  It is amazing to me how much the people of God forget the true nature of our relationship with God.  He is a loving Father who made us so that we might walk together.  He hears and sees.  He cares for us.  He corrects us and teaches us when we falter.  His mercy is everlasting.  He is open to our cries and hurts when we hurt.  Like a loving temporal father, he must allow short-term hardship in order that long-term blessings may come.  Like an earthly father, that is difficult.  Being a God who can do all things, He could make it all go away.  But He doesn’t.  We would never grow into Christlikeness.  The encouraging truth this morning is, no matter what we are at the moment, if we are saved, the eyes and ears of God are open to our cries.  This will never change.

Fear Must Follow

“By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the LORD [men] depart from evil.” (Pr 16:6 AV)

We tend to lean on the first part of this proverb and forget the who thing goes together.  The first part is God’s part.  The second is our part.  By mercy, God forgives and removes our sin.  By truth, He teaches us what sin is and His attitude toward sin.  If fear does not follow, we will fail again.  That word ‘fear’ can mean several things.  The use of the word here means reverence, respect, or piety, resulting in a very measured and humble response to Him.  This fear is not fear as in a phobia.  It is not a terror that freezes one.  This fear is not a fear of destruction, wrath, or vengeance.  This fear is the emotional response and respect due the Creator of the universe by virtue of Him being that very person.  If we say we fear God, then we care how He feels about what we do.  If we say He cares about what we do, then we will not do that which displeases Him.  It is a matter of respect, reverence, and worship.

How we respond to authority tells much regarding our character and maturity.  The person that recoils at the demands of authority has little character or maturity.  Or little of both.  The other day, my wife and I went to a fast-food chain that served only two staples.  Chicken tenders and fries.  If you want a bit of variety, you would order a sandwich, which consisted of the same chicken tenders in a bun with lettuce and tomato.  Having met each other will working in a pizzeria, we chuckle at the discussions that might be going on in the restaurant we are approaching.  Can you imagine employees arguing about what task they were scheduled with in that particular shift?  The murmuring and complaining going on when there were only two things to do?  “Ah, man, I have to fry the chicken today?  When it is going to be my turn to fry the potatoes?”  The same is true of any workplace.  There are those who are never happy.  They complain no matter the task.  They fight their boss and try to find something they could be happy about, but it doesn’t exist.  If they are unhappy frying chicken, they would be unhappy running the register.  No fear.  No respect.  Not reverence for the one whom they work for.

The same is true in a family setting.  If there is no fear of Dad, then what Dad requires will go ignored.  At some point, that child has to grow up and care what Dad thinks and how he feels.  This is sorely missing in today's churches.  The saints are all about affirmation.  What is God going to do for me today?  Where is the reverence?  Where is the respect?  It went out the window over one hundred years ago.  When we began to think our intelligence was more important that God’s divine hand, that was the day Christianity became about the saint and not about God.  When we tampered with the word of God to change it to our liking, our faith became about us, and not about God.  But even those of us who claim to be arduous defenders of scriptural purity can still make our walk with God more about us than about Him.  We have lost the respect and reverence due the God who created us.  So, mercy and truth may be the short-term fix.  But unless they are followed up by fear, sin is still at the door.

Mercy To Live Holy

“Deal with thy servant according unto thy mercy, and teach me thy statutes.” (Ps 119:124 AV)

The more I study myself, the more I don’t like what I discover.  I’m more wicked than I can imagine.  God is beyond merciful in the mere existence of mankind.  Why He chooses to create us, I will never understand.  Humility is a hard trait to gain.  Self-denial is impossible.  If the truth is known, we are so far from God’s holiness that without Jesus, the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and prayer, any hope of righteousness is quickly dashed.  When I read the verse above, I am reminded that the mercy of God is not limited to forgiveness.  The mercy of God is not limited to encouragement.  The mercy of God is not something we run to when we feel as though we have failed.  The mercy of God is also needed to grow into Christlikeness.  To overcome faults, mercy is still inseparably important.  This is to what our writer is referring.  He desires the mercy of God manifested by learning, understanding, and applying the word of God.  He desires God to be good to him so that he can return that same goodness back to Him.  The mercy of God, as revealed above, is sought that the writer might live godly before the One whom he declares he loves.

The thing is, walking contrary to the word of God costs the individual.  There are consequences for wrong choices.  At first, we are upset over the consequences that affect our temporal existence.  We do not like the bumps and bruises that come our way because of what he did, or failed to do.  We do not like the hardships resulting from walking contrary to the perfect law of liberty.  We seek God’s mercy because we simply do not want to suffer for wickedness.  As we mature, we realize that sin has other consequences.  Our minds and spirits are also affected.  We don’t like the guilt, shame, and confusion which sin thrusts upon us.  So, we seek the mercy of God so we can have a sound mind and clear conscience.  But as we approach full maturity, we realize the most damage sin does is with our personal walk with God.  God loves us and we, Him.  But not as deeply as is possible.  We realize that the sin of our hearts is contrary to an intimate walk with the Creator.  He is there.  We pray.  We worship.  Yet, there is intimacy lost that could be there if we would simply trust the LORD’s mercy to teach us His statutes.

This teaching goes beyond fact and understanding.  David is not asking for a school lesson.  He is not asking that he understand the intricacies of the law of God and how it might point to greater truths.  His request is about as humble as one could be.  He is asking for the LORD to teach him not only what he is supposed to do, but the disciplines to see that it is done.  This is a mercy.  This request is so intimate.  Imagine a child who is told to arise at a certain hour so that he can do his chores.  When he does not, there are more chores heaped upon him.  The undone chores remain so and only get more difficult.  This child understands it is better to get up in the morning, but still struggles.  He is then bothered by Dad’s disappointment and frustrations.  He doesn’t want his father to be upset with him, so he sets his alarm a bit earlier.  He is successful to a point, but is still overcome by laziness.  Lastly, he desires a deep and intimate relationship with his dad, but he knows that will never happen until he gets up on time.  His motive has changed.  Instead of the dislike of consequences, all he wants is to please his father.  This is the spirit in which David asks for God’s mercy.  Mercy to live by the statutes of God’s word.

Getting Better Takes Work

“Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.” (Heb 12:12-13 AV)

Note the lame must do his own work to both protect from further injury and to heal.  The LORD is telling he who was corrected to lift up the hands and straighten the knees.  Then the lame must make the path straight while he is still lame.  Maturing is a painful process.  Learning obedience and faith is not for the faint of heart.  It takes much hardship, crisis, and stress.  Along the way, the two-edged sword does some corrective work.  This can leave scars.  This can cause a bit of handicap.  However, this does not mean the corrected one cannot be made whole.  To be left permanently damaged is not God’s plan.  Healing is in His wings.  What that doesn’t mean is the LORD will do all the work for us.  There has to be some investment, or we will fall back into the pattern that caused the injury to begin with.

Having gone through physical therapy for my shoulder, I can tell you the therapist pushes you to the edge.  My shoulder went bad because I carried golf bags for five years and, as a child, a newspaper sack full of the Sunday papers.  A callous grew so big, I almost lost the use of my shoulder.  After successful surgery, it was off to the therapist.  The worst exercise of all was tracing the alphabet on a wall with a large ball in hand.  Not fun.  The picture above is even more extreme.  A man who is lame on his feet, taking rake and shovel in hand, slowly making a straight-and-level path.  Perhaps he had a scythe or ax in hand to fell some trees as well.  The responsibility of clearing a path and leveling it is not that of the one who made him lame.  Because his lameness was earned by his own poor choices, it was up to him to contribute to the way out.  This may seem cruel.  But it is necessary.  We see this with patients.  The care-giver team does only that which is absolutely necessary for the patient.  Whatever the patient can do for him or herself is required.  If not, the patient can cause greater long-term damage.  Pushing that patient to the limit only strengthens hom or her.

Note the present tense here.  Those making the straight path are lame.  Not ‘was’ lame.  Those who are lame need healing.  Making the straight paths is part of that healing.  There is a two-step process to making a straight a level path.  One must remove that which would trip us the pilgrim.  He must also add sod, dirt, pebble, or brick for the low spots along the way.  One must remove what doesn’t belong and bring in that which does.  God is not going to do this for us.  He will guide.  He will give instructions.  But the doing of the work is up to the one who remains lame.  We have gentlemen who need knee surgery.  However, because he has been favoring that knee, some leg muscles have atrophied.  So, his surgery is put off until he works as strengthening the rest of his leg.  The lame must do the work before the lame can be made whole.  We cannot sit around expecting God to fix it all while we remain idle in our efforts.  This is the hard reality of living healthy.  Health is work.  Work that belongs to the sick.  Work that belongs to the lame.

Obedience Costs

“Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;” (Heb 5:8 AV)

This verse is packed with both doctrine and hard to answer questions.  If we get stuck on the latter, we will miss the personal application.  The obvious object of this verse is the LORD Jesus Christ.  Without a firm grasp on New Testament doctrine, one might assert a heretical view of the humanity of Christ.  Learning obedience might be assumed to mean that Christ had a neutral, or worse, nature from which He had to overcome.  Much like we do.  We were created in the image of Adam.  We were given a nature to sin.  A predisposition which we, by and act of the free will, act upon.  We sinners by nature and by choice.  This is not so with Christ.  He was incarnated without the fallen nature of Adam.  He was incarnated with a perfectly sinless spirit and nature.  When he learned obedience, it was not to overcome disobedience that was part of His nature.  Rather, when He learned obedience, we experienced subjugation and a human being to a divine Father.  Again, we can get caught up the mystery of the incarnation and miss the point entirely.  Jesus showed us the way of obedience, and that way often requires suffering.

I grew up in one of the snowiest areas of our country.  Tucked in between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, we routinely received snow by the feet and not be the inches.  One of the snowiest places in the entire U.S. including Alaska, is at the eastern end of Lake Ontario.  Weather coming from the west would pick up moisture from these two Great Lakes and dump it off shore.  There are picture of snow twenty to thirty feet high as a Highway Department truck blew the snow from the road onto the fields on either side.  It was this kind of weather that assisted us in learning the principle above.  My father had a Sears two-stage snow blower.  It was barely used.  He had something better and cheaper.  He had eight boys.  We lived on a corner lot, which meant we had twice the sidewalk to clean.  We had a driveway that could fit seven cars.  It was a small parking lot.  When it snowed, those of us at home would shovel.  No blower.  That was for my dad.  There were times when it would take the better part of a day.  This was not a choice.  We were told to shovel, and that is what we did.  The harder the task, the more we learned obedience.  Suffering was a matter of breaking the will.  Suffering to the breaking of the will is the only way to learn total obedience.

Sacrifice, suffering, persecution, hardship, labor, striving, etc are seldom preached anymore.  God has not changed His mind.  God is still the same God.  Affirmation, worth, motivation, encouragement, etc, are the themes of today’s pulpits.  It is producing shallow saints who continue to define their faith by how it affects Self rather than how their walk glorifies God.  Obedience is often motivated by reward.  That is God’s design.  However, if we concentrate only on the reward and not the cost, then struggling with obedience is reduced to a total sum game.  The reward must exceed the cost and the reward must be immediate and discernable.  The problem with this thinking is reward for obedience is often abstract.  Surrender, humility, maturity, joy, peace, etc, cannot necessarily be measured.  Even more unfortunate, those abstract rewards God gives are valued less than material reward.  We will not suffer to learn obedience because we value the material over the spiritual.  Christlikeness, by definition, means we learn obedience by suffering.  Only when we exercise the heart to follow that the will might be broken do we begin the process by which we learn obedience.  Jesus did not overcome a sinful nature.  Rather, He experienced what it required for man to be obedient.  He experienced it through suffering.  If we are to be like Christ, it requires no less.  There must be a cost paid.  There must be discomfort.  Pain is a real possibility.  Estrangement, loss, persecution, etc. are possibilities.  The question remains, how much like Christ do we want to be?

Evidence of Faith-filled Prayer

“But withal prepare me also a lodging: for I trust that through your prayers I shall be given unto you.” (Phm 1:22 AV)

It is interesting how Paul phrases this.  Philemon, a wealthy man whom owed Paul much, is the addressee.  Paul puts the onus on Philemon to both pray for, and prepare for, Paul’s release from prison.  I think this is both profound and amusing.  Amusing because if Paul was not released, the suggestion is Philemon’s prayer life was insufficient.  However, there is, in this statement, a profound illustration of praying by faith.  If Philemon’s prayers for Paul’s release are to come to pass, then it only makes sense for Philemon to order his life accordingly.  If he really believed Paul would be free, then Philemon would prepare him lodging.  Herein is our profound application.  If we are praying in faith, we are also making plans for answered prayer.

Thanksgiving is soon to arrive.  That meant all sorts of good food.  Some like the savory.  Some like the sweet.  Most like both.  My mom made this killer cherry pie.  One of those things she made that you would think your wife could not best.  Yet, Lisa’s cherry pie is out of this world!  There are no words to describe it.  It is beyond heavenly.  One of our traditions is to do dessert a bit after the meal.  We would sit down to our traditional turkey dinner with cranberry relish, sweet potato casserole, and stuffing (not dressing – yuk).  WE would fill up as much as we could then help the ladies clean up after words.  A bit of sitting around talking, or playing some games, and it was dessert time.  Out came a pumpkin pie, a pecan pie, ice cream, and that succulent cherry pie.  The dessert plates and small forks were placed on the counter.  As we passed through the line, piece after piece was claimed.  The first round being finished, we would ask for seconds.  What we did not do was place our plates and forks in the sink and then ask if we could have another piece.  That would be silly.  We kept the plate and fork in the expectation my wife or mother would permit another assault on the dessert counter.  Asking without the plate in hand made no sense.  We prepared ourselves for an affirmative answer.

We do the same with the LORD.  We thank Him for eternal life, then put our dessert plates away.  Maybe we get a piece or two, but God’s pies are infinite.  We place our hearts of expectation in the sink, but then do the silly thing and ask, anyway.  If you really think about it, the whole thing is rather patronizing.  If we are asking the LORD for answer to prayer without expectation of His answer, then what are we really doing?  We are patronizing the Creator of the universe.  We are giving Him lip service.  We don’t expect Him to continue His grace.  We think God is only so caring as to meet basic needs.  When we get to the dessert table, we take what we want, but we don’t think we can have more.  Philemon wanted Paul free from the jail cells of Rome.  If that were true, what was the extent he was willing to go to see that happen?  Was he willing to pray?  If so, was he willing to assume the LORD would answer?  If he assumed the LORD would answer, would he prepare a place for that which he just asked God?  Our prayers bounce off the ceiling when we do not ask in faith.  How do we know we have asked in faith?  Because we will order our lives as though the answer has already come.