Church Bulletin Week 53

Worry Free Living for the Christian

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. Matthew 6:34

“If you want to go through life without crippling yourself and burdening yourself and perhaps losing your health and the control of your nerves, these are the cardinal rules. Do not carry yesterday or tomorrow with you; live for today and for the twelve hours you are in. It is very interesting to notice as you read biographies how many men have failed in life because they have not done that. Most men who have been successful in life have been characterized by this wonderful capacity for forgetting the past. They have made mistakes. ‘Well,’ they say, ‘I have made them and I cannot undo them. If I meditated upon them for the rest of my life, it would make no difference. I am not going to be a fool, I will let the dead past bury its dead.’ The result is that when they make a decision they do not spend the night worrying about it afterwards. On the other hand, the man who cannot help referring back keeps himself awake saying, ‘Why did I do that?’ And so he saps his nervous energy, and wakes up after poor and broken sleep feeling tired and unfit. As a consequence he makes more mistakes, completing the vicious circle of worry by saying, ‘If I am making these mistakes now, what about next week?’ The poor man is already down and defeated.

Here is our Lord’s answer to all that. Do not be foolish, do not waste your energy, do not spend your time thus in worrying over what has passed, or about the future; here is today, live to the maximum today. We must learn to realize that the God who helps us today will be the same God tomorrow, and will help us tomorrow.

Some people fail very grievously in this matter because they are always trying to anticipate God; they are always sitting down, as it were, and asking themselves, ‘Now I wonder what God is going to ask me to do tomorrow or in a week’s time or in a year? What is God going to ask of me then?’ That is utterly wrong. Never try to anticipate God…Live day by day; live a life of obedience to God every day; do what God asks you to do every day. Never allow yourself to indulge in thoughts such as these, ‘I wonder when tomorrow comes whether God will want me to do this or to do that.’ That must never be done, says our Lord. You must learn to trust God day by day for every particular occasion, and never try to go ahead of Him. . .

We can sum it all up by saying that, as we learn in wisdom to take our days one by one as they come, forgetting yesterday and tomorrow, so we must learn this vital importance of walking with God day by day, of relying upon Him day by day, and applying to Him for the particular needs of each day.” – Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones