The End is Near [part 3]; a complete desolation of hearts ...

What do you fear the most?  Would the sudden and permanent rejection of your love top the list?  There is a reason for the expression “broken hearts”.  There is even a physiological condition that can pair with that expression so extremely it can actually kill you.  It is said that Jesus died of a broken heart while on the cross.  The separation from His Father was so intense while He bore the sin of the world, it killed Him.  And this fear of rejected love is something our God understands very well.  For it is God who suffers a rejection of His love from His creations, despite how passionately He feels about us.  When we tell Him no.  When we keep pushing Him away, until finally our time expires and the sleep of death cements the longevity of our rejection.  This is a fate for His children that our Father never wants to see, and our enemy simply revels in.  Satan is able to wound the heart of God by seducing His children away from His love to pursue happiness another way, a self-centered way.  These wounds may always be in the heart of our God who is incapable of forgetting the child He loved so much, but was unable to bring back to His side forever.  And the central tenant that underlies an eternity of life, or death, is love.

For those who embrace submission of the heart to Jesus Christ, maintaining that submission is all that matters.  As Jesus re-creates who you are, how you love becomes job one.  Shifting your love away from self to others, and then deepening it beyond all reason, and you will begin to see what harmony with God looks like.  Anything that might interfere with that life altering love, that transformation that only Jesus can bring, must be considered the enemy of souls, more specifically of your soul.  So when Jesus looks at world events, from the time of His disciples, until the end of all things – He is not worried about “when” the end will be.  He is worried that we might turn our hearts away from Him as time ticks by.  He is worried about the loss of even one child who decides there is a substitute for Jesus, another way to get to Nirvana, a different path to God – that all may sound good, but as they lead away from Jesus, they cut us off from the only transformation we are ever offered that works.  Jesus works.  His transformation will re-create you from who you are today, into who Jesus can envision you can become.  The “other” paths are distraction that lead nowhere, but to pain, and eventually death.

An eye that can see all of time in an instant, sees only the loss of His precious children, and seeks to take that loss down to zero.  The disciples asked for signs in the gospel of Matthew chapter 24.  But Jesus seeks to keep hearts in a path that will lead to His Father.  Anything that would distract from that, are the conditions, the prophetic warnings, He must relay to us – in hopes that by telling us what is happening, and what will happen, we will be warned against the distractions and keep our eyes ever on Jesus alone.  He picks up relaying a series of events that span our world’s history but share a common theme.  It begins in verse 15 saying … “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) [verse 16] Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:”  Matthew when he writes this gospel already sees signs in the exploding Christian Church of problems that were not apparent when Jesus spoke these words.

The “abomination of desolation” has meaning even in the days of Matthew.  For it will precede the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem.  But it is not, as his contemporaries will reason, the desecration of the Temple by Roman actions.  Nor is it, as we might reason, the condemnation of Jesus by the Temple priests and leadership.  It is a more insidious thing, a more cancerous virus, that spares not men, nor women, nor children.  It is an abomination of hearts.  It is the seeking of power over love, of hierarchy instead of one-on-one leadership by Jesus to every believer.  It is the attempt at making salvation personal, by taking personal control over it, wresting it away from the hands of Jesus, and placing it in our own.  Making statements that “we” must do “our part” before God will do His.  It is the ceding of a pure gospel of 100% dependence upon Jesus, with the insertion of self into every facet of the gospel.  We put self on the throne and bump Jesus into the “co-pilot” chair.  It is stone hearts that understand a lust for wealth, and are mystified at those who would give every penny they have for another in need. 

The abomination of desolation puts man ahead of God, and it comes in a variety of forms.  From the audacious who believes he is the “vicar” of Christ; to the Islamist who venerates Jesus as “great” but not God.  It happens in modern protestant churches as we proclaim our responsibility for ending sin, instead of looking for that from Jesus alone who is able to see it done.  That phrase, that fear of God, had meaning to Matthew, but it had meaning during the dark ages, and it still has meaning today.  It remains a desolation of hearts that should strike fear into us all.  For we are its target, and may well already be under its spell, looking away from Jesus for the things that only Jesus could ever see accomplished. 

Jesus begins with an answer to the original question the disciples asked, the destruction of the temple as He continues in verse 17 saying … “him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: [verse 18] Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes. [verse 19] And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! [verse 20] But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day:”  These words reflect a sudden desolation.  The destruction of the Temple foretold by Christ would come with devastating effect.   The Romans would march angry over continued Jewish attempts at rebellion, looking to forever crush the residents of the Holy Land.  They would kill everything they touched.  They were not there for mercy, they were there in an angry state of revenge.  No amount of blood would be enough.  So it is in that context that Jesus warns His believers not to prize belongings over their very existence.  Take what you have on you.  Trust me.  And flee for your lives.  He offers sympathy to those nursing mothers, and asks us to pray that it does not come in winter, or on Sabbath.

The destruction of the Temple would happen many years after His death.  And yet Jesus is still asking us to pray that the flight from it would not happen on Sabbath.  Clearly, Jesus still cared about His Holy day.  It was not nailed to a cross as some have conveniently tried to argue.  And all of the activities one would have to do while fleeing for their lives would prevent them from enjoying the Sabbath as it was intended with their God.  So if flight happened another day, it would be better.  Not happening in winter allows for the fact that the person in the field was to simply drop everything and run.  No time to get extra coats or clothing.  True believers in Jesus Christ have always faced persecution, and have generally always run from it.  The running has the side effect of spreading the gospel to new places and so in that sense not a horrible thing.  But Jesus tells us that persecution because we love is something we are going to face, it is the way of things.

Jesus then seems to look across time from that time to this and sees a common tragedy as He continues in verse 21 saying … “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. [verse 22] And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.”  There was great persecution in the days of Rome, enough to turn the color representing the church from white to red in John’s prophecies.  It would continue and get worse during the dark ages.  And if the world had not opened up by the discovery of the Americas it might have extinguished those who look only to Jesus all together.  So do these days of persecution still lie ahead of us, maybe.  But there is certainly enough of it behind us to hope it is now in our past until He comes.  One thing is certain though, the devil will not go quietly, so as time moves closer to the end, you can expect his fury to grow to match the fire of people truly beginning to rediscover what it means to encounter Jesus personally.

Jesus then goes back to His earlier warnings, that even while He looked over a wide span of time were still ever present.  He continues in verse 23 saying … “Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. [verse 24] For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. [verse 25] Behold, I have told you before. [verse 26] Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. [verse 27] For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. [verse 28] For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.”

One of the biggest remaining fears for Jesus across all time, is our tendency to put man in the place of God.  From false folks who claim directly to be Christ, to false prophets powered by the dark side of the supernatural world.  Their signs and wonders are great, but their message similar, a distraction from Jesus.  For those who value a “show me” mentality looking for supernatural proof of God, these false leaders will have great appeal.  But it is not the great acts that change the thinking, or create passionate love where there was none before.  Those are responses to a still small voice that changes the heart of each of us as we submit ourselves to Jesus alone.  Humans are only distraction to that, especially humans we begin to follow in place of Jesus (or in partnership with Jesus).  At some point the vultures will gather over the corpses created by looking away from Jesus.  A fate Jesus wants every one of us to avoid.

It is the desolation of our hearts that comes from putting man between us and God.  Our pastors should be admired and supported in the work they do – but not as a supplement or replacement of Jesus Christ.  We should not look to our pastors for an example.  We should look to Jesus for transformation of “our” hearts.  It is our heart that is important.  Not a collective reference to the hearts of men, but our particular heart that is important to our God.  Yes He feels this passionate for each of us.  But that does not diminish how He feels about me, or you, or the loved ones around us.  Each one extremely important to Him.  Each one, a child He wants back.  A child He desperately does not want to lose.  Because He loves us just that much.  As we look through the lens of Jesus across time we see Him desperately fighting for His children.  To keep each of us locked on Him, and safe because of it.  Looking anywhere else is a surefire recipe for disaster.

But His counsel was not over yet …

 

Darkness Has a Plan for You ...

We talk extensively about what plans Jesus has in mind for you.  They begin with your liberation.  Your freedom from slavery to self-love, and the sin you embrace.  The plans of Jesus for you, start by breaking your chains to pain and death, and in their place granting you a new life, a real life, something way more than mere existence.  In short, what Jesus has in mind for you (and only you), is unique to you, and offers a purpose without end, an infinite place in His Kingdom that will never expire – and they begin in the here and now, as soon as you allow them to begin.  But unfortunately, these are not the only plans that exist where you are concerned.  Your life is a not a simple choice of what you want, and what Jesus wants.  That is not the two-way choice you face.  If it is not the light you choose to embrace - that will form a shield around you; the darkness is all that is left to you.  The darkness tells you, that “you” are strong and in charge of your fate.  Submission is an act of weakness, you need not submit to Jesus (though the reality is that through submission, you replace your weakness, with His strength).

The goal of the darkness is to first deceive you into believing that there is no darkness at all.  Once you accept this premise, darkness will have full sway over you, and you without the slightest recognition, that events, circumstances, and results are not “just” because of what you choose, and why you choose them; but because you are under attack by a darkness so black its malevolence cannot be fully measured.  Yet so many, even within the church, come to believe the darkness is not real, something of bed time stories, and tools to control the masses through fear.  But fear, is not a tool to escape sin, it is a reason for sin, and a symptom of sin.  Jesus does not want your fear, He wants your trust, and ultimately He hopes you will make a choice to love Him.  The devil is slick in projecting the negative aspects of who he is on to God, accusing God of the things he (the devil) is most guilty of himself.  Obfuscate, hide the idea of darkness at all, and convince you that your life is a matter of luck, and God’s punishment, that darkness plays no role in it at all.

But what happens when you begin to deviate from “normal” behavior.  What happens when you entertain thoughts of the abnormal, of the unacceptable to social norms, and find them attractive, appealing, and ultimately ideas you wish to follow and embrace?  What is perverse, becomes a part of who you are, and who you have chosen to become.  And perversity need not have only to do with sexual expression, it can exist in a number of plains.  The kleptomaniac steals, like you and I take a breath.  We look at these people and refer to their condition as a sickness, as a form of mental disorder.  But that is not how they see themselves.  What is aberrant and perverse to us, is fully normal to them; even if normal is different, just a different idea of normality.  The drug addict, and addicts of every variety, understand logically the danger of their behavior but choose it anyway to get the fix.  The child who entertains the ideas of torturing small animals, and works his way up to humans, becoming a serial killer and a sociopath – chooses not to see himself as a “problem” but as a “solution” to our society.  The perverse expanding its reach across our populous more insidious than any virus, and more effective in its spread.  Until every man looks in the mirror and determines that they are good person, despite whatever differences there might be in how they behave.

But facts remain.  The timeline for darkness is finite.  It will one day come to an end.  John wrote in revelation about the very end of evil, when Satan himself will finally be consumed in the lake of fire.  And once that is done, death itself will be consumed.  The ultimate death of evil.  The ultimate death of death.  No eternal minions to propagate the existence of evil, or torture, or dying.  Instead the absolute end of it, in thought, in motive, in deed, and in instruments of its expression.  This means Satan is on a clock.  Where once he existed from his creation, in a life not intended for an ending, now he is destined to one day be finally consumed in fire, never to exist again.  That clock ticks loudly in his ears.  Every day is a day closer to his final end.  He cannot avoid it (though he will try).  He cannot overcome it.  He is bound to his fate.  So as evil does, it looks for a way, to plot revenge.  Forgiveness does not exist in the mind of evil, any more than mercy does.  And to strike with revenge, he must strike at what God loves the most, namely at you.

So darkness formulates plans for your life, just as firmly as what Jesus does.  The darkness can hurt God, by hurting you.  They can make the pain of God greater, by having you blame God for the pain that comes your way (when in secret it was never Him).  They can make the pain of God better, when they get you to hurt yourself.  They can make this pain better when they can deceive you into believing that a “new normal” is just as good as any old normal, even if that includes being a serial killer, or an addict, or someone who thinks forced sex is better than consensual sex especially as it relates to children.  In morphing what you do, the evil spreads, and impacts itself on other children of God further increasing the pain.  And do you then have value in the dark kingdom … no.  You are nothing to them, merely a tool to spread pain, and a victim to have pain inflicted on.   Lest you believe any differently, or think it could never happen to you, or think you are too innocent (or your baby) is too innocent, to ever be caught up in this – lets take a look at a story Matthew recorded in his gospel in chapter seventeen.

Matthew picks up in verse 14 saying … “And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man, kneeling down to him, and saying, [verse 15] Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water.”  First note, that the victim is not the man himself, a father, and someone who believes in the power of Jesus Christ.  The victim is the son, a child, presumably an innocent child.  But his state or age in life, did not prevent his possession, by a demon of the darkness.  And what does this demon force the victim to do, to fall into fires to burn, or into waters to drown.  The darkness plagues this boy, to send pain to his father, his parents, his family.  The darkness tortures this boy to rebuke the church (whether old or new).  And the boy, or what happens to the boy is of no consequence.

Matthew continues in verse 16 saying … “And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him.”  Yikes!  This father, brought the boy to the disciples of Jesus.  You know, the ones with the keys to the kingdom, who are able to bind things on earth (figuratively) and have them reflected or heard in heaven.  James the future leader of the church in Jerusalem, Peter the future evangelist to the world, and John the chief prophet of the Christian faith, as well as all the others and none could cure him.  Now everyone of us, looks at Judas and says in our hearts – figures.  But then Judas had the same gifts of demon repulsion as did any other disciple, and was no less a leader in the church, and in the faith as Peter, or as you, or as me.  So the failure of Judas was no more or less the same failure as Peter.  It was not about what Judas would ultimately do, that causes him to fail.  For Judas could have been forgiven of that future sin, just as Peter was forgiven for ones he would commit in the heat of those events.  The problem of this father, and his boy, were in the here and now, and in the here and now – not one of the disciples could overcome the darkness nestled in this boy.

Matthew continues in verse 17 saying … “Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me. [verse 18] And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour.”  First note, that the child is healed immediately.  There is no delay on the part of Jesus.  The misery the darkness brings to this child’s life is over for now.  But the words of Jesus look none too happy.  “O faithless” generation.  Is Jesus speaking to the dad, seems very unlikely as the dad believes, and tried the disciples of Jesus, before coming to Him personally.  And the boy may or may not even be present, and is infected with a demon, so unlikely Jesus is challenging his faith.  There will be no blaming of the victim here.

But the church?  Is Jesus challenging his own disciples?  Is He challenging the Pharisees and Sanhedrin?  Or is He challenging you and I?  Perhaps all of the above.  But it is not just our faithlessness that warrants the attention of Jesus, it is also our perversion.  Have we adopted the aberrant as normal, perhaps just a different kind of normal, but one far outside of harmony with the laws and character of a God of love?  Do we see ourselves in the mirror, and see nothing wrong.  Have we perverted the Word itself.  Have we used the Word to justify our traditions, our ideas, and our notions of separation with the brotherhood of Christ – each group claiming purity, while ostracizing any other “less informed” groups of believers.  Our perversion need not just be in our sexual expression, it can also be founded in how we read the Word, and what we do with what we find, using it as a weapon against other sinners, instead of a hospital field manual of how to love others back to the feet of Jesus, ever pointing them there for the relief they so desperately need. 

How long shall I be with you?  And more poignantly; how long shall I suffer you?  These questions of Christ imply a seeming limit to His patience.  But I believe it is more a statement of His absolute frustration with us.  He offers total healing.  He offers a path to perfection, and a life beyond our wildest dreams.  And we sit around delaying that choice, avoiding it, postponing it.  As if the pain and death we now embrace is somehow better than what He offers.  Our blindness, our stupidity, so amplified against what the alternative is.  This is the plans of darkness for you, unfolding in your real life.  To keep you from submission to Jesus.  Making up all kinds of excuses why you should ever avoid that choice.  Not yet, you need to make more money first.  Not yet, you need to have unbridled sex with as many as you can first.  Not yet … the list goes on and on … each choice a hidden pathway to pain and death and misery along the way.  The words of Jesus reflect a coming finality to making that choice for something better.  There is a clock, and it is ticking – whether for Satan, or for you with him.  This is not about fear, it is about a choice for something so much better, that could be made now, right now.

Matthew concludes this snippet picking up in verse 19 saying … “Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out? [verse 20] And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. [verse 21] Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.”  We have our answer.  Jesus tells the disciples, that it is “their” unbelief that caused their failure.  That was not a slight against Judas alone.  It was an assessment across all of them, even the ones who will one day take a more leadership role in the faith.  And perhaps a continued assessment of you and I.  Faith as small as a grain of mustard seed is a tiny thing, and yet none of us seem to wield it.

We accept the cancer we encounter as “a fact of life”, never once considering it might be a direct result of the darkness.  We accept the need and the poor, as just another “fact of life”, again ignoring the influence and direct plans of the darkness on the lives of those impacted.  And none of us wield our grain of mustard seed to provide the fix – not a relief to suffering, only an accompaniment through it – instead of a true miraculous fix.  We just let the pain linger.  Afraid to test our mountain to be moved.  Afraid to be shown publicly, we lack the faith to even make it rumble a little.  And the plans of darkness triumph at the expense of the weak wielding of our mustard seeds of faith.  What is more, Jesus offers that this particular demon requires prayer and fasting to get it to leave.  As we try to pray with our tiny faith, perhaps our faith would be better augmented if we were willing to fast quietly, pray incessantly, and then look again to see if our mountains have been moved, and the demons of darkness vanquished against the bright light of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.

Your life will come down to only two paths.  It will not be a choice between good and evil.  That is too easy.  It will be a choice between submission to Jesus, and a liberation and freedom that leads to real life as it was meant to be enjoyed.  Or it will be consumed with the plans of darkness who care no more for you than does a tyrant stepping on an ant as he moves from one place to the other.  There is no middle ground.  There is no happy median.  There is life abundantly.  Or there is misery even more abundantly.  Everything else is deception.  Everything else is fear.  There really is only one way out, and His name is Jesus Christ.  And Jesus had more yet to say …

 

The End of Fear and Uncertainty ...

How much of your life is curtailed because of fear?  How many things do you avoid, or risks you refuse to take, because the fear of the loss that might come to pass, is just too great for you?  The thing we call life, the way we define our existence, is so often ravaged by our fears.  We construct a box for ourselves to live within, hoping that if we stay confined to our box, we will be safe.  But inevitably life has a way of knocking down the walls of any box, and when the reality of those challenges present, its most devastating side effect, is to deepen the fear that governs how we live at all.  Imagine for a moment if you had taken every risk you were ever presented with, but imagine that they all worked out positively.  It is as if your brain won’t let you imagine that outcome.  Surely the nature of a risk, is that not all of them work out the way we want, so imagining they do is nearly impossible.  It presents a “too good to be true” scenario.  And yet, your mind is much more comfortable imagining every risk would have worked out badly.  And that kind of imagination, governs what you have done, and what you will do.

That kind of risk avoidance, that is so easy to imagine going badly, and so difficult to imagine working out the way we want, leaves a footprint in how we live.  It confines our actions, and stunts our imaginations.  It pushes us to want a life we can define, and predict, with relative certainty will go the way we want.  You call that common sense.  An outside observer would call it moved-by-fear.  So to get you to look beyond.  To get you to examine what life may have to offer beyond the limits and history of your fear, you must ignore your fears.  This is especially true in matters of religion.  Nearly every time an Angel is commissioned to communicate with mankind, the first few words are generally, “fear not”.  There is a reason for this.  Confronted with the supernatural, with the out-of-bounds, something beyond the limits you set for yourself and your ideas about life … the first human response is one of fear.  Not joy, not rejoicing (imagine it, most of the news they have to say is usually always good, sometimes really good), not even curiosity.  The first human response is fear.

Having an Angel appear in your real world, knocks the wall down of the nice little box you construct for yourself.  Thus, the message of the good news they bring must wait, while first they re-assure our fears.  And these messages are most often reserved for believers, for people who have chosen to believe in our God, in His Word, and the history of communication between God and man it has presented.  Even behind the lives steeped in belief, remain human fear, human uncertainty.  And this condition is not meant to be permanent.  It is not even meant to be how we live today.  Consider as an example, the slightly misplaced argument that toddlers have on the playground about “my dad is bigger than your dad”.  The real notion behind it, is that the toddler is asserting his/her own security based on the idea that their dad is big enough to ward off any threat.  The toddler is comfortable looking to daddy to protect them, care for them, and generally be a fence between themselves and evil.  While slightly misplaced, the basis of this argument is sound, if we were to apply it to God instead.  Even daddies need that analogy.

Security enables us to feel better.  Certainty, a hedge against the downside of risk, allows us to live life in a completely different way.  When you are not scared about eating, about making a living, about God taking care of the things, the burdens, you usually take upon yourself; something wonderful happens.  You begin to let go of the fear, and start to really live, outside of the box, outside of the boundaries you used to place upon yourself.  Your existence begins to change because the way you think about your existence begins to change.  It is in a sense self-fulfilling, but it cannot begin or be effective, without an outside assurance that will cover the fears we face, and hedge the risks we no longer fear to take.  What our “Daddy” can do for us in this regard, is something He longs to do.  It is how we live in the eternity of heaven.  And it can begin right here and right now, if we will only let Him do it for us.

Jesus Himself gives us the roadmap for this.  Matthew continues recording His Sermon on the Mount in chapter six of his gospel.  Jesus has just concluded a snippet about true currency valuation, and what relevance money has in the light of eternal things.  But before humans can let go the fear of using our money differently, we need assurances too many of us ignore.  Yet here they are.  Picking up in verse 25 Jesus continues saying … “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?”  This is radical reprioritization.  We spend our lives working to feed our families, put a roof over their heads, and clothes on their back.  From the extreme rich, to the very poor, the mechanics remain the same.  Yet here is Jesus putting an abrupt halt on everything we value, on our entire economic structure, and furthermore saying “take no thought” for it. 

This is beyond a general admonition not to have fear regarding it.  This is nothing even remotely related to having balance between responsibility and spirituality.  This is a one-sided, completely weighted statement, that passes up any boundary we are comfortable with.  “Take no thought” means past not worrying or stressing, don’t even think about it.  We can be that certain in how we live, that God Himself is looking after our lives, that we need not even think about what we eat, or wear.  The question is not whether I shop at Saks Fifth Avenue, or Walmart, for my clothing.  The proposition Jesus makes, is that my body is the important thing to God, and God will take care of clothing it.

Jesus continues in verse 26 saying … “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?”  Jesus has a point.  Birds wake up every day, and go eat.  The bird never has to worry that they will not find food.  They simply look, and there it is.  God does the worrying.  God provides for the feeding.  The bird is just living his life, he is not obsessing about whether he has a full pantry of food at home, or whether his canned goods supply are adequate to withstand the next hurricane disaster.  The bird just wakes up and eats.  Mom’s bring home food for their little birds.  There is never a worry about this kind of thing.  If you took the evil of predatory creatures out of the equation, birds would thrive.  You don’t see them going extinct because of lack of food.  Even though they still have to contend with what man does to their natural habitats, with pollution, with weather events just like we do.  Yet after a hurricane, when the storms roll away, there are the birds.  They just wake up and eat and live without a thought about it.

Jesus drives home the point in verse 27 saying … “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?”  This is not just a frustration the shorter population faces.  It equally applies to health issues you have almost no control over.  Think about it, as you read this, your local hospital is filled with people in varying degrees of need.  This is true all over the city, country, and world in general.  Wealth is no barrier against being there.  Youth isn’t either.  Fitness despite all its other benefits does not shield you against cancer.  And our thoughts about what we want, and our fears about what we want to avoid, do nothing from keeping any one of us from becoming the patient in the bed right next door.  If we cannot control our bodies by sheer force of will, why do we take on the fear and stress over them as if we could.  The stress does not fix the problems, it only makes them worse.  There is a better solution.

Jesus continues in verse 28 saying … “And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: [verse 29] And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. [verse 30] Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?”  Ok Macy’s, your entire value proposition has just been cut to the ground.  And so has yours Walmart.  Jesus asks us to simply look at the beauty He has created around us in nature.  Beauty that occurs whether we encourage it or not.  If God offers us the beauty of Roses, and Lillies, and Tulips and Trees; He takes care of things that have a short span of time here in the world, and things that last.  Flowers cannot just transplant themselves to find better foods.  Nor has a tree ever been given this kind of option.  The Sequoias have been there for quite some time, and yet still they grow, their beauty a remarkable thing.  If God so takes care of the transient things, why would He not take care of you?

Jesus summarizes His thoughts picking up in verse 31 saying … “Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? [verse 32] (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. [verse 33] But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”  Your thoughts, your worries, your pursuits are either wasted in the temporary things of this world, or founded in the eternal things of God that matter.  Jesus tells us here that what we eat is not worth thinking about, food will be there.  He tells us what we wear is not our concern, God will make sure we have something, and that it lasts.  Following this advice may not offer us a wealth of new clothing every season, but it will meet our needs.  Following this advice may not have us eating at Morton’s every night, but it will have us eating to meet our needs.  And trusting God, to provide these things, is to just test what He provides.  His gifts are amazing.

What should be our focus is seeking His kingdom, the thing that lasts and matters.  The rest of the temporary needs will be met.  Jesus concludes this line of thinking with a more realistic and somber thought continuing in verse 34 saying … “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.”  The problem is not our food, or clothes.  It is our priorities.  It is our faith or trust in God.  It is our inclination to focus upon ourselves and begin to indulge the evil that lays in wait all around us.  THAT is the real problem.  That is something we can have a little stress about.  Because the problem there is not half so much about what surrounds us as what lies inside of us.  Our refusal to trust.  Our refusal to change how we live, and who we rely upon to support us.  We take on burdens that do not belong to us, and in so doing continue to entertain fear, and uncertainty, that otherwise could die a permanent death.

How great could be our Christian lives and experience if we could think differently about who takes care of us, and who is there to meet the risks, and solve the challenges.  A sense of self-reliance is our biggest handicap.  Atheists must rely upon this as it is all they have.  But Christians should be able to rely upon something more, to a point where we literally … take no thought.

And the Sermon was far from over …