Part of the "Design of a Disciple" series "If you’re not trusting in Jesus here, you will either fall to greed or fall to anxiety. And both of those are absolute markers of our society today." From Part 1
"What’s the mark of a follower here? What’s the design of a disciple look like? Faith, trust, confidence. Someone who trusts God with everything… even money. And that’s not easy. It’s downright scary." From Part 2
For those of you who are still at home with Mum and Dad, please… recognise that, especially in times like today, this whole money thing is incredibly, incredibly stressful for them. If you ask your mum or dad for something, and they say no, we can’t afford it… please – honour you father and your mother by not fighting back on that one. As a dad, let me tell you – it hurts when I can’t provide Grace with something that she has asked me for. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that if I could afford it I’d buy her whatever she asks… but not being able to is heartbreaking.
For those of us who have to pay the rent or the mortgage, find money for the groceries, struggle desperately to figure out what we’ll have to miss out on to make sure the kids don’t dip out… How do we do it?
How do we look at Jesus saying do not worry and stop ourselves going – yeah, right in our souls? How do we obey the command do not worry?
For some of us, it can feel irresponsible, it can feel like poor stewardship, it can feel like very poor management. When I told my in-laws that I was leaving my job to pursue full-time study at Moore College, it was pretty hard for Fiona’s mum to completely hide her feelings. She tried, but you could see her trying so hard not to say that’s unbelievably reckless… and, by the way, that’s my daughter and my grandkids you’re dragging through the hedge. And you know what? I really could see her side of that.
For some of us, the trust and faith and confidence to be able to not worry is going to be as alien as breathing underwater. It feels all wrong.
I got a SCUBA licence eight years ago. Now – I’ve always loved diving and snorkelling, I’ve done it most of my life, and to me using a snorkel is the most natural thing in the world. (Fiona, on the other hand, finds it totally freaky to stick a bit of rubber in her gob and stick her head underwater… it seriously gives her the willies thinking about it.) I’m used to it, though.
But the first time I used an aqualung – an air-tank and a regulator - I couldn’t trust myself to breathe any lower under the water than when I used a snorkel. Until I was totally committed to moving lower and lower and lower – and still trusting this thing in my mouth to deliver my air and keep me alive – I was never going to be able to leave the surface. But once I did… and was able to move down and down and around and down, the world changed forever.
When I dive, I have a couple of gauges – a compass, a pressure gauge and depth gauge, and I use a watch so I know the limits of my air and a few other things. It means I’m careful of my resources, I’m conscious of them, I have a requirement and a responsibility to be planned and disciplined.
But I still need to trust enough to breathe normally. If I’m too anxious I’ll never leave the surface. If I’m too greedy and dive outside my limits, I’ll run out of air really quickly, and I’ll set myself up for a whole heap of very real and very horrible dangers.
If I trust what my instructor says, if I breathe slowly, deeply and constantly, I’ll be able to move in one of the most amazing environments that God has made. And it’s beautiful.
Jesus asks a lot of us here, make no mistake. In the most troubling times he says trust God. But he says trust God because these are the most troubling times. Do not let your hearts be troubled, he told his disciples. Trust God, trust also in me. Where was Jesus when he said this? In a room at the end of a Passover meal, a few hours before his arrest, torture and execution. But despite this – really because of it – his words ring with the warmest of comfort. Have a listen… In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you... and if I go there to prepare a place for you, I will come and receive you to myself, so that where I am you may be also. You know the way that I am going.
You know what I really love? In amongst this hard, hard teaching that we find in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus points us irresistibly to the beauty that His father – our heavenly Father – has made. I’m going to close by letting Jesus’ words reassure us, by letting what Jesus says about our Father assure us that we can place our trust and our faith and our confidence in the living God. Let’s eavesdrop in…
Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious 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?
Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
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