Sunday, December 19, 2010

Priorities

“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ “For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (Matthew 6:31-34, NKJV).

Eating, drinking, and clothing encapsulate and symbolize everything about life on this earth that we need to attend to in order to survive. Those who don't know God (called Gentiles, in this passage), can have no assurance that needs in this area will be met without their own investment of energy and focus. They cannot simply trust. 

In contrast, Children of God, those who, whether Jew or Gentile, have been reborn into the Church by faith, not only can trust, but are commanded to trust that our "…heavenly Father knows that [we] need all these things…" and will provide them, in the same way that He provides for the birds and for the flowers of the field.

By worrying about them, we are being disobedient, mistrusting, unbelieving, and are guilty of having the wrong priorities. That is Jesus' final point in His teachings on anxiety here. Instead of seeking the means to physically survive, we are to "seek first the kingdom of God".

This may seem anti-survival, and it's conceivable that by seeking God first, the pursuit of Him may lead to death. But physical survival at any cost is not the road believers are to take. Our destination is not temporal, but eternal, and you can't get there from here by any other way except through faith in Christ, as Jesus declares, "…I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." (John 14:6, NKJV). No matter what self-preservation strategy we pursue, in the end it's all vapor. Death wins, except in Christ. So seeking the kingdom of God as our first priority actually makes more sense than seeking anything else, including the physical necessities of life. Find God, and all else falls into place. Find the mere satisfaction of earthly needs, and no matter how successful you are, you lose.

Yet, the Lord does not just command the seeking of the kingdom of God, but "…the kingdom of God and His righteousness..". In essence, Christ is detailing the only meaningful pursuit in this life: the power of God (His kingdom) and the righteousness of God (His character and essence). Nothing else in Heaven or earth or under the earth matters. Not riches, nor glory, nor fame, nor long life, nor comfort, nor health, nor relationships, nor authority, nor food, nor drink. Nothing else matters. If you don't have God, in the end, you have nothing, no matter what else you may have managed to acquire.

Worry is an obstacle to this pursuit. It serves as a roadblock or massive distraction. It forces you to focus on things of earth, rather than things above, where your desire for true citizenship should rightly be. Worry prevents you from giving your full attention to seeking God and His righteousness, and it becomes a sickening inward spiral. The more you worry, the less you seek Him, the less you receive His comfort and strength, which leads you to worry more, receive even less comfort, and so on until you either give up or become obsessed with pursuing and maintaining material things. Jesus pleads with us to recognize this syndrome, and to recognize our powerlessness over time and space. His final loving exhortation in this area is so unlike what the world conditions us to do: Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Like everything else in these seminal teachings on anxiety, the Lord's commands and assurances are gracious gifts from a loving Father conveyed by an obedient and glorious Son for our benefit. Do not fret, and seek the kingdom and righteousness of God and all these things shall be added to you. The Father knows what we need before we ask, and delights to give us those needs, as well, as the delights of our hearts, but to receive them we have to be in a position of blessing. It is like the gifts bestowed by any loving parent. In order to be received rightly, and to not reinforce wrong behavior, the child must be in obedience to the parent for the child's own best interests. It is not even that the gifts are a reward for good behavior, but that they are expressions of love that must be withheld if they will in any way be interpreted as a reward for bad.

In this life, the only way to know God is to know His Son. The only way to know His Son is to receive the gospel, the good news of salvation by grace through faith. Once saved, the only way to ensure that your priorities are correct is if you immerse yourself in the Word of God, in order to so know and understand the truth of God that seeking the kingdom of God is the ONLY pursuit that makes any sense. In this life, or in the life to come.

After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.” (Genesis 15:1, NKJV).