DAILY DEVOTIONAL – January 15, 2021
“Don’t Sweat It”
Prayer: Heavenly Father, when we behold the cross we see the depth of Your love for us and the cost You are willing to pay Yourself to ensure it is well with our souls. Forgive us when our trust is misplaced, and keep us in the joy of Your salvation. Amen.
Scripture: Luke 12:22-31
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. 24 Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! 25 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 26 If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? 27 Consider the lilies, 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. 28 But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! 29 And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. 30 For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. 31 Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.”
Devotional – “Don’t Sweat It”
Back in 2014 the company Amazon completed a survey to find out what the most highlighted passage of the Bible was. The winning verse was Philippians 4:6, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
I’m not sure if the survey has been done again since by Amazon or any other company, but if I was a betting man I would feel pretty good about the odds of that still being the most highlighted verse of 2020.
In verse 25 of our text for today Jesus says something that should grab our attention. “And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?” A small thing. Jesus just called adding one hour to your life a ‘small thing’?! Think about all of the money and time and energy and effort man has expended trying to find the fountain of youth or the next medical breakthrough that will help us live forever. And yet, for all of our medicines and treatments that are no doubt a blessing in many ways, we can in no way say that they are adding even an hour to our life. For anyone to make such a claim, they would have to know what only God knows – the exact time a person is supposed to die and how they are to die. No man knows this about themselves, and certainly not about anyone else, so even when we feel we have been spared from death, we can never say we were able to “add a single hour” to our life. Jesus plainly says we are “not able to do as small a thing as that.” If we can’t do the smallest of things, why do we worry about the rest?
Adding an hour of life is an afterthought for the Almighty. In His teaching Jesus is trying to get us to realize the real problem, the real source of our anxiety – sin, and the death our sin has earned us and will bring us. Jesus is trying to make us wrestle with the sin and death of our anxiety so that He would bring us peace and rest and assurance in the fact only the One eternal God and Creator of all things who reigns over all things and fulfills all things has the power and the loving desire to provide salvation from sin and death, and who in fact has provided that salvation through the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus. God, as our loving Heavenly Father who clothes the lilies of the field that are here today and gone tomorrow and who feeds the ravens who neither have to reap or sow for their food, did not send His Son to die for lilies and ravens on the cross. Jesus died for you and for me. How much more will that same Heavenly Father, then, care for those whom He did pour out His blood for on the cross?
The peace that God has promised to give us, the serenity to endure even the most difficult times in life, and the confidence that helps us endure with true everlasting joy comes only through faith in who God is, in His goodness, in His faithfulness and in His perfect provision that comes in His perfect time and in His perfect way. We are set free from worry and anxiety not by believing in God for the sake of getting what we want or think we need, using faith as a bargaining chip, but by truly trusting in God with our whole life because of who He is. He is the God of all love and mercy and compassion who did not spare even His own Son for the sake of redeeming us, forgiving us of our sins, saving us from death and graciously giving us the assurance of eternal life in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
When by faith we live in the knowledge of the truth that we have been made sons and daughters of the Most High God through the blood of His perfect Son Jesus Christ, that is when our anxiety joins our sin and is separated from us as far as the east is from the west. It is in the confidence of knowing and trusting in Christ as our eternal worth and treasure that the Apostle Paul says in Romans 8:32, “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”
The Good News is that God has already given you all things. He has given you heaven itself. He has given you His Son Jesus who has forgiven us, who has made us His own, who reigns on high and who is coming again very soon with all the glory and majesty of heaven to take us back to Himself.
Thanks for joining me today for another daily devotional, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today, and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
