May 14, 2023

Luke 12: 22 Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear.” (NIV)

[Worry is] calling God a liar. God promises, “I will supply all your needs . . .” But worry says, “I don’t think that’s true.”*

We could pluck any random verse out of the Bible and use it to prove something other than what was intended. This verse, for example, could be misused by a lazy individual to back-up his decision not to work. Jesus clearly said not to worry about the necessities of life . . . but he didn’t say, “Do not work for them.” As someone has pointed out, Jesus was simply telling us to keep work in the right perspective.*

There are worriers in the world who, while they understand the gist of Jesus’ admonition against worry, haven’t really learned how to apply it to their lives. They send up a smoke-screen of responsibility to hide their worrying. They abide by the principle that we should pray as if everything depends on God and work as if everything depends on us. Except that’s not what Jesus said, either.

We learn from other passages that worry in general is wrong; but here Jesus is addressing a specific concern: our physical needs. We can become so involved in providing for our food, clothing, and shelter that we forget that God provides. You may go to work every day and bring home a paycheck but what do you bring to that job that God didn’t provide you? What does that job give you that didn’t originate in the hand of God?

In the next verse, Jesus continues: “Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.” Don’t let worry about those physical things distract you from the spiritual. As David proclaimed in Psalm 37: 25, “I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.” God has promised to provide our needs so that we are free to pursue eternal matters.

Spiritual needs ultimately outlast and outweigh physical needs; the bread of life is more valuable than perishable bread.*