We’re under pressure from all sorts of things, aren’t we? Stresses of work and family, house maintenance, neighbourhood challenges, national events, international issues – not to mention our own inner selves and health challenges. So often it feels like if it’s not one thing then it’s another – and any pause is just a lull in between storms!
Thankfully the Bible, which really is our handbook for life, is all ready to tell us how to respond. The Lord Jesus put such worries in context in the sermon on the mount in Matthew 6:31-34:
‘…do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear? For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.‘
Although it was almost 500 years before, we saw such faith in action in Nehemiah chs 1 & 2 on Sunday morning: to trust and seek first the Kingdom of God doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t plan and prepare and pray. Rather it means we can pray in detail but with open-hands for the Lord to decide the very best way we are to take.
The fact is that He IS sovereign and DOES know best and we CAN trust Him. On Sunday we caught a glimpse of Nehemiah proving that, and we worship the same LORD. As puritan writer William Gurnall puts it so helpfully: “The Christian life has never been about let go and let God. The Christian life means pray hard and fight!”
Spencer Shaw