Focus on God
Friday, October 2, 2009
By the Rev. Al Areheart
Special to The Gazette
My fiancée (who has been my wife for many years now) and I graduated from college in 1974. Good news: no debt; bad news: no money.
My bank account held less than $100. We were engaged to be married in five weeks. So I got up early on Monday morning after the Saturday graduation, read my Bible, prayed and took off to the construction site where I had been promised a job. To my dismay, there were no jobs. I shook the job superintendant’s hand with more confidence than I felt and told him, “It’s OK, God will take care of me.”
I went home, exhausted from the weekend and fell asleep. Later that morning, my parents awakened me and told me that the construction foreman wanted me to come to work.
“No! They told me that they don’t need more workers.”
Yes at 7 a.m., but at 8 am. they asked several workers to change crews and they quit. He wants you to come back. The condensed version is that I worked many hours including overtime and the wedding and honeymoon expenses were covered.
The verses that I read that morning were from Matthew 6:25-34. The key verse is No. 33 — “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.”
“All these things” refers to the needs of food, clothing and shelter that we all share. The principle is that when we truly put God first, he will take care of our needs. To be clear, the Bible has much to say about hard work and industriousness. But our provider is God, and He deserves our focus.
In this passage, Jesus deals with the issue of anxiety as it relates to materialism. Six times he uses the word “anxious” which literally means “to be torn apart.” When we focus on our selfish materialistic desires, we become anxious, worried and torn apart emotionally.
He gives two “how much more” arguments. First, from the lesser to the greater, he reasons, “Is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothes?” His point is that God has created and sustained your life. If God can take care of the greater need, our life and our body, he can he take care of the lesser — the food and clothes that we need.
The second “how much more” statement argues from the lesser to the greater. Note that the birds do not sow, reap or gather into barns, but he feeds them. Note that the lilies do not toil or spin (make cloth) but our Father clothes them. The point is that if our heavenly father cares for these little birds and flowers, how much more will he care for us — human beings with an eternal soul.
“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.” God calls us to live counter culturally. Instead of seeking your own kingdom and obsessing over acquiring stuff, he challenges us to seek his kingdom and his righteousness.
Make your life a spiritual adventure. Seek heaven and get earth thrown in too. The converse is not true. See earth and miss heaven (see Luke 9:23-27)
What if you made a paradigm shift? What if, in every facet of life — recreation, marriage and family, in our church, in our community, at our jobs — we began to look with an open seeking spirit: “Lord, what do you want to do here? Where are you already working; I long to join you.”
God is looking for those who are seeking his kingdom in every corner of this world.
I am challenged by John White’s prayer in his book, “Flirting with the World”:
“Dear Lord, show me myself. Tell me where I grieve you. I feel within me the pull of the world and I am both ashamed and weak. I want to obey you and yet I find myself craving the things the world offers as well.
Lord, make heaven real to me. Teach me to know at the very center of my being that my true citizenship is in heaven, not here on earth. Thank you for the material blessings you have poured on me, but tear the attraction for them from my heart so that I become truly indifferent to wealth or poverty and am free to abound or to be in want — indifferent to every circumstance in life except that I may hold your hand and walk beside you. Show me that the world is a fickle and false companion and a cruel master. Keep me loyal to you.”
• “Sunday Sermon” is a forum for Emporia area ministers to share their sermons, thoughts and observations. This week’s sermon is from the Rev. Al Areheart, pastor at 12th Avenue Baptist Church.