24 “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and
love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You
cannot serve God and mammon. 25 “Therefore I say to you, do not
worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your
body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than
clothing?
26 Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor
gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more
value than they? 27 Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to
his stature? 28 “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the
lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; 29 and
yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
these.
30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and
tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will
He not much more clothe
you, O you of little faith? 31 “Therefore do not worry, saying,
‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32
For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father
knows that you need all these things.
33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all
these things shall be added to you. 34 Therefore do not worry about
tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
I liked this passage because I saw
it as a way for me to witness to our non-Christian friends who would be
attending our wedding. This was my chance to let them know that THEY needed to
seek Him. Little did I know that this passage would be a life-verse for both
Cathy and I.
In fact, had I known it, I probably
would have picked another passage of scripture that would be the hallmark of
our lives. Something along the lines of;
“Your life will have no problems... Come to Him and you will
never have any struggles. You will never have to use faith. Simply ask God and
He will give you whatever you want as soon as you ask. He is a super generous
God who is at your service to meet every wish”
Unfortunately, that verse
doesn’t exist. So, we set out into our marriage with our eyes blind to what was
ahead of us, simply committing that we would seek Him first in all things.
We had to learn to stand on
Matthew 6:24-34 right away during our first year of marriage. Shortly after our
wedding, we got together with another couple from church to compare wedding
photos. They had gotten married one week earlier than we did and weren’t able
to attend our wedding because they were on their honeymoon.
At some point during our
evening the conversation transformed into a sales pitch for insurance. The
husband had a person goal of selling one million dollars during his first year
and we were in his crosshairs. When we explained that we
already had enough insurance (with another agent from the same insurance
company), he quickly stated that you can never have too much insurance because
who knows what will happen.
When that attempt didn’t work
to stop this salesman, I stated that if something came up, we would have to rely
on God’s provision. His response still challenges me today. He said, in
essence; “You can’t look to God to provide for you, that’s stupid!”
With that, we were done with
the conversation. What alarmed us more was that no matter how much we defended
our decision to “seek first His kingdom”, he was determined to undermine our
faith and get us to “live in the real world” not some fantasy world of make
believe.
We quickly ended our evening
and asked them to leave as his wife, who had been friends with me since
kindergarten, hid her face in embarrassment as they headed out the door. Little
did I know that this was the beginning of learning to stand by faith and not by
what others would say trying to undermine our faith.
"Scripture
taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Used by permission. All rights reserved."
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