Kingdom of Life

Life is full of unknowns. We don’t always know why things are happening or what will happen in the future. In fact, we usually don’t know. We may have questions about many kinds of things, including spiritual matters, world/national/community affairs, career, relationships, physical well-being, and finances. We may worry about our own lives, or we may worry about loved ones.

God, through His Holy Spirit, enables believers in Christ to grow in love, joy, peace and patience, among other things (Galatians 5:22-23). Yet the cares and concerns of this world may still sometimes threaten to prevent us from manifesting this spiritual fruit (Matthew 13:22). Perhaps you are like me; I have a natural tendency to over-analyze things. I want to know why things are happening or not happening in my life, and to know what will happen in the future. Even though we know God is in charge and that we should not worry, we may still do it anyway. I have sometimes wondered: Am I doing anything to prevent God’s will for my life from happening? We may become anxious, tossing back and forth in our minds about something.

That is not what God wants for us. He wants us to be assured of His love and care for us, to grow in our relationship with Him, and to experience His goodness, not to worry ourselves to death about things we cannot understand or control.

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines worry as “mental distress or agitation resulting from concern usually for something impending or anticipated”. In addition to concern over what will happen in the future, we are also including, in our definition, concern for why things are the way that they are.

Things will not always make sense

We will not always understand why things are the way they are. God’s ways are higher than ours. Also, it does not always suit His purposes to reveal to us everything He is doing and how He is doing it.

Just as you do not know the path of the wind,
or how the bones form in the womb of a pregnant woman,
so you do not know the work of God who makes everything. (Ecclesiastes 11:5)

But sometimes it is a very difficult thing to not know. It can be hard for our minds to find peace or rest without knowing. Perhaps this is the essence of worrying: We want to know, to understand, but we have insufficient information to analyze; we have insufficient knowledge with which to reach a conclusion. When we think, for whatever reason, that we must reach some sort of definitive conclusion anyway, then we are condemning ourselves to tossing back and forth between various possibilities.

There is a sense in which our desire to know and understand stems from being created in God’s image:

I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. (Ecclesiastes 3:10-11, NIV)

So what is the difference between healthy curiosity and worrying? Ultimately, worry is unbelief in God, in His sovereignty and care. Worry is really a lack of faith.

This may seem to be a rather bold statement. After all, “everybody does it.” Worry is so commonplace that we may have come to see it as something we can indulge or tolerate in our lives.

But let’s think about this for a moment. We know we will not understand everything that is happening. We know God is in charge of everything. And we know that worry is without benefit to us and can actually do more harm than good. If we still decide to spin our wheels by worrying, it must mean that we are not, for whatever reason, fully trusting God.

If we have trusted in Jesus to save us, then God has forgiven us, adopted us into His family, given us His Spirit, and is working to transform us into the people He wants us to be.

And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose, because those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; and those he called, he also justified; and those he justified, he also glorified. (Romans 8:28-30)

God is in charge and is working for the good of those who love Him. If we believe this — really believe it — then we should be willing to accept not knowing or understanding things sometimes. After all, if God is really working supernaturally in our world, then there are going to be things that we cannot explain naturally. If everything has to always make sense to me, then I am not leaving room for God to work in my life. Instead of wanting to understand everything, we should trust God and be responsive to His leadership. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding. Acknowledge him in all your ways, and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)

Don’t worry about tomorrow

Not only should we not worry about what is happening, we also should not worry about the future. If we have difficulty understanding the present, how much more difficult it is to guess the future! But, as we have already seen, in a larger spiritual sense we do know what the future holds: We will be conformed to the image of Christ and glorified with Him, if we have put our faith in Him. If we really believe God is in charge and is working for the good of those who love Him, we should be willing to leave our future in His hands.

This does not mean we should adopt a passive attitude toward life, or not care about what will happen or the results of our actions. But we should understand the role that God has given us to play in His kingdom. He ensures the outcome but has given us the opportunity to participate in bringing it about.

There is a popular saying which says, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” This can be a little misleading, as our destination in life matters very much. We are either moving toward the destination of heaven, being with God for eternity, or moving away from God and persisting in rebellion. Our destination has eternal implications. Also, the saying might suggest to some that life is about maximizing our enjoyment of this world. God cares about our well-being in this world but cares even more about our spiritual well-being and destiny. Nevertheless, the saying may be of some use if it helps us to be less ‘result-oriented’ and more ‘process-oriented’. We don’t need to obsess about the future or the outcome of what is happening in our lives — God will look after that. It is more profitable for us to focus on living now the way God wants us to live, on being the people He wants us to be.

The apostle Paul, writing to the believers in Corinth on the subject of disagreements about church teaching, indirectly provided some insight into what our attitude should be toward our lives as God’s servants:

What is Apollos, really? Or what is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, and each of us in the ministry the Lord gave us. I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused it to grow. So neither the one who plants counts for anything, nor the one who waters, but God who causes the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters work as one, but each will receive his reward according to his work. We are coworkers belonging to God. You are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master-builder I laid a foundation, but someone else builds on it. And each one must be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than what is being laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, each builder’s work will be plainly seen, for the Day will make it clear, because it will be revealed by fire. And the fire will test what kind of work each has done. If what someone has built survives, he will receive a reward. If someone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss. He himself will be saved, but only as through fire. (1 Corinthians 3:5-15)

God has given us the privilege of planting and watering seed, but God is the one who makes it grow. We cannot do anything about whether the seed will grow or not, and we don’t need to worry about it. That doesn’t mean we don’t care about what will happen, just that we need to focus on our task, which is planting or watering or whatever God has given us to do. Note also that each person’s work will ultimately be revealed for what it is. We might sometimes think that what we do will go unnoticed or unappreciated. But we can be sure that regardless of the quality of our work, eventually “each builder’s work will be plainly seen, for the Day” will reveal “what kind of work each has done.” God sees what no one else does and will reward us accordingly.

We are free to focus on serving God, because He will look after the final result of what we do. And if He does that, He will also provide for us whatever we need to serve Him, as Jesus said:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t there more to life than food and more to the body than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky: They do not sow, or reap, or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you more valuable than they are? And which of you by worrying can add even one hour to his life? Why do you worry about clothing? Think about how the flowers of the field grow; they do not work or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of these! And if this is how God clothes the wild grass, which is here today and tomorrow is tossed into the fire to heat the oven, won’t he clothe you even more, you people of little faith? So then, don’t worry saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For the unconverted pursue these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But above all pursue his kingdom and righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So then, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Today has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:25-34)

Again, this is not saying we can be passive and not do anything, but that we can trust God with our lives. He will equip us to glorify Him and be a blessing to others. Paul, in a letter to believers in Thessalonica, after mentioning the eventual return of Jesus, stressed the significance of our lives here and now:

And in this regard we pray for you always, that our God will make you worthy of his calling and fulfill by his power your every desire for goodness and every work of faith, that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thessalonians 1:11-12)

If our life in this world is a journey, it is not merely something we have to grit our teeth and endure until we can get to heaven, all the while feverishly trying to ensure that all goes well along the way. It is, rather, an adventure in which we can experience His goodness and enjoy the privilege of participating in what God is doing in the lives of others, all the while being assured that He will provide whatever is needed along the way.

Pray

So if we find ourselves consumed by worry, how can we free ourselves from it and start entrusting ourselves to God? We can start by admitting that we cannot free ourselves. But through the power of God all things are possible.

First, we must hear and believe what God has said about this. Some of the relevant scripture passages have already been noted. God is in charge, He is worthy of our trust, He will carry out His purposes to bless us and enable us to be a blessing to others, and He will always be with us and take care of us. God’s blessings to us are first and foremost spiritual blessings. “For God did not give us a Spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control.” (2 Timothy 1:7)

If we believe what God has said, we can approach Him in prayer and ask for what He has promised in the name of Jesus, who promised His disciples, “‘At that time you will ask me nothing. I tell you the solemn truth, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive it, so that your joy may be complete.’” (John 16:23-24) We can ask God to help us to not worry about something, and He will.

When we pray to God about a problem, we admit that we are unable to solve it ourselves, we acknowledge that He is able to handle it, and we express trust in Him to work things out for the best. It is hard to do this, and at the same time, to keep worrying about the problem, about what is going to happen, and about how we are going to solve it.

If worry has become strongly established, it may take time to overcome and it may be very difficult at first. But the longer we persist in prayer, the more the worry will diminish. The further this process goes, the easier it will become.

If you are like me you may have found yourself worrying about something that you have known all along is really not worth worrying about. You may feel it is not worth bothering God about. First of all, God loves us and is interested in our well-being in every aspect of our lives. There is no such thing as something that is too trivial to talk to God about. Second, even if I think something is trivial, if I am becoming paralyzed by worry about it, that is certainly not trivial. You may find helpful a principle that has helped me: If it’s worth worrying about, it’s worth praying about. If it’s not worth praying about, it’s not worth worrying about. Or, to put it a little differently: If I worry about something, I have to pray about it. If I am not willing to pray about something, I don’t let myself worry about it.

If we will do this consistently, if we will, when we are beset by questions about what is happening or will happen, turn to God and talk to Him about it, rather than worrying about it, we can live victoriously and confidently in the face of uncertainty.

This doesn’t mean that everything in our life will always suit us perfectly, or even that we will always get what we ask for. Remember what Jesus prayed on the night before His crucifixion:

“Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:36)

But we can have the joy which comes from the assurance that God will accomplish His purposes. That same night, Jesus also prayed this:

“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.” (John 17:24)

Christ has overcome the world

As we travel on our spiritual journey, we do not always understand our surroundings, and we cannot see everything on the path between where we are and the final destination, but we who believe know what our destination is.

Our surroundings can not only be incomprehensible, they will often be hostile. We live in a fallen world, and we will pay a price for identifying with Jesus. As He told His disciples:

“If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. However, because you do not belong to the world, but I chose you out of the world, for this reason the world hates you. Remember what I told you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they obeyed my word, they will obey yours too. But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me.” (John 15:18-21)

However, God, through His Word and His Spirit, tells us what we need to know during our lives in this world, as Jesus promised to His disciples:

“I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. For he will not speak on his own authority, but will speak whatever he hears, and will tell you what is to come.” (John 16:12-13)

No matter what we encounter on our spiritual journey, we can be assured that Christ has given us the victory, and that God will take care of us.

“I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In the world you have trouble and suffering, but take courage — I have conquered the world.” (John 16:33)

Most importantly, if we have put our faith in Jesus, we have His assurance of our spiritual destination:

“Do not let your hearts be distressed. You believe in God; believe also in me. There are many dwelling places in my Father’s house. Otherwise, I would have told you, because I am going away to make ready a place for you. And if I go and make ready a place for you, I will come again and take you to be with me, so that where I am you may be too.” (John 14:1-3)