Passage of the Day: Matthew 6: 31 – 32 … 31 So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 31 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.
My Journal for Today: Jesus had some highly pointed exhortations for His mostly, if not exclusively, Jewish audience for His famous sermon on that hillside in the Holy Land. And His words drive home the point that true believers, i.e., born-again Christians, are believers in the truth that God knows and provides for the needs of His children, Therefore, we should not live and act like unbelievers (i.e., “pagans”), who worry about what they eat, drink, or wear. Jesus is essentially asking us, to paraphrase a quote, “You’re not like those Gentiles (Greek = “ethnos,” which means “pagans), are you, in the way you live?”
Now Jesus wasn’t putting down the Gentiles as a people. We know, from Paul’s ministry/mission to the Gentiles, how much God loved the Gentiles. However, Jesus was using the ethnic behaviors of selfishness and greed, which were practiced by the Gentiles, as a point of demarcation in terms of how we, as believers, should “act” when it comes to handling God’s providence. For His followers [i.e., disciples in the larger sense], Jesus wanted them (us) to live differently from how the Gentiles habitually lived in that day. He wanted all of His disciples to really trust God, their Jehovah Jireh, for their well-being (which we can see from Paul’s teaching in Phil. 4: 19).
It’s really a matter of belief and trust; and Jesus is asking you and me in this passage today to trust God, The Heavenly Father, Who knows our every need and promises to provide for those needs. And He’s also saying that it’s pointless to live like pagans who worry about such things … especially when it causes them to selfishly live toward temporal and/or material concerns.
So, do we believe?! And each of us will answer that question by the way we live.
My Prayer Today: Lord, may my life reflect my trust in You. Amen
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