Does Worrying Mean You Don’t Trust God? | Jesus Said What?!

See, worry sells itself as control. If I think about it enough, I'll be ready. But Jesus is honest here, worry can't give us the control we're after. Worry spends today's strength on tomorrow's problems and leaves us with neither strength for today or hope for tomorrow. Welcome to the Infocus Church podcast. We're in the sixth week of our series, Jesus said what? And today Pastor Brent takes us into Matthew chapter 6. Jesus tells us not to worry, but the bills are real and so are the people we love. So what is he really asking of us? Here's the message. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow. For tomorrow, we'll worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Gotta tell you, I'm a little bit worried about today's message. Which seems a little counterintuitive considering we're talking about now worrying, which is causing me some anxiety about the subject of worry. I'm trying to be a little humorous, but there's a real question underneath all of this. How in the world are we supposed to live in this broken world and not worry? We have people that we love and care about. We have bills to pay. We have decisions to make. We have elections that we're thinking about. And in all of that, we're supposed to live in such a way with all kinds of circumstances that we can't control. And Jesus says, do not worry. So what is exactly he asking us to do? Does feeling anxious actually mean we're failing to trust God? What about those intrusive thoughts that probably all of us have before we've even had a chance to make a decision about what we're going to do? Just this week, Josh, our Executive Director here, and I were discussing some important decisions that we needed to make for the church, which is not completely abnormal. But we were wrestling with them trying to decide what was the best path forward and trying to come up with something that not only was beneficial to the body and the staff, but also honoring God in our decisions and how we make them. And he texted me at one point and said, well, I'm just going to stop worrying about it. And I can't wait till Sunday so I can learn how to do this right. You know how much anxiety that caused me? Apparently, I'm supposed to figure this out before the end of this message for me and Josh. But I imagine a lot of us come to these words of Jesus with the same questions that I have. We would love to worry less. We would love to trust God more. But what does it look like when things that we're worried about are real? In real time. So let's read Matthew chapter 6 together. As we continue in this series, Jesus said, what? And we're going to talk about what Jesus said. But I want to mention first that the heading in your Bible is probably that you have headings in different sections of the Bible. Probably right here says that it was put there about translators and editors. It's not like inspired. It says, do not worry. Period. Nothing helps a worrisome person worry less than telling them to stop doing it. Those words really are in the passage they are. But if those are the only words that we read or that we hear, we miss everything that Jesus gives us around them in the context of the sermon on the mount. We need to expand our hearing into the whole passage really into the entire sermon on the mount. Because Jesus gives us more than a command not to worry or a command to wrestle with if you will. He gives us reasons to trust the Father. So let's read Matthew chapter 6 starting in verse 25. Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life. What you will eat or drink or about your body, what you will wear. It's not life more than food and the body more than clothes. Look at the birds of the air. They do not so or reap or store away in barns and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow? They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you not even Solomon and all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God closed the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothes you? You of little faith. So do not worry. Say 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. Holy Spirit, we ask that you would illuminate your word today. This is your word, God. Let it change and transform us. Jesus said what? Jesus is directing our attention to the Father's care, our Father's kingdom, and then a tomorrow that we can entrust to a good Father. If I could distill this down to a faithful summary of what I believe Jesus is exhorting us to do in these verses, it will be simply this and I'll come back to this again and again. Trust the Father with tomorrow while taking the next faithful step today, whatever that is. And before we go any further, I want you to notice how Jesus speaks about God in this passage. He says your Heavenly Father. The reason that matters is because some of you here do not worry. And you immediately wonder whether you have disappointed God so much in your life that you can no longer belong in God's family. If you belong to Jesus, let me encourage you today. Your place in God's family rests in the grace of God not in your performance. So you do not have to earn your place in the family of God by producing a perfectly calm heart this morning. You can bring your heart to your Father. So your Father will challenge you. That's true and that's what I hope the Word of God will do today. He will call you to trust in Him more and to grow in your trust and that's good. And you can come to Him honestly while that growth in your life is still happening, aren't you glad for that? With the questions, with the fear and the thoughts that you wish would go away. But you keep that in mind as you know that you come to the Father who loves you. Also want to clear up a few things that I think we can misunderstand about this entire passage. Because if you've been in the church for any amount of time you've heard this before and maybe even if you have been in the church you've heard about the birds and the flowers of the field, God takes care of us. But here's a few things that I think we misread in this passage. And what I mean is by sometimes we can feel crushed by what we think Jesus said, that He never said. And on the opposite side we can be comforted by what we think Jesus said, that He never said. I see that a lot. First, this is not Jesus saying worry is a sin so knock it off. That's not what's going on here. Jesus does challenge our lack of trust, yes. But He does more than tell worrying people to stop worrying. He's also letting us know that we have a Father that we can trust, who cares for you more than you can even come up with the reasons of how He cares for you. More than you can imagine. Second, this is not a promise that if you put God first your bills will always get paid. It's just not because we can read verse 33. All these things will be added unto you. That means that I'm going to get everything that I need, all the stuff that I want, all the things that God's going to take care of that. Verse 34 is honest as well. And it says each day has enough trouble of its own. So there's going to be trouble. Jesus never sold anybody a trouble-free life. He actually said at the beginning of the sermon on the mount, if you're persecuted, you're blessed. So blessed are the persecuted. And He promises a Father who will always be with you in this troubled life. Not that you won't have trouble in this life. Third, this is not a call to sit back and wait for God to drop everything in your lap. Jesus says, look at the birds and He points out their activity and God's provision that belong together. And then lastly, let me say this carefully. This is not a rebuke to anyone who struggles with clinical anxiety. Jesus is talking about the anxious preoccupation and the worry that grips us over provision. What will eat? What will wear? How are we going to make it? He's not diagnosing a medical condition. Anxiety can involve psychological and physical factors that require yes, professional care. And these verses do not give us permission to diagnose someone else's faith by the severity of their symptoms. If someone has ever done that to you, I apologize and I'm sorry because here's what we understand in this, God is a good Father. So someone saying we'll just buck up and get more faith, that's not helpful. Get the help you need from a counselor or a doctor, yes, get prayer, share your burdens with a trusted brother or sister in Christ and let this passage be a Father's invitation to trust him more, not a charge against you. Trust the Father with tomorrow while taking the next faithful step today. Okay, so if it isn't scolding, it's not a guarantee, it's not an invitation to passivity and it's not a diagnosis than what is it. Let's start with the very first word in verse 25, therefore, therefore what? We know that's what that means. See therefore, you want to know what it's there for. Therefore what? Just before this, Jesus said, you cannot serve both God and money. We've already talked about that in this series. And just before this in context, he's talking about, you can't serve both God and money. Now here the question forming, if you will, if money can't be my master and it can't be my security, then who's going to take care of me? That's where worry lives and that's where worry grows. Worry is often what happens when our security has been moved somewhere other than our heavenly Father. When the what-ifs of this life have replaced what is true about our good Father. So Jesus doesn't answer with a technique and there's nothing inherently wrong with techniques. But Jesus knows the greatest reorientation of our thoughts is going to be fixing our hearts and our minds on our heavenly Father so he points us to our your Father. Then he points us to how the gospel always starts. What God has done more than what you need to do. That's where the gospel always starts. What God has already done on our behalf, not what you've got to performatively create and make happen in your life. So he says this is not life more than food and the body more than clothes. What is he saying? You didn't earn your life. He gave it to you and you didn't create your body. He made that. He knitted you and formed you in your mother's womb. Someone gave you both. That's God. So if the Father gave you the bigger gift, your life and your whole self, then can't you trust him with a smaller one, food and clothing. And to help illustrate Jesus points to something that we can see right out in nature every single day. Birds. He points to birds. Like, look at the birds. Now why would you tell people with real life problems to do some bird watching? Like you think about that, it's like, okay, there's a bird. I mean if you're trying to figure out how to feed your family, watching a bird can seem like a strange assignment unless it's big enough to shoot and kill and eat. And that's not what he's saying here. But listen to where he takes our attention. You're heavenly Father feeds them. And then he asks, are you not much more valuable than they? And what he's saying is birds are busy. Birds are busy. They gather food. They build nests. They feed their young. And Jesus looks at all that activity that they're doing and says, but your Father feeds them. The birds are teaching us something about the Father. Their activity is part of how the Father provides for them. The bird gathers its food that it did not create. It lives in a world that they do not sustain and its effort takes place within God's provision. Now bring that into your life. You go to work, you make the budget, you do what you can do to care for the people that God has entrusted to you. But the real question is, what are you carrying in your heart and in your mind while you do all of that? Because sometimes we carry this conviction that it all rests on us. Everything depends on me. I have to anticipate every problem, prevent every failure and make sure everybody is going to be okay. And that's a lot of pressure. So even when the work day ends, we're still working on things in our minds. We're still calculating, still trying to make tomorrow certain. And Jesus is inviting us to do the work but do so knowing that we have a Heavenly Father that provides what we cannot. Who cares for us? So we can pray, Father, thank you for the strength and the opportunity to work today. Help me to do it well as unto you. Open doors. I cannot open. Provide what I cannot provide. Help me receive what you give even through other people, God. You still send the application. You still have that conversation with somebody you need to speak with. You still show up for your shift. You still have the difficult conversation with the boss that you might need to have. But you can acknowledge that your effort has limits and you bring those limits to God. You could take your responsibility seriously without believing everything depends on you. So he says, look at the birds. They're taking life seriously but I'm the one that feeds them. Jesus says, your Father feeds those birds and you matter to God infinitely more than birds. If the birds help us see provision, which they should, then he goes and he starts talking about flowers and those help us consider the care that God gives us. To care for something so fragile and brief, Jesus says, see how the flowers of the field grow, not a garden, not a greenhouse, a wild flower in a field. That's what he's pointing to. Nobody planted them, nobody's going to cut them and put them in a vase. They come up, they open, they're beautiful and then they're gone. Jesus says it himself that here today and tomorrow they're thrown into the fire because Bible scholars say that they would take dry grass and use it for fuel for their ovens. Now these flowers don't get remembered. They get burned for the next meal and hear what Jesus says about them. Not even Solomon in all of his splendor was dressed like one of these flowers. Solomon, the richest king that Israel had ever known, a whole kingdom's worth of resources behind him and Jesus says he loses to a wild flower in a ditch. Imagine an artist who spends the whole day on a masterpiece and the next day throws that masterpiece into a fireplace. Why? We'd say, why would you do that? But that's what the Father does every spring. He pours out beauty on what will be gone tomorrow. That's the argument and it's an argument for us to put our complete confidence and trust in God. If that's how God, He say, if that's how God closed the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow's thrown in the fire, will He not much more clothe you? If He magnificently closed the one day flower, what will He do for you? The crown jewel of creation and He says, not might He, will He not much more? See where He says the Father is stingy and that He rations and that He holds back and that I'd better hold on tight because there may not be enough at the end of the month. Jesus says, no way. Your Heavenly Father is the God who dresses what burns up tomorrow. The grass is temporary and you, my friends, are precious to Him. Listen to me, church, the need that you brought into this room this morning belongs to someone God loves. You do not have to persuade your Father that you are worth caring for. He just cares for you. That's the force of Jesus' question in this analogy, if you will. Look at the care that He gives to this flower. Now consider how much more you matter to Him. Jesus gives these pictures of the Father's care alongside them. He asks us to consider what our worrying can actually accomplish anyway. This has got to be one of my favorite verses anyways. How many years to your life can you add? Can any of you by worrying at a single hour to your life in verse 27? Let's sit with that for a minute because if we could, there are some of us who are going to live a really long time, but that question stings a little bit. When we realize how much time we spent investing in worry instead of investing in trust in God, see worry sells itself as control. While Jesus is honest here, worry can't give us the control we're after. worry spends today's strength on tomorrow's problems and leads us with neither strength for today or hope for tomorrow. The late Pastor Tim Keller described anxiety as the will to control the uncontrollable. I think that helps us recognize something that can happen when we worry because we care deeply about something or someone, and we want to guarantee how something or someone is everything's going to turn out. We want control, so we keep rehearsing something and imagining something and we keep solving it in our minds and sometimes we even feel irresponsible for setting it down as though worrying for somebody is going to prove to them how much we love them. You know we said that before, "Well, baby, I just worry about you." Well, honey, I'm just worried about you, but there's a difference between taking responsibility for what we can do and trying to guarantee what we can't. We can gather information, we can seek advice, we can make a plan, we can pray, and there's still an outcome that we cannot control or command no matter what we do. Which brings us to the two challenging words. words of this passage. The challenge, that's a strong one. When Jesus says, you of, here they are, little faith, little faith, not no faith. So he's not disqualifying anybody, but it's little faith. And this isn't a little problem. This is the challenge of these words. So let's sit in it a minute. Where have we brought little faith to a father who deserves big faith, great faith. 'Cause every hour we spend living in tomorrow is an hour we're not here for today, which God has given us. The father gave you today with real people in it and little faith lets tomorrow that doesn't exist yet take it away from you. Jesus is connecting and correcting our tendency to let what we fear become more decisive than what we know is true about our Heavenly Father. And when he asks, will he not much more clothe you? He's asking whether we believe God is who he has shown himself to be to us. Is God good? Fear lies and says no. Is God our provider? Fear lies and says no, you are and you can't do it. Is it fear or is it faith that is leading us in what we do today? And also worry has a cost that doesn't just affect you. We withhold generosity because we're afraid there won't be enough for us, we're worried. We don't tell the truth because we're afraid of what that honesty might cost us. We try to control people we love because we're afraid of what might happen if we can't manage their choices in everything in their life. Fear begins deciding what we're willing to do and what we're willing to give and how we treat people. We're effectively saying, Father, I will do what you ask. Once I can be sure, it will turn out the way I need it to turn out. But Jesus calls us to trust Him while the outcome is still unsure. To trust Him when we still aren't sure exactly how this situation, whatever it may be, is going to turn out. Jesus is addressing disciples whose faith needs to grow in very difficult times mind you. He's speaking to people who belong to Him but need to replace their fears about tomorrow with the faith that they have in a faithful God today. And that still speaks to us today. We can draw comfort from this as well. Jesus says little faith to disciples, watch this, that He's not gonna let go of. Just because we have little faith, Jesus doesn't go well, I'm done. He's not gonna let go of you. Matthew uses the same phrase when the disciples are terrified in the boat. Maybe you remember that story and Peter steps out onto the water and there's a storm and here's what Jesus says to Peter. He's sinking in the water and He noticed the order. He says this immediately, Jesus reached out His hand and He caught Him. Then He says you of little faith. You see the hand of God's provision comes first. The correction comes afterwards. The hand arrives first. The correction comes behind it but God does both. I'm gonna help you but I want you to trust me. You're listening to the Infocus Church podcast. So far, we've seen that our father feeds the birds and close the flowers and that worry can't add a single hour to your life. If this is speaking to you, send it to someone who needs it. Next, does every anxious feeling mean you don't trust God? - So how do we hear that correction? 'Cause I believe God is correcting me and you all of us today in some shape or fashion. How do we hear that without turning every anxious feeling that we have into a verdict on our relationship with God? So let's look at the word itself, the Greek word for worry in this. Mary now, which means worry, it does mean that or to have anxiety, but it also means to show care or concern. So Paul uses this same Greek word in Philippians chapter 2, verse 20, when he's talking to Timothy about Timothy's care and concern for the church and it's a good thing. It's the same word, but it's a good thing, a good care, a good concern. So Jesus isn't telling you to stop caring. He's not telling you to stop being concerned. He's talking about the kind of care and concern that swallows you, the kind that takes over your mind and leaves no room for the heavenly father to be trusted in your life. - That's the kind of care and concern he's talking about. Don't do that. Remember those thoughts that I mentioned earlier that can kind of show up those intrusive thoughts? They just show up immediately like, and you haven't even decided what you're going to do in life. They're just there. You open a bill and immediately what are you thinking? You're thinking, oh my goodness, what if we can't pay this and what if things keep getting worse and what if I lose this and that? Like those are all those thoughts that just start intruding your mind. You didn't sit down at the table with the bills and decide to distrust God. That thought just showed up and it might come back even while you're praying about it. Has that ever happened? Even while you're praying about it here, it comes again. And it's a rival and it's return. Do not automatically mean your prayer wasn't sincere or that you stopped trusting your father. But Jesus does invite us to notice how fear is influencing our response. To encourage us to not allow that, is it pushing us to hide the truth? Is it pushing us to shut people out? Is it pushing us to try to control someone that we love or something that we can't control? Right there with the concern still present. We can pray. Father, I am afraid and you know what we need. Help me to see the next faithful step today right now and give me the courage to take it. And that's where the good father comes in. 'Cause it says in this verse, your heavenly father knows that you need them. Listen, you don't have to persuade God that food matters. He knows you don't have to explain while your family needs something to wear somewhere to live, he knows. Some of you understand having very little margin, maybe that's where you are today. Some of you understand no margin at all and maybe you're even dealing with real food insecurity this morning. You could be one financial crisis away from going hungry or losing housing or something. And if that's you, the food your family needs matters to God. Jesus is saying you don't have to worry because you have a father who cares for you. 'Cause some of us can believe God cares about the world and still struggle that he built to believe that he cares about what's on our kitchen table. Some of us can believe that he holds the universe together in his hands, but we wonder whether we can bring him the grocery bill, the car payment, the power bill, the rent, the gas for the car. Here's the reality, you can. He's a good father who cares and you can trust him. If he cares for the birds and he cares for the flowers, how much more does he care about you? He loves you and that trust, as we begin to trust him more, frees us up to read verse 33 in a new way where we can see what our responsibility is. 'Cause yes, we have a responsibility. Like I said, this isn't an invitation to passivity. Jesus doesn't leave us with a vacuum where worry used to be, he gives us something to pursue within our uncertainty in this life and he says seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. His kingdom means God's rule and Lordship over your life. His righteousness means living in ways that reflect what is right before God. So the question becomes, what does obedience to my father look like in this situation that I'm in today? Whatever that is. And perhaps it means telling the truth when fear makes dishonesty look attractive. Perhaps it means being generous, even though as we said, generosity doesn't guarantee complete security it's just being obedient to God. Perhaps it means receiving help instead of protecting the appearance that everything is fine. See, when a few verses before Jesus teaches us to pray, he says give us this day our daily bread. Give us, notice there's us and there's our. Here's the reality, the father often answers our prayers through other people. Jesus gives us a priority, then he gives us a day in which to pursue it. So how do we pursue the next faithful step today? Let's picture an ordinary kitchen table in someone's home. We've probably all been through this scenario. Imagine someone whose hours at work have just been cut. They have the bills spread out in front of them. They're trying to figure out what they're gonna do and how they're gonna have any leftover for groceries. The need is real and so is the fear. And pretty soon they're thinking about next week, next month, the rest of the year, what happens if the hours never come back? What happens if this happens? What if this doesn't happen? And in a few minutes, the whole future seems to be sitting right there in those bills on the table. What might a faithful step look like right there? And maybe that's where you are. It might begin with a prayer. That's probably a great place to start. It sounds like father, I'm afraid. I don't know how this is gonna work. We need provision. Please give me the wisdom and help me receive the help I need. Then go to work, in essence, like the birds. Look at the actual numbers. Talk with somebody who can help make a plan. Tell somebody in your connect group what's happening. Call your employer, ask for what you can expect. You may still feel anxious a little bit while doing all those things while you're picking up the phone, having that conversation, but you can take the next faithful step today, even with trembling hands and feet. And somewhere else in the church, watch this because it's the kingdom of God at work. Somebody who has enough hears about the need and brings groceries to the person or the family. Now, the same words of Jesus seek first the kingdom, have called one person to receive help and another person to give the help. Both are learning what it means to seek the kingdom of God first. That matters church, that matters for us to be the church. If we tell somebody that the father cares about their needs, we should be willing to consider how he might use us to help us meet that need. And then planning fits here too, for all of you who are like, what about planning? I don't plan. I just plan this spontaneous life. Planning is good. Acts 11, when the church learns that a famine is coming, the believers arrange relief. They take a future need seriously and they act on it in the present. One can be an expression of love and trust as well. So you can make the budget, you can schedule the appointment, you can have a conversation about next year and make a plan because planning for tomorrow could be today's faithful step. Let me give you a real life example of receiving help instead of protecting the appearance that everything in life is fine. Just this week, someone in your spiritual family in this church had let their connect group leader know about an urgent financial need. They were two payments behind on their car and facing repossession. So through the benevolence ministry of this church because of your generosity and giving, we were able to bring those payments up to date so they could have their car. Someone asked for help, the church responded. Someone asked for help, the church responded as we seek first the kingdom of God together. Maybe you're in a similar situation. Matter of fact, let me ask this and don't be embarrassed because this is what we're talking about. Is there somebody in this room this morning saying I'm really not quite sure about how we're going to eat and pay for some food this week. Anybody in here like that. But I want you to hear this question underneath all of these prudent pursuits. What if I pray? What if I make the call? What if I do what I can? What if I ask for help and then the news gets worse? What if no one helps? Can I still trust the Father then? We can stay in that question for a moment because some of you have lived that. You prayed and the person you loved still suffered. You asked for wisdom. You took the steps you believed were right and the answer was still no. One assured you that everything was going to work out and then what happened next was instead terribly painful. And now you hear me saying, trust the Father with tomorrow and part of you wants to say, "Well, Pastor Brent, I did trust him and that's what makes this heart." I want you to know there's room to say that here. Sometimes we're afraid to admit our disappointment because we think it sounds like we're given up on God. So tell people we're doing fine, that's what we do or we're still trying to understand what happened. But you could tell the truth about how much this has hurt or how disappointed you are because you don't have to give up and you don't have to give us a reassuring ending or answer while you're still living in the middle of the struggle. Verse 33 speaks about actual provision. It does. Jesus means for us to trust the Father with bodily needs. We should pray for food. We should pray for work. We should pray for shelter and we should pray for help. Yes. And we should expect his care to reach into those practical places in our lives. And at the same time, we have to hear that promise alongside the rest of Scripture. Like in Philippians 4, Paul teaches us to bring our anxieties to God in prayer. But later in that same chapter, he talks about knowing hunger and need. He also thanks the church for sharing with him in his hunger and his need. That gives us a little more of a full holistic picture, I think, because faithful people can experience scarcity. God's people can become a means of provision. And we cannot explain every painful delay or unmet need by accusing the sufferer of insufficient faith. Jesus himself says each day has enough trouble. And he tells us that while inviting us to trust the Father, I cannot explain every painful delay or every unmet need in your life or my life, but I can show you that God has made his love known for us and that he is a good Father and why we should continue to press into him and to turn our eyes to him and to continue to trust him with our lives. Because later on in the book of Matthew, you see Jesus in a garden. The cross is ahead of him. He is deeply distressed, so distressed that he sweats drops of blood. He tells his friends what he's experiencing. He asks them to stay and pray with them and they don't. He brings his desire to the Father and he prays again and he entrust himself to the Father's will. Here is the Son who trusts the Father perfectly and what do you see in him? He's expressing anguish, seeking companionship and praying repeatedly over and over. Deep distress and faithful obedience are present in the same scene. You can bring your distress into the presence of God. You can ask somebody to stay with you and to help. You can return to the same prayer that you have prayed hundreds of times when the burden remains heavy. But here is the thing about Jesus. He didn't just show us how to face suffering. He actually suffered for us on the cross in our place. He bore our sin, including our failures to trust and obey. The forgiveness we need is found in Christ alone and when God raises him from the dead, here's what we see. We see that suffering and death will not have the final word. No matter what we go through this life, suffering and death will not have the final word. You Christ, we're welcome into God's family. That's why he is your Heavenly Father. And he can become somebody that you trust and rest the entirety of your life on. Our belonging to him rests in what Jesus has done on the cross, not what we do for him today. Now we can see why I said earlier. We do not have to earn our place in God's family by producing a perfectly calm heart. Jesus made a way for us to be in his family to come to the Father with all of our needs. If some of us need to hear that today, maybe all of us need to hear that today. You can come to God with a heart that is still racing. You can come to God with tears still streaming down your face. You can receive care while you're still learning to trust God. The cross and the resurrection give us reasons to entrust ourselves to God's love when we cannot explain what tomorrow will hold. Why? Because trusting the Father today with tomorrow is what he's calling us to do while taking the next faithful step today. And I want you to listen to the last part of verse 34. Jesus is acknowledging the weight of this day. It's got trouble. We can face what is before us today while entrusting tomorrow to the Father. Earlier, he taught us to ask for daily bread. Now he's calling us for daily trust. As we learn to depend on God for present needs, we grow in our trust concerning what is ahead. That growth may take time. We may need to return to this passage often and we can practice it together. That's why we're a part of the body. So I want to invite you to do something with one concern today that maybe you have that's causing you to worry in a way that is no longer trusting God's goodness in your life. That's what it would be. I give it a name. What's been following you throughout this message? What's been kind of rolling around in the back of your mind as God's word is being preached? What did you think about when we read the word tomorrow? Bring that concern to the Father. Once for six directs us to bring our request to God with prayer and thanksgiving. Tell him what you need, tell him what you fear, thank him for the care that you've received even while you ask for help with what remains unresolved. You do not have to make the prayer sound impressive. You just have to be honest. Father, I am scared about this. Can I tell you how many times I prayed that in my life? I'm scared. I need wisdom, I need provision. Please help me. I mean that's just an honest place to begin. Then I want you to finish with this sentence. Here's what this sentence I want you to finish with. With the Father's help, today I will, what, what is it that you're going to be faithful with today while trusting tomorrow to God? Maybe it's, make the appointment that you've been avoiding. Here with your help, today I will ask somebody to sit down and look at my bills. I will apologize for the way that fear has come out in anger towards somebody that I love. I'll ask a counselor or a doctor for help with the anxiety that keeps disrupting my life. I'll ask for prayer or support from my church family and here's the thing, because prayer and support from your church family and appropriate treatment can be held together. And perhaps you've already done all of that and maybe today this could be, you've made the call. You've done what you've done. you need to do. You've asked for wisdom. You've asked for prayer. You have time to revisit the decision. You've done all of that. So maybe here's your next step today. You go to lunch. You take a nap or you enjoy your family. Even though the outcome remains uncertain. Why? Because you're putting your hope in trust in God and you've done all that you can do. This is where we need one another even more. I love Proverbs 12, 25 that describes anxiety in the heart of a man ways him down, but a good word makes him glad. We're just saying you all can be the good word for somebody today. And somebody can have a good word for you today. I'll go with you. I'll bring dinner. I'll pray for you. And if the worry returns tonight, then you just bring it to the Father again. Listen, the return of the feeling does not erase the faithful step that you already took. Receive the support you need. Keep walking with Jesus. Keep trusting your heavenly Father. So how does this apply to us? Like even for me. So when Josh and I sit down again, and we will, we'll still have a decision to make because we always do. We can ask for wisdom. We can look for good counsel and wisdom. We can do whatever faithfulness requires that day. Then we can entrust what follows to the Father. And when you get home to your kitchen table, you can do the same thing. The things that concern you are still there. The bills may still be there. The unanswered question may still be there. But you could sit down at that table knowing that your father knows what you need and he cares for you. You do not have to know everything tomorrow holds to obey Jesus today. You can trust the Father with tomorrow while taking the next faithful step today. I don't know what your need is. I mean, a moment ago when I was asking if somebody needed something like food, it was because earlier this week, the Lord put that on my heart that I would ask and I would, we would help. So if that's you and you are afraid, there's nothing to be afraid of. That's how the body of Christ helps one enough. That's how we seek the kingdom of God together. But I'll ask again in the second service, somebody will get double. Now don't come back to the second service and pretend like you weren't here in the first. In all seriousness, if you need help, let us know. Jesus is here because he cares and he loves you. And I don't know what your needs are but God does. So let's be those that trust our Father. And not worry about tomorrow because today has enough trouble with so. Thanks for listening to the Infocus Church podcast. Here's the line to carry into your week. If this message helped you, send it to someone who needs it. Find us at infocus.church and on Instagram at Infocus Church. We'd love to see you on a Sunday in Augusta.