Your Father Knows
“Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Matthew 6:31-33
I don’t thank God enough for the blessing that it is to have enough food, enough clothes, and a good place to sleep every night. We are so fortunate to not have to worry about where our next meal will come from and if we’ll be warm when we go to sleep tonight. That doesn’t mean we don’t have needs though, and sometimes we do worry about the things we need.
I find myself being anxious about my internal needs more than my external needs, like whether my friends and I will continue to be close as we grow older and change. Or whether I’ll get good enough grades to pass all of my classes. These things and others are real needs and things that we do have to be attentive to.
You could probably name a couple more that you might find yourself worrying about. There are things in life that we need just as much as we need food and clothes. And there are times when we start to worry about them. Essentially, that’s worrying about whether God will take care of us or not.
The cool thing is, just like the verse says, God knows that you need those things. If you read Matthew 6 starting from verse 25, you’ll find a beautiful picture of how God takes care of His creation. He takes care of the sparrows who don’t store up food. They don’t need to because he provides for them. It talks about how lilies don’t make clothes but they’re beautifully clothed because God made them that way. It points out that we are so much more important to God than lilies or sparrows and, if He takes care of them, of course He’s going to take good care of us!
It’s great to remember that God is watching out for us, providing what we need. But that’s not the only thing this passage talks about. Before the verses above, verse 25 says, “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” Jesus is telling us that we shouldn’t worry about these things because God is taking care of us, but also because there are other things that are more important.
The end of the passage tells us to seek God’s kingdom first. This means that we should be more focused on getting closer to God and honoring Him than we are focused on the things we need. And we can do that because, like the verse says, those things are already taken care of!
Instead of worrying about things that God has promised to take care of, we should be “worrying” about what our relationship with him is like. Not worrying like being anxious about it, but worrying as in seeking to do something to make it better.
So what are you worrying about? Give it to God, trusting that He will take care of you, and then ask Him to bring you closer to Him.