Nobody ever said it better than Jesus. He capsulated the whole concept of a worry-free life in one sentence. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you (Matthew 6:31-33). Amazing!
A quick look at the sentence and you realize there's a command, “Seek first the kingdom, His righteousness.” And then there is a promise, “All these things will be added to you.” The command is our responsibility. The promise is His. How great that is. Keep on seeking the Lord's will and doing it the Lord's way. And when you do that, He will handle all the other things — “What will we eat? What will we drink?” or “What will we wear for clothing?” — the stuff of life. The things that make us worried.
Sometimes it takes a traumatic event for us to get that correctly fixed in our minds. That's what happened to Stephen King, the author, a very famous, very wealthy man who wound up in a ditch, having been hit by a car. Compound fracture of his right leg, covered with glass, wondering if he'd ever be found. That was 1999. He writes,
“A couple of years ago I found out what ‘you can't take it with you’ means. I found that out while I was lying in a ditch at the side of a country road, covered with mud and blood and with the tibia of my right leg poking out the side of my jeans like the branch of a tree.
I had a MasterCard in my wallet, but when you're lying in a ditch with broken glass in your hair, no one accepts MasterCard. We all know that life is short and transient, but on that particular day and in the months that followed, I got a painful but extremely valuable look at life's simple backstage truths.
We come in naked and broke. We may be dressed when we go out, but we're just as broke. Warren Buffet? Going to go out broke. Bill Gates? Going out broke. Stephen King? Broke. Not a crying dime. All the money you earn, all the stocks you buy, all the mutual funds you trade—all of that is mostly smoke and mirrors.
No matter how large your bank account, no matter how many credit cards you have, sooner or later things will begin to go wrong with the only three things you have that you can really call you own: your body, your spirit and your mind. So I want you to consider making your life one long gift to others. And why not? All you have is on loan anyway. All that lasts is what you pass on.”
Now we're looking ahead and we don't know the details of what the new year holds for us. But it helps to know that in the Scriptures we find a map to ready us for the journey.
Jesus is saying, “If you will make the Lord God your priority, He will make your needs His priority. If you will give Him full focus, He will provide the needs you have and that will become His focus.”
By Chuck Swindoll
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