Do not be Anxious (Matt 6:25)

Do not be anxious about your life - Matt 6:25a

When God gives a command, He does so with the intention of us obeying that command. Now He knows our weaknesses, and He knows that in our flesh we are but dust of the earth. So while God absolutely expects us to obey His commands, He absolutely does not expect us to be able to do so on our own.

If we want to have any hope of fulfilling what God expects of us, we must first come to terms with the fact that we can't.

Once we have recognized our utter inability to fulfil God's will no matter how hard we try, we next need to recognize that with God all things are possible. Both of these aspects are absolutely necessary if we hope to have any true success in our lives.

Many people are able to recognize one of these truths, but not the other.

For example, many people truly believe that with God all things are possible, but deep down they also believe that they can accomplish certain things without the help of God. The temptation for these people is to fall into pride.

On the flipside, there are many people who are intimately aware of their own futility and incompetence, but they do not yet realize that such things are no hindrance at all to God. The temptation for this group is to fall into despair.

The only way to steer clear of both these ditches is to at once recognize that I can do nothing apart from God, but with God there is nothing I cannot do.

To obey Jesus's command to cease being anxious about our lives requires not a massive amount of surrender, but complete and total surrender.

A dead man does not know how to worry. Indeed it is impossible for him to worry.

For anxiety to cease, we must see ourselves as totally dead to this world and its influences.

This is a stumbling block to many just as the Cross of Christ has been a stumbling block for multitudes throughout the ages.

It is only through experience that we will come to know that Jesus has transformed the Cross from a mechanism of death to a mechanism of life, and that whatever we pin to the Cross for the sake of Christ will be given back to us in glorified form.

Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him

2 Tim 2:11