“Do not worry, saying, `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. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:31-34
If there is a God that designed and
created and continues to sustain this earth, it
really is a reasonable assumption that He knows what is going on better than we
do. He knows what works and doesn’t
work in life. He knows what is
good for us and what is harmful to us.
He knows more than we do.
Living under God’s Kingdom is actually very practical –denying God’s
Kingdom and demanding our own way is foolish.
If there is a God, it seems fairly obvious that demanding autonomy from God, demanding to live our
own lives without the benefit of His wisdom and goodness and blessing, is
foolish. Yet, we all do this to some degree or another.
The problem we have then, is that to whatever degree we deny the authority and sovereignty and wisdom and goodness of God –we are in rebellion against Him. Rebellion against God is not a matter of any specific sin –it is a heart attitude. It is the opposite of loyalty –it is the opposite of surrender.
Rebellion
is the little voice inside of us that says, “Why can’t I do it my way? What about what I want? I just want to live how it seems right
to me. I trust only myself.”
Whether we make a conscious choice to reject God’s
Kingdom, or the more passive choice to ignore God’s Kingdom, the end result is
the same. Rebellion leads to
spiritual blindness and ultimately to spiritual death. Rebellion against God –Living as if God
has no say, is a dangerous and hurtful way to live. Bad things happen.
Rebellion
leads to spiritual blindness. The
problem with blindness is that if we are blind we can’t see. The problem with spiritual blindness is
that we can’t see truth –we can’t see reality. And if we insist on living by our own agenda instead of
God’s agenda when we can’t actually see reality, we are always going to be in
worse condition than we realize. When our
perceptions are clouded
by spiritual blindness, we don’t realize the danger we are in.
One night
a long time ago, I was suffering from allergies. We had just gone to bed, but my eyes
began itching so badly I couldn’t stand it. So I asked Sarah where the eye drops were. She told me that she thought they were
in the living room on top of the computer monitor. So I got up out of bed and groped my way to the living
room–all of the lights in the house were out, and it was very dark. But I found my way to the living room,
and located the computer monitor, and found the little plastic bottle sitting
on top –all in the dark. And I
tipped my head back and let a drop fall into my itchy eye. And I quickly realized that what I had
was not a bottle of eye drops. As
it turned out, what I had actually picked up in the dark was a little plastic
bottle of tape recorder head cleaning fluid –mostly alcohol. And it did not sooth my eye –it burned
my eye more than I can even describe.
It was horrible. My eye
felt like it was on fire. And I
yelped, and I started jumping around in the dark yelling. And while I was jumping around, I
managed to bang my shin into a chair, which caused me stumble, which wrenched
my back. All the commotion got
Sarah out of bed to see what the problem was. And as I remember it, when she turned on the light and saw
what had happened, she thought it was kind of funny.
So
basically, I had burning eyes, a wounded shin, a wrenched back and a bruised
ego –all because I was trying to operate blindly. Just as my physical blindness caused all sorts of problems
for me –problems that I had not anticipated –spiritual blindness causes
repercussions and consequences all throughout life, because the only way to actually see
reality is to see life from a Kingdom perspective. This is because the Kingdom perspective is based on what God knows,
not simply on what we think we know.
If we are desiring to be Kingdom people, when things in
life go wrong –as they always eventually do, we have someone to turn to. We turn to our owner with full
confidence that since He designed and created and sustains all things, He also
know how to take care of the problems in our lives. We can turn to the One who know the way things really are.
On the other hand, if we are living in rebellion against God’s Kingdom (either actively or
passively), if we are insisting on being the owners of our lives and are
usurping God’s sovereignty, when things break down, when things go wrong –as
they always eventually do, we are stuck in a bad way.
So, for me, I will choose to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. It's a practical thing.
