Picture of a carefree Jamacian man. No problems. Having a great time, life is a vacation. No stress, no worries. No sickness, no bills, no children to shuttle from event to event. no problems to solve.
If it were only that simple.
There are Work-aholics. And then worry-aholics. How many of you think you struggle in this area.
There are things that consume me if I’m not careful.
We worry We stew Obsess Fingernails Toss in bed Drink Maalox Eat comfort food
What if… I don’t get the job I don’t ever get married My child has an accident.
And worry never seems to run out of Gas. Keeps circling.
Jesus doesn’t want you to allow satan to bombard you life to the point that you worry your life away. So consumed with how he will take care of you. He wants you to simply trust him.
Sometimes this advice ‘don’t worry, be happy’ falls on deaf ears.
Grades Budget cuts.
There is One peculiar unusually thing about worry. Usually it’s not the big things that concern us, but the small things that add up.
And it takes a lot more than just saying “Hey, don’t worry, be happy”
Worry is harder to get rid of than you think. And it’s more than a one time decision that rids you of anxiety.
Comedian Carl Hurley asked his audience one night.
Have you ever tried to throw away an old garbage can away?
Set out an old rusty trash can for the garbage man to pick up. Since it was empty, I thought they’d assume to take it away.
Sometimes we try to get rid of things, and they’re hard to get rid of. Worry is one of those things.
You can’t just get rid of it. No one is going to come by and pick it up Tuesday morning with the rest of the trash.
Worry falls into that category, and so does hurry.
Both topics, really both sins, are mentioned in Matthew 6
Matthew 6: Sermon on the mount
It can be read in 12-15 minutes worth of time. Perhaps Jesus was setting an example that sermons should be about this length. Practical, Godly, Biblical teaching
1st point. Don’t worry. Don’t sweat the small stuff. But it’s hard to do in everyday life.
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. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life[b]?
Jesus continues his teaching, and uses the transitional word therefore.
Previous verses. Reminds the listeners of all the things he’s been teaching about in his previous discourse
Salt of the earth Light of the world Storing up Treasures in heaven where moth and rust don’t destroy and thieves don’t break in and steal Regularly fasting Habit of daily prayer to God
In light of all these things, don’t worry
A lack of trust that God will really take care of us is evidence that we’re really not as spiritually mature as we should be
We don’t believe or accept the fact that God is worthy of trust, that he’s got all things figured out.
When you try to look at or quantify what is that causes us to worry there have been a number of studies done, and the numbers always turn out about the same:
Average person’s anxiety is focued • 40% Things that will never happen • 30% things about the past that will never change • 12% criticism by others, mostly unfounded or untrue • 10% about health. And yet if we worry about health it adds to the stress factor, and makes our health worse • 8% are real problems we’ll face.
The problem is we get consumed with the other 92%
Do you notice that Worry is the acceptable Christian sin.
God is saying through his son Jesus Christ on the sermon on the mount that: worry is a serious sin. You are lacking trust in me. Worry saps today of it’s strength. You can’t be who you were created to be when you’re consumed with worry. It’s like a rocking chair.
Jesus Looks at the birds of the air.. the birds don’t seem to be worried about what’s going on
I’ve never seen a bird having a nervous breakdown.
Have you ever seen a bluejay all upset and worried, and said he’s having a nervous breakdown.
Jesus says there are 3 things that I want you to be concerned about. These are 3 things that everyone is concerned about.
But your concern is not to turn into worry, but instead to trust.
Don’t worry, first of all, about what you’ll eat.
A few years ago my family was all on diets.
Where would you like to eat? Anywhere, Anywhere.
Mexican? Italian? Dairy Queen?
When we think of food, it’s where do we want to go. Where are we getting coffee. Where are we getting dessert. We’ve got it all planned out.
That wasn’t the setting.
Concerned about where there next meal was going to be. What there next meal was going to be. If there was going to be a next meal.
In the wintertime especially there was some concern if there would be enough to make it stretch. So much was contingent on the weather, and what the crops had been, and it all relyed on the climate.
Jesus says: don’t worry about what you eat.
Worry about drink Higher impact Hot climate of Palestine 9 months out of the year the people would face a lack a water.
Often they would have to turn to something similar as wine because it had fermented a little bit and it was cleaner and safer to drink.
Drink. If you were Born between Jan 1-Feb 10, would you stand?
According to statistics for the US, this is the number of people in this room who are alcoholics. 1 out of 9. Don’t worry, it isn’t them.
If you were born sept, oct, nov. dec. please stand.
That’s one third Statistics say 1 of 3 people who begin to drink socially will become problem drinkers.
What do I mean when I say problem drinkers? That means that these people need at least 2 drinks a day just to cope.
That’s 33%! Happy birthday.
If your mom or dad was an alcoholic, you are playing Russian roulette with your future.
The odds of a person you becoming an alcoholic skyrocket if you are the child of an alcoholic.
If you never drink, you never have to worry about becoming an alcoholic.
So let me encourage you to be careful about what you drink.
It’s hard enough to resist temptation when I’m sober. It’s important
It’s tough enough to live for Christ Why would I want to put something in my system that will just water down my chances of standing for Christ.
Max Lucado: alcoholic father, had a propensity towards drinking.
He said “I never felt more Christlike when I was drinking”
Don’t worry about what you wear.
Now you’ve gone too far! I didn’t say it, Jesus said it.
28"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
Little has changed in 2000 years…we’re still concerned about appearance and what our clothing looks like
Even in ancient times, Designer robbers
In Verses 28-29, Jesus talks about flowers, and the flowers he talked about had a life span of one day..
And yet these lilies were dressed finer than kings with their royal robes.
Live one day and then used for cooking
Solomon…the ideal life is virtually unattainable.
Solomon had an estimated income of $16 million a year. That was wen 16 million was a lot of money 1400 chariots
How much more important are you than a flower that’s going to be trashed
Some of you are thinking…I need a new summer wardrobe.
We can become so fixated on what we wear, whether it’s the right style, what’s the label
There are a lot of parts of Milwaukee where it’s not a question of
1 Peter 5:7
But even before Peter and Jesus spoke against worry, the Old testament cautioned against it.
Ecclesiastes 11:10
(Video)
Silence substantiated the words of Jesus
Do not worry
When you’re 9 or 12, you don’t worry about…
What mom and dad will pack in your lunch Whether you’ll have clothes for school The interest rates on the house you moved in Whether you’ll be able to afford a vacation this summer
Will you just trust me, turn it over to my father.
One other sin.
Don’t worry, and don’t hurry…
31So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them
If you missed a stage coach, you just wait a day and catch the next one. Richard Swenson in the overload syndrome says… Our sentences are peppered with phrases: Time crunch Fast food Rush hour Frequent Express way Overnight delivery Rapid transit
The products and services we use further attest to our hurry Send packages by Fed ex express Use a long distance company named Sprint Manage personal finances on Quicken Schedule our appointments on a Day-runner Diet with Slim-fast Wear swimsuits by a company named Speedo
We wear business as a badge
Our culture isn’t described as a people of patience.
We’re the only nation that has a mountain named rushmore.
That sums our culture up quite well.
Always on the move. I’m on the road
All these things going on at one time.
Bosses look for this. They want to make sure you look busy.
The more you’re doing, the better. The faster
That’s contrary to the bible
Psalms: Be still and know that I am God.
John Ortburg
We’re a culture where fast food sums up our lives
2 decades ago time management experts predicted the average work week would decrease from 40 hours/ week to 36 hours a week.
But do you know what’s happened?
Instead of the average work week decreasing, it has increased to 46 hours a week.
Hurry diminishes our ability to truly love and listen.
All men will know…
Love requires an investment of time.
If patience is a fruit of the spirit, then hurry is not.
Jesus is never in a hurry in the bible.
Only 1 time..the prodigal son
If you’re going to run after Grace Forgiveness Holiness Generosity Love
Don’t run after what you eat, drink & wear Don’t run after what
Matthew 6:33 What things: food, shelter, clothing…
What about all the starving people. We have enough food to feed the world 2 times over each
Each month 1 ton of aspirin is disgarded throughout the united states 2,000 pounds of aspirin is thrown away. Do you know why? It’s past the expiration date. And that could do so much good in so many countries.
We have the resources to feed the world. To clothe the world. The question is whether we’re willing to share.
Matthew 6:44
Let’s work on trusting in the Lord instead of worrying Let’s work on slowing down instead of rushing And to every Christian here today, I say let’s make sure we’re running after the right things. Not just a whole bunch of activity, but we’re about the priority of Christ. Story about Charlie.
2 comments:
I'm beginning to wonder if spring will ever return to Wisconsin. Stay warm, my Sconnie friends!
Worry & Hurry: June 3, 2007
Song: don’t worry, be happy.
It takes you to another place.
Picture of a carefree Jamacian man. No problems. Having a great time, life is a vacation. No stress, no worries. No sickness, no bills, no children to shuttle from event to event. no problems to solve.
If it were only that simple.
There are Work-aholics. And then worry-aholics. How many of you think you struggle in this area.
There are things that consume me if I’m not careful.
We worry
We stew
Obsess
Fingernails
Toss in bed
Drink Maalox
Eat comfort food
What if…
I don’t get the job
I don’t ever get married
My child has an accident.
And worry never seems to run out of Gas. Keeps circling.
Jesus doesn’t want you to allow satan to bombard you life to the point that you worry your life away. So consumed with how he will take care of you. He wants you to simply trust him.
Sometimes this advice ‘don’t worry, be happy’ falls on deaf ears.
Grades
Budget cuts.
There is One peculiar unusually thing about worry. Usually it’s not the big things that concern us, but the small things that add up.
And it takes a lot more than just saying “Hey, don’t worry, be happy”
Worry is harder to get rid of than you think. And it’s more than a one time decision that rids you of anxiety.
Comedian Carl Hurley asked his audience one night.
Have you ever tried to throw away an old garbage can away?
Set out an old rusty trash can for the garbage man to pick up. Since it was empty, I thought they’d assume to take it away.
Sometimes we try to get rid of things, and they’re hard to get rid of. Worry is one of those things.
You can’t just get rid of it. No one is going to come by and pick it up Tuesday morning with the rest of the trash.
Worry falls into that category, and so does hurry.
Both topics, really both sins, are mentioned in Matthew 6
Matthew 6: Sermon on the mount
It can be read in 12-15 minutes worth of time. Perhaps Jesus was setting an example that sermons should be about this length.
Practical, Godly, Biblical teaching
1st point. Don’t worry. Don’t sweat the small stuff. But it’s hard to do in everyday life.
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. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life[b]?
Jesus continues his teaching, and uses the transitional word therefore.
Previous verses. Reminds the listeners of all the things he’s been teaching about in his previous discourse
Salt of the earth
Light of the world
Storing up Treasures in heaven where moth and rust don’t destroy and thieves don’t break in and steal
Regularly fasting
Habit of daily prayer to God
In light of all these things, don’t worry
A lack of trust that God will really take care of us is evidence that we’re really not as spiritually mature as we should be
We don’t believe or accept the fact that God is worthy of trust, that he’s got all things figured out.
When you try to look at or quantify what is that causes us to worry there have been a number of studies done, and the numbers always turn out about the same:
Average person’s anxiety is focued
• 40% Things that will never happen
• 30% things about the past that will never change
• 12% criticism by others, mostly unfounded or untrue
• 10% about health. And yet if we worry about health it adds to the stress factor, and makes our health worse
• 8% are real problems we’ll face.
The problem is we get consumed with the other 92%
Do you notice that Worry is the acceptable Christian sin.
God is saying through his son Jesus Christ on the sermon on the mount that:
worry is a serious sin. You are lacking trust in me.
Worry saps today of it’s strength.
You can’t be who you were created to be when you’re consumed with worry.
It’s like a rocking chair.
Jesus Looks at the birds of the air.. the birds don’t seem to be worried about what’s going on
I’ve never seen a bird having a nervous breakdown.
Have you ever seen a bluejay all upset and worried, and said he’s having a nervous breakdown.
Jesus says there are 3 things that I want you to be concerned about. These are 3 things that everyone is concerned about.
But your concern is not to turn into worry, but instead to trust.
Don’t worry, first of all, about what you’ll eat.
A few years ago my family was all on diets.
Where would you like to eat? Anywhere, Anywhere.
Mexican?
Italian?
Dairy Queen?
When we think of food, it’s where do we want to go. Where are we getting coffee. Where are we getting dessert. We’ve got it all planned out.
That wasn’t the setting.
Concerned about where there next meal was going to be. What there next meal was going to be. If there was going to be a next meal.
In the wintertime especially there was some concern if there would be enough to make it stretch. So much was contingent on the weather, and what the crops had been, and it all relyed on the climate.
Jesus says: don’t worry about what you eat.
Worry about drink
Higher impact
Hot climate of Palestine
9 months out of the year the people would face a lack a water.
Often they would have to turn to something similar as wine because it had fermented a little bit and it was cleaner and safer to drink.
Drink.
If you were Born between Jan 1-Feb 10, would you stand?
According to statistics for the US, this is the number of people in this room who are alcoholics. 1 out of 9. Don’t worry, it isn’t them.
If you were born sept, oct, nov. dec. please stand.
That’s one third
Statistics say 1 of 3 people who begin to drink socially will become problem drinkers.
What do I mean when I say problem drinkers? That means that these people need at least 2 drinks a day just to cope.
That’s 33%! Happy birthday.
If your mom or dad was an alcoholic, you are playing Russian roulette with your future.
The odds of a person you becoming an alcoholic skyrocket if you are the child of an alcoholic.
If you never drink, you never have to worry about becoming an alcoholic.
So let me encourage you to be careful about what you drink.
It’s hard enough to resist temptation when I’m sober.
It’s important
It’s tough enough to live for Christ Why would I want to put something in my system that will just water down my chances of standing for Christ.
Max Lucado: alcoholic father, had a propensity towards drinking.
He said “I never felt more Christlike when I was drinking”
Don’t worry about what you wear.
Now you’ve gone too far! I didn’t say it, Jesus said it.
28"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
Little has changed in 2000 years…we’re still concerned about appearance and what our clothing looks like
Even in ancient times, Designer robbers
In Verses 28-29, Jesus talks about flowers, and the flowers he talked about had a life span of one day..
And yet these lilies were dressed finer than kings with their royal robes.
Live one day and then used for cooking
Solomon…the ideal life is virtually unattainable.
Solomon had an estimated income of $16 million a year. That was wen 16 million was a lot of money
1400 chariots
How much more important are you than a flower that’s going to be trashed
Some of you are thinking…I need a new summer wardrobe.
We can become so fixated on what we wear, whether it’s the right style, what’s the label
There are a lot of parts of Milwaukee where it’s not a question of
1 Peter 5:7
But even before Peter and Jesus spoke against worry, the Old testament cautioned against it.
Ecclesiastes 11:10
(Video)
Silence substantiated the words of Jesus
Do not worry
When you’re 9 or 12, you don’t worry about…
What mom and dad will pack in your lunch
Whether you’ll have clothes for school
The interest rates on the house you moved in
Whether you’ll be able to afford a vacation this summer
Will you just trust me, turn it over to my father.
One other sin.
Don’t worry, and don’t hurry…
31So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them
If you missed a stage coach, you just wait a day and catch the next one.
Richard Swenson in the overload syndrome says…
Our sentences are peppered with phrases:
Time crunch
Fast food
Rush hour
Frequent
Express way
Overnight delivery
Rapid transit
The products and services we use further attest to our hurry
Send packages by Fed ex express
Use a long distance company named Sprint
Manage personal finances on Quicken
Schedule our appointments on a Day-runner
Diet with Slim-fast
Wear swimsuits by a company named Speedo
We wear business as a badge
Our culture isn’t described as a people of patience.
We’re the only nation that has a mountain named rushmore.
That sums our culture up quite well.
Always on the move. I’m on the road
All these things going on at one time.
Bosses look for this. They want to make sure you look busy.
The more you’re doing, the better. The faster
That’s contrary to the bible
Psalms: Be still and know that I am God.
John Ortburg
We’re a culture where fast food sums up our lives
2 decades ago time management experts predicted the average work week would decrease from 40 hours/ week to 36 hours a week.
But do you know what’s happened?
Instead of the average work week decreasing, it has increased to 46 hours a week.
Hurry diminishes our ability to truly love and listen.
All men will know…
Love requires an investment of time.
If patience is a fruit of the spirit, then hurry is not.
Jesus is never in a hurry in the bible.
Only 1 time..the prodigal son
If you’re going to run after
Grace
Forgiveness
Holiness
Generosity
Love
Don’t run after what you eat, drink & wear
Don’t run after what
Matthew 6:33
What things: food, shelter, clothing…
What about all the starving people.
We have enough food to feed the world 2 times over each
Each month 1 ton of aspirin is disgarded throughout the united states
2,000 pounds of aspirin is thrown away. Do you know why?
It’s past the expiration date. And that could do so much good in so many countries.
We have the resources to feed the world. To clothe the world. The question is whether we’re willing to share.
Matthew 6:44
Let’s work on trusting in the Lord instead of worrying
Let’s work on slowing down instead of rushing
And to every Christian here today, I say let’s make sure we’re running after the right things. Not just a whole bunch of activity, but we’re about the priority of Christ.
Story about Charlie.
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