Carla Hughey resides in Sullivans Island, SC and has been a part of Drawing Near to God for many years. She currently serves on the board of directors.
Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Matthew 6:33 has flooded my heart for days as I have sought the Lord for wisdom and direction for my life. I keep coming back to these words. Seek me first. No matter what the situation is, I want you to seek me first.
I cannot be alone when I say that things around us seem to be out of sorts. The world looks upside down to me, and even my own life looks upside down to me. I find myself in an old but familiar place. I desperately need God. If given access to anyone in the world, none could solve these trials of mine. Why then do I think that I can?
The words Do Not Worry appear as the heading for this section of Matthew 6. It begins with verse 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 than food, and the body more than clothes? Look 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? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
Do not worry. It’s right there in black and white and repeated verse after verse. Yet we often insist on sorting through every detail, every possible problem and solution, turning every situation over and upside down to evaluate it with our own “wisdom.” Then, after we have exhausted our power, we hand it over to God to see if he has anything to add, turning to worry first and God second.
How would our lives change if we reverse that order and daily choose to seek Him first? What if we lay down every worry on the altar of God? What if the idol of anxiety that we serve bows down to the lordship of Jesus Christ? How would that impact our lives and the lives of the people around us?
Our problems may not shift, but our mindset will. When we focus on Jesus, the desire or compulsion to worry no longer plagues us. As we fix our eyes on Him, He, whose name is above every other name, we melt into the beauty of all that He is. Everything else fades away. As we make a conscious decision to demand that the worries of life bow down to the King of Kings, we make more space in our hearts and minds for His peace, His love, and His truth. It is then that we begin to find the godly wisdom and direction that we need. We humble ourselves and acknowledge that we cannot do it all, and we cannot do it alone. We need help, and who better to sort out our lives than the one who made them?
