“Be careful, or your
hearts will be weighed down with the carousing, drunkenness, and the anxieties
of life, and that day will close in on you suddenly like a trap.” – Luke 21:34
Over
and over again during training we were reminded that while on the field, and
for the rest of our lives, our first mission fields are ourselves. After ourselves comes our team, the people
that God has put together to work for His glory. When focused on these two things, when one is
constantly mindful of keeping Christ the center, running their race well and
not becoming stagnant, then his or her work on the mission field God will
bless. How can one pour out on people,
if they themselves are empty? I read
this verse in my devotions the day after I had started to feel a little weighed
down with the anxieties of the world (God always knows what we need). It can be so easy to worry about things and, especially
for me, people that we care about. We
can’t see into the future and many times our hands are tied and we are incapable
of doing anything. Yet God continues to
bring me back to Matthew 6:33-34, “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.”
We so
easily can begin to slip into worry and anxiety. But, by doing this we are taking our eyes off
the Author of Life and becoming distracted by the world. Concern and worry are two different things,
and concern should bring us to our knees and bring us to the cross so that we
can lay it down at the feet of our Creator.
This is something that God has been continually showing me, and exactly
how much I need to completely rest in Him.
He knows exactly what I need and what those around me need. If I seek Him first in all that I do, if I
don’t get distracted by the worries of this world, but instead I am distracted
by Jesus, then I will know that I am in His perfect will. I can do nothing to further His Kingdom by my
own strength, and I can never change someone’s heart. I need to lean not on my own understanding,
but trust in Him with all, key word, all of my heart, and fully allow Him to direct
my path. Peace and Joy are two of the gifts
of the Holy Spirit, showing that we are filled with Him, anxiety is the
opposite of these two things. I want to
be distracted by Jesus.
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