GodSprings - 23, May, 2017

Won’t God Take Care of Me?

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

Matthew 6:26

Dale Carnegie in his book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living pens down the story of James Cash Penney who started the J.C. Penney stores. J. C. Penney made some unwise commitments and became very depressed. He worried so much that he developed shingles. He went to see his doctor who admitted him to the hospital, but his condition became worse. One night he was prescribed a sedative that quickly wore off, and he awoke believing that he would die that night. He wrote letters to his family and fell asleep.

He woke up the next morning and was surprised that he was still alive. He heard people singing “God Will Take Care of You” in the chapel and went in. He listened to the singing and message with a heavy heart, but then something happened. He later said, “I realized then that I alone was responsible for my troubles. I knew that God with His love was there to help me.” He said that from that day forward his life was free of worry and I was all because he realized that God would take care of him.

Often we fail to believe that God is going to provide for us, and we worry. Jesus gives us three illustrations in verses 26-30: one from food, one from the future, and one from fashion. Today we will look at the first illustration.

Birds have no ability to reason but God planted within birds something called instinct so that birds are planted with divine capacity to find what is necessary to live.

When Jesus was giving these illustrations many of tend to believe that if this is the case then we need not work. We need to carefully look at them. God never makes a worm rain for the birds. God feeds birds through an instinct that tells them where to find that food. They work for it. There are busy searching around, gobbling up little insects, worms, preparing their nests, caring for their young, and so on. They work hard.

Birds do this by instinct and they never overdo it. They don’t say, “I’m going to build bigger nests. I’m going to store more worms. They work within the framework of God’s design for them, and they never overindulge themselves. The birds just fly. They don’t worry where they’re going to find the food. They just fly until they find it and God provides it. If God gives us the gift of life, then surely God will sustain us.

Let us pray – Dear Lord, help us be more confident that You will provide us with what we need.