Raised to Release

Learning to trust God is scary, but this King requires total allegiance.

Matthew 6:25-34

In ten verses, He tells us not to worry three times, really addressing the striving and anxiety that we feel when we are trying to provide for ourselves.

Studies show that worrying doesn't add to our lives, but it decreases our lives.

We don't have to worry like the pagans. God knows what we need before we tell Him.

We aren't meant to keep striving; we're meant to seek the Kingdom and His righteousness. But there's a tension here. In seasons of deprivation or discouragement, instead of feeling like God was providing, it feels like He is withholding or taking away. In this, we look to this quote from Elizabeth Elliot.

"God never withholds from His child that which His love and wisdom call good. God's refusals are always merciful—"severe mercies" at times but mercies all the same. God never denies us our hearts desire except to give us something better." — Elizabeth Elliot.

God protects us in His provision, not allowing certain things to happen. Sometimes, His provision looks like a "no."

Four things stand out about our King:

1.) Our King can handle the weight of our worry.

He is saying that we can be free. If God is perfect love, which Scripture tells us He is, then we can cling to the fact that perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18).

"It's an overestimation of the problem and an underestimation of self." — Sissy Goff.

2.) Our King is trustworthy and true.

The birds have learned to accept what the Lord provides.

Scripture tells us who God is and why we can trust Him. It's crucial for you to be in the Word.

3.) Our King desires a proven faith.

The desire to want to strive to provide for yourself is a symptom of little faith.

We are going to go into our own fires because Jesus is committed to purifying and proving our faith.

"Faith untried may be true faith, but it is sure to be little faith, and it is likely to remain dwarfish so long as it is without trials. Faith never prospers so well as when things are against her: tempests are her trainers, and lightnings are her illuminators." — Charles Spurgeon

Jesus is committed that when we are in Him, He is helping us. He is promised to prove our faith.

Some of us are going through fiery trials, but could we trust together that perhaps these trials are serving a bigger purpose? That they would help us grow in our faith and purify us?

4.) Our King was raised to release us.

We know we have a trustworthy God who can provide for our every need because He has already demonstrated His willingness and His ability to provide for our greatest needs.

Our needs matter, and He validates those needs, but in the grand scheme, He did the one thing you really needed that you could never do on your own.

If He could do that, He can do anything.

He was raised to release us from:

• The circumstances we were born into.
• He was raised to release us from a life of loneliness and purposelessness.
• The power of shame.
• The condemnation of guilt.
• The chokehold of sin.
• The cures of death.
• The separation from God for eternity.

He was raised to release you and me, so we seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, and trust that He will provide.

God's standard of righteousness is perfection, and we will never meet that standard. But we look to Romans 3:21-22.