• Jesus once said, "Don't worry about everyday life." So, what would He have us do? Live one day at a time.
• We can pray about tomorrow and what we may need or want to avoid - such as trusting God for our necessities and enabling us to overcome temptation. We can pray that tomorrow will bring us greater blessings than we have ever experienced. We can pray that God will increase our faith, grow our trust and increase our hope in Him. But it is foolish to live for tomorrow.
• It is not the problems of today that destroy us. It is, instead, focusing on the failures of yesterday and the fears of tomorrow that may never materialize.
• Worry does not work. It cannot erase our past mistakes or guarantee us a problem-free future. What it can and will do, however, is destroy our confidence in the forgiveness of God and assurance that He will be with us until we are at last with Him in Heaven.
• Worry will sap us of our strength, weaken our will, infuse us with fear, paralyze our productivity and inhibit us from helping others. These behaviors reduce or eliminate our ability to trust God to provide for our every need.
• Turning our worries into concerns and asking God to forgive us and guide us will bring His peace into our lives.
• Prayer: Enable us, Father, to place all of our life in Your hands - our failures and fears, our frustrations and especially our future - knowing that You care for us. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
• Scripture for Today: Matthew 6:25-34 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? 26 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? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[a]? 28 "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If 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--you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.