“And He said to His disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse not barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If you then are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek His kingdom, and these things will be added to you.’” – Luke 12:22-31

MANY OF US have read the above quotation countless times, and for some more than any other Scripture passage. It is very comforting particularly when we’re seeking guidance and help in times of ambiguity and extremities, but most of our familiarity is with a surface level understanding of what Jesus was really aiming at.

“Consider the lilies…” – we know it all so well, and yet how much we really believe it shows in how we react to circumstances, especially when our world of security ceases to hold together.

In other passages, such as Matthew 6:33, the emphasis is upon, “seek first the kingdom of God”, so how do we unite these two passages; is one passage implying a different emphasis from the other? Not really; they both hold equal weight. One verse states, “seek first the kingdom of God”, while the other stresses, “Instead, seek His kingdom” – in essence, they both hold equal connotations. “Seek first” and “instead” are really one and the same thing. The focus Jesus is drawing our attention to is being taken up – or preoccupied – with none other than God’s interests.

There are two ways of misunderstanding this passage. One is to utilise it for selfish reasons, the other is going to extremes when we oppose any enjoyment of the things in this life, even to disagreeing with the apostle Paul stating, “All things are permissible, not all things are beneficial.” – and, of course, it requires a balanced spirituality and mindset to rightly discern in certain predicaments. Paul learned to be content in either circumstance of abounding or being abased; neither one of them had the hierarchy in his life. Jesus for one second never implied that we have disregard for material aspects – that’s fanaticism. If that was the case then God would have never created us with physical matter and all the things needful in sustaining life as we know it. The cults will endorse a binding – yet attractive – ‘spirituality’ that twists Scripture’s emphasis, and it is no different to the Pharisees that unnecessarily added rules and regulations to what God commanded, while neglecting real matters. They totally missed the big picture – and we are to beware lest we find ourselves walking paths God never intended us to embark on.

It is astounding to see how Jesus was so patient and understanding in relating to people and the struggles all encounter in life. We see it in how He gave examples of how the birds don’t sow or reap, the flowers of the field that don’t toil or spin – and yet they are fed and clothed in such a way that not even King Solomon, in all of his royalty, was dressed to such intensity as the flowers are. Jesus wasn’t speaking hyperbolically here; every word – in the literal sense was and is true! He drew from nature – what He created – to speak to us, things we are so accustomed to in everyday life. He stooped so low to meet us in our mindset, the aspects that really concern us. He is getting us to see, as if He were saying, “Look, don’t you see that if these other aspects of creation – that are of value to Me – are provided for in such amazing ways, is it not commonsense to realize that I will care for you – the highest in My creation – more intricately?!” As well as a condescending (and non-patronizing) manner, there is also a loving rebuke of exposing misplaced faith functioning from a God-denying mentality – “For all the nations of the world seek after these things…” and reflects the heart-pulse of the unregenerate; it resembles the effects of the fall of humanity out of fellowship with God. We have the echoes of such implications in John 6:26-27 – “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life.” The call comes to look higher and way beyond the temporal. It is not past-gross sins or lifestyle that sets us apart from how we may now be living ‘clean’ and moral lives – the Pharisees in their own and other people’s eyes were regarded as blameless – but rather our attitude of living a life of trust in the God we are confident in to do abundantly more than we can ever conjure up in our minds.

“Your Father knows that you need such things.” – do we just give up praying for such things then? Of course not! We wouldn’t pray about anything for that matter “because He already knows”. God has so instituted prayer for us to commune with Him – that word prayer which has such a stigma attached to it in our day that we’ve therefore lost the inestimable jewel of it! It’s being with Him; it’s walking with Him; it’s knowing Him. Lord, have mercy on us in our generation and saturate us with a spirit of true prayer – and such in the power of the Holy Spirit! Do we trust Him implicitly to the degree that we are not burdened by the cares of this life – not careless and apathetic – because we are beautifully distracted by the higher calling of God on our life for HIM, knowing that whatever we truly need, He will give it? Do we dare to take God at His Word and leave unto Him to order and provide while we fix our focus in line with His directives? It’s not that we don’t ask God any longer, but that the emphasis is no longer on our need, or rather, we’re not consumed with our needs to where we cannot function in God’s revealed purposes because of our anxiety and fits of panic that arise from unbelief.

A Pop-cultured Christianity is merely sympathising with, endorsing or adopting a biblical belief system as a means to an end in obtaining self-success and autonomy in this life, but is not the emphatic New Testament perspective. It is quite the opposite in where our nature is transformed from self-prioritising to lovingly pursuing the beauty and interests of God’s eternal kingdom.

That all too-familiar Scripture, “My God shall supply all your needs” has been so abused nowadays that Christianity, for many, has become nothing more than a cash-generating app to obtain living a comfortable and successful lifestyle. The mindset is no different from any ordinary person who doesn’t know God; every human being strives to succeed and win. It’s self preservation, and the very antidote to that is, “He who is willing to lose His life, for My sake, shall find it.” That’s where Biblical Christianity brings reality home, and many will begin to walk away – just like the young rich ruler – because the price is too high, and it’s not about money, which can come and go as it pleases; it’s surrendering our self-autonomy to the Lord Jesus Christ to where He takes preeminence in our lives.

Nursing a debilitating mindset of our needs creates a dwarfed and distorted Christianity and shall amount to a minimal – to no impact – upon this world. It’s merely playing while forfeiting the wonders of praying and witnessing God doing great wonders in our day. While being tied up with our wants and needs, we are merely children paddling in the waves of the sea as they weaken to nothing over our feet, instead of treading the ocean’s depths of God’s performing wonders. We have the same invite as did Peter who passionately longed to come to Jesus on the boisterous waves that defied gravity’s law. Our calling is unimaginably higher than being consumed by the limitations of this life; we have eternity ahead of us, and eternity should envelop our outlook while here. It is above all realities, yet we limit ourselves to being concerned with only the things in this life. We miss so much with our imprisoning perspectives and familiar safe zones. The first church – a dangerous church, known, hated and feared by the satanic realm – turned the world upside down, defeated emperors, subdued empires and prevailed against the gates of hell. It was no militant power against the State, no power in and of herself, no building by herself; but Christ Who built, and endued with the fire and power of the Holy Spirit as they sought and longed for God’s kingdom, His righteousness, and His will to be an overwhelming reality here as it is in heaven.

Can we say, as our Lord said, “My food is to do the will of My Father”? Laughable and equally tragic, is that society lives to work in order to buy and eat the finest foods; in essence that has become the pinnacle of life for billions worldwide. The author of Ecclesiastes would be lost for words if that were possible. Jesus didn’t live for the physical aspects of life as much as He had power to generate water into wine and stones into bread; doing what God the Father sent Him to do was all-consuming, and this eternal perspective is what the Holy Spirit is ever instilling into us. Long the process may be, but we can certainly pray for power not to foolishly delay – that indeed the Lord would turn our eyes away further from beholding what self craves for; seeing the shallowness of a self-orbed life in glad humility and worship to lose it for His sake, His kingdom, His beauty and His glory.