Week 10 | Stop Worrying about Tomorrow

Bill and I are going to be married for 36 years this May. When we first got married, there were five young kids. The kids were between the ages of 6 and 10. For me as a mom, just learning how to handle all the kids and especially my step-sons because I wasn't their mom, there were still a lot of things for us to handle in terms of working out the two of us as a married couple, how we were parenting together. So it was constantly on my mind and I was always worried about it. In that first year of our marriage, we both became believers and both started to learn what the Bible had to say about marriage, what the Bible had to say about parenting. And so some of the worry began to lift because I was aware that there was this God that was going to help us and show us how to do this family. My husband's ex, her name is Cheryl, I think both of us felt really insecure about whether or not the kids were going to love us, like us, be open to us. It caused her and I to have a kind of a contentious relationship. And I found myself regularly being pretty critical and judgmental about her. And I remember in those moments saying, you know, Lord, I don't think I can do this. I don't know how to do this. But it was always kind of stirring in me. And the worry around that was, again, always stirring. After the service, there was a direct prompt from the Holy Spirit. You need to confess to her your critical attitude. I was like, what? He was like, no, Karen, I want you to confess to her. Oh my gosh, the anxiety. I mean, my whole body just felt like tense and tight. So when I sat across the table from her and I grabbed her hands, I said, I feel like God is asking me to confess that I've had a very critical negative attitude about you. And I want to say I'm sorry for that. She started crying and she started talking about some of the unpleasant things that she had been thinking about me and the way she was talking to the kids.

She says, I am so sorry. And it was the most amazing, healing moment that I've experienced. Since that point, her and I have been girlfriends. And we've had opportunity to celebrate Mother's Day together and holidays together. And now we do share multiple grandkids together. I was at one of our daughter-in-laws and the granddaughter that's there, she called it her grandma day. Because both Cheryl and I were there and we made gingerbread houses and it was just great. It was truly wonderful. And what's been so beautiful to me is that there hasn't been a day and I mean not a day where he shows me something and sometimes it's just a drop. And then other times it's like a whole great big bucket load every day, just bucket loads of delight. The worry, oftentimes it's like here in my chest, it's tight. My thoughts, it's like a hamster on a wheel. But when I slow and I quiet myself a little bit, and I can be aware like, oh Lord, you're here, you're with me. And to know that he wants to hear from me. He wants me to tell him everything, every detail. He can take it, he can handle it. Well, come on, let's give a round of applause for Karen and her story. Yeah. Karen actually attends our Crystal Lake campus. And so I want to start our time out together by saying a huge shout out to Crystal Lake. It is great to be with you today and all of our campuses who are watching today. Also to JCCC. Now, if you don't know, we are one church in multiple locations. Come on, let's welcome all of our campuses. Yeah. Praise God.

Now, for those of you who I haven't met, my name is DeWayne. I get to serve, I get the privilege to serve as the campus pastor for our South Barrington campus. And I am excited about the way ahead. Yeah, I'm excited about what God has been doing already. And I wanted to take an opportunity because I know you may not know me or may not know a whole lot about my story and just share a little bit about who I am and where I came from. I grew up in upstate New York, an area called Rochester. And I hear people say, like, man, that's a really nice place. Not where I grew up. It was inner city. It was rough. It was quite the challenge growing up there. And so as early as I possibly could, I wanted to move to Rochester. to get out of the city life and get into something a little easier, a little better, a little more calm. So I joined the United States Marine Corps. Yeah, logic. And I jumped into the Corps. I remember walking into my recruiter's office and him telling me that I would get a couple of different experiences that actually ended up being real things. The first one he said was like, dude, you're going to get a lot of exercise. And let me just tell you, they did not spare the exercise. I got a lot of that. He said, you're going to get three meals a day. And he didn't hold that back either. That was also true. And then the third thing that I got shared was that I was going to get a chance to travel and have adventure and go a bunch of different places. And I did. I got to go all over the world. Like one of my favorite assignments was my last assignment. It's actually where I retired at in 2014 from service. It was a place called Okinawa, Japan. I got to live there for eight full years. Two as a Marine and six as a pastor. Phenomenal experience. Getting to talk to people who have never heard the name of Jesus. My kids speak fluent Japanese. And I speak a little bit, right? I knew how to walk into a room and say, which loosely translates to what's up? I got a little bit of Japanese under my belt, and it was a beautiful experience.

And God really did show me the world. Because not only did I get to travel the world, but each place that my family went, we got to serve as a part of a local church there. And it was a phenomenal, phenomenal experience. And here's what I know. I know that God was showing me a lot in all of that. And everywhere I went, it was a beautiful experience. And the Marine Corps was great. There was one thing that my recruiter never actually shared with me that I would experience in the Corps. That was this suburban ritual. Now, remember, I'm a city kid. I grew up in the city. So, I had never done this. Maybe you've heard of this ritual. It's something called hiking. Like, which is apparently is walking through the woods for no reason at all. Like, and so, I had to do this. They made me do this, not just hiking, but hiking while carrying a massive pack. And so, we would go on these long 20-mile journeys dressed like that with this pack that looked something like this, carrying it every single place that we went. And you had to take it everywhere. Like, when you woke up, when you went to sleep, you were carrying this heavy weight, sometimes 60, 70, 90 pounds full of gear on your back every single place that you go. Now, I want you to take a moment, and I want you to think about what that might feel like. I want you to actually take a second and switch places with me. And I want you to think about what it would feel like to carry a heavy pack with you everywhere you go. Like, when you wake up in the morning, you've got this pack on your back. When you go to drop your children off for school and send them out of the car, like, you've got this heavy weight on your back. When you get home and you talk about your highs and your lows of your day, you're still carrying around this heavy-weighted pack on you. And right before you get ready to go to bed, you think it's time to drop the pack down, but you realize it's still on your back. You're still carrying this heavy weight. And then all of a sudden, you go, okay, I've had enough. I'm going to take it off. I'm going to put it down. And you look on the front of the pack, and you realize the name is not yours. The name on the front says worry. And you realize for the first time that you've been carrying worry with you every place you go. This is the place that I think most of us probably find ourselves. The recognition that we carry worry with us into every aspect of our lives. And it's a heavy weight, and it bears a heavy burden on our very souls, but yet we choose to pick it up every single day and take it into the places that we go. Let me give you an example of what I mean. Like, if you have worried about some of the things that I'm going to mention, as your worry comes up, I just want you to put your hand up in the air. Watch it on all of our campuses. Put your hand

up in the air and put it right back down. Because I think you will find that our worries are pretty common, but all of us experience them. Like, the first one I would say is our kids or our family. Now, this is a picture. Look at all the hands around the room. Praise God. This is my family, and I remember dropping them off in the morning, our children off in the morning at school. And I remember being so worried about what was going to happen to them during their day, right? Like, are they going to be able to make the grades? Are they going to graduate? Are they going to do the things that they need to do to be successful? Because we've helped them go on the journey, but we didn't know exactly how that was going to work out. And then, for some of us, the worry goes even deeper. even deeper because we know our little angels because they act just like us. And so when we drop them off, our actual worry is that we're gonna get the call from the principal about what our little angel has done that day. And if we're honest, we worry. And so we put this in the bag. And then for some of us, maybe our worry isn't our children. Maybe for us, our worry is the future. You know, I grew up in an era where we had some great movies. And one of the movies that we were able to watch was something called Back to the Future. Anybody seen this thing? Yeah, great movie. Now, if you are not near my age, Google it, okay? But it was a wonderful movie. And there was a tool in the movie that helped you to move towards the future called the flux capacitor. And this is like a little mini flux capacitor, right?

It took you right to the future. Very cool piece of gear. We were excited about the future, but here's what I know. I know that some of us, for us, the worry actually is the future. Because you have heard that AI is gonna take all the jobs right before it launches the nuclear missiles. And so you worry about what's ahead. And so for you, that worry just kind of goes into the bag. And then I know for some of us, maybe the worry is not that. Maybe the worry is something different, politics. Now, I was searching for a way, the cutest way possible to talk about politics. And so you can't get mad at this. I won't get any emails about this, I'm sure. Right, for some of us, the greatest concern is politics. And so we've been watching the donkeys fight the elephants in this 24-hour news cycle going back and forth and back and forth. And like the way this looks, it feels kind of ridiculous. And let me just take a time out real quick here. Like, time out. If this has been the greatest source of our worries and concerns, can I just say like, I have read the whole Bible and God's got this, like he's got this. So we don't have to spend all of our time worried about politics. But what I know is that this is in the bag for a lot of us.

And we think about it a lot. Every 24 hours, we go back and watch the news and politics has become a real problem. And the problem with it is, to me, is that like, it's not gonna be either one of those animals that usher in the future, it'll be a lamb, amen? Yeah. The nickname for Jesus is the lamb. The lamb will change everything. So we're gonna leave the lamb out this whole service. This is a way to remind us that politics isn't it. And then I know for some of us, the fears go even deeper, the worries go even deeper. For some of us, our greatest fear is our health. Our greatest worry is our health. Like we live through COVID, we saw what that did. And now every time at church, when somebody asks us to shake a hand or hug a neck, we get a little bit worried that it's gonna be COVID too, and we're gonna be patient zero. And so we get really concerned and worried about our health. And here's what I also know, that some of us, this goes even deeper than that. We have been going to the doctor over and over again, and they're telling us what it isn't. But they can't tell us what it is. And so by show of hands, how many of us worry about our health? Yeah. And then there's some of us,

who the greatest worry isn't any of that. It's what Sean talked about last week. Our greatest worry is money. Listen, if that's you, and you haven't seen that message from last week about how to live life the Jesus way when it comes to money, I wanna invite you to go back and watch it, because this doesn't need to be the source of our worries either. And this one goes in the bag. Now, what I know is that these worries tend to worry most of us, and they become a real part of how we do our lives. We think about our kids, we think about the future, we think about politics, our health, and our money, and we carry it with us everywhere we go. And there's just one small problem with that. This is not the life that Jesus wanted for us. He never wanted us to live lives of carrying around worry. As a matter of fact, as you look at things like the Sermon in the Mount, you see that Jesus had a different way, a better way, the Jesus way of doing life, where we exchange worry for something better. So that's exactly what we're gonna be talking about today. So if you have your Bibles, what I would love for you to do is go ahead and open up to Matthew chapter six, and we're gonna begin with verse 25, and we're gonna move our way through to verse 34.

Now, but while you're doing that, let me just set the stage for you a little bit. Jesus has been talking to the disciples as his primary audience. But as he's been doing that, he's also been growing in popularity. and there's a group of people who have begun to gather. We would call them the multitude or the crowd. And because Jesus is so powerful in the way that he speaks and the way that he presents the Jesus way, these folks are beginning to listen in. And it's important to note that some of the people who would have been gathered in that group, they were not people of a lot of means. They would have been people who had to get it out of the ground if they wanted to eat it or catch it in the woods, bring it home and fricassee it to have something for their families. They wouldn't have had a lot of clothing. They would have had to make it or barter for it. And so when Jesus is talking to them, which echoes to us, Jesus is talking to people who would have been dependent on God for the next meal. And it adds a lot of weight to the words that Jesus says in verse 25, because here's what he says. Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink or about your body or what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes? He tells them, look at the birds of the air.

They do not sow or reap or store away in barns yet your heavenly father feeds them. And are you not much more valuable than they? Can any of us by worrying at a single hour to our lives? And why do you worry about clothes? I see how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all of his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass at the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, you of little faith? Jesus is speaking to the folks who are gathered there and it's important to note that what he offers in this very first moment, it's not a suggestion. This is a command. He tells them, do not worry about your life. Don't do it. Don't do it. Jesus has these three movements that just kind of glide through the text. And as you start to read it, you see it just emerge from the reading. The first one that Jesus offers to us as we read through the text is that he points us to creation. He says, look at creation, because when you look at creation, you will see your provider. Now, this last week, as we were preparing for this time together,

I just started looking at birds. And if you ever look at birds, what you'll note is that they don't do nothing. They actually do quite a bit. They're pretty industrious animals. Like they fly all over the place. They find things to nest with. They bring them back. They put them on my front porch in places I can't reach them. They build nests. They go out, they find worms. They bring those back. They feed their children. Like they do a lot of stuff. They go all over the place. But here's what they don't do. They don't plant a single seed in the ground. They don't grow anything. Like they don't make worms. And so anything that they have, they are dependent on God for it. They don't sow. They don't reap. They have to trust God for everything that they get. And Jesus knows this. And so he points us to the birds of the air. Here's what he also knows. He sees the grass on the ground. Now, one of my things, the things that my grandmother said,

and our grandmothers have great wisdom. And she would say, you can just look at the world around you and you can see God's hand in everything. You can look at the top of the trees and see that nobody had to trim them, but they all lined up. You can look at creation and see God's hand. You can look at creation and see God's hand in everything. Here's what Jesus is pointing us to is that God is not a provider. He's the provider. He provides for the birds. He provides for the grass. And surely if he can provide for those things, then he can provide for us. I mean, how much more would he care about us than the birds and the grass? And Jesus points us to the provider who is God. Here's the second thing that he does. He reminds us that worry doesn't work. Translation, what's the point? Jesus says, can any of us by worrying add a single hour to our lives? Like, what's the point of doing this? Why are we doing it? I love the way the video shared that worry is kind of like running on a hamster wheel. I've heard it compared to rocking in a rocking chair. You think you're going somewhere,

but you're actually not making any progress at all. But we do it a lot. You know, in a recent study by Penn State University, in the study, they follow people for a significant amount of time. And what they found is that in the people they followed, they asked them to name their group. greatest worries, and as they named their worries, what they found was that 91.4% of the things that they worried about actually never happened, with most respondents reporting that 100% of the things that they worried about never happened. So we spend a ton of time worrying about things that haven't happened and that probably won't happen, ever. And so to Jesus's question, what's the point? What do we actually accomplish by worrying? It feels like a feat of futility and we just do it because it occupies our time. And what Jesus is trying to get us to do in the text is he's trying to get us to examine why we worry and the fact that he's the provider, but he's also trying to break a cycle that we get caught in from time to time. I like to call it the cycle of living in the what-if. It's a pattern of life where we ask a whole bunch of what-if questions about how things are going to go. And worry is just asking these what-if questions over and over again and playing out the results in our mind. And so when Jesus is trying to share this with us, he's trying to get us to stop living life in the what-if and to exchange it for something different, something better. Let me give you an example of our what-if questions. I think if you were to look back at the list that we talked about earlier, you'll find that every single one of our worries are nested in these three questions. Here's the first one. What if it all goes wrong? What if everything just goes wrong? Like, has anybody ever walked in the house from a day of work or a day of being out, and the garage door opener doesn't work? And then you get inside, and the kids are arguing. Like, it feels like everything's going wrong. The refrigerator light goes out, and you can't get to it.

There's everything happening. The dog bit the cat. The world is going crazy. And you start creeping into this place of worry. What if it actually all goes wrong? What if everything goes crazy? And that becomes the source of our worry. Let me give you the second one. This is a little bit harder than the first one. What if I don't have enough? Now, you can insert the narrative on what enough is, but I can tell you what a couple of them are. What if I don't have enough to retire? What if I don't have enough to pay the rent this month? What if I don't have enough food in the refrigerator to feed my family? What if I don't have enough education to move to the next tier of success in the company? What if I haven't done enough? What if I haven't gotten enough? What if I haven't achieved enough? And then what if starts to rule the day, and all of a sudden, we find ourselves yet again in the cycle of worry called what if? Let me give you a last one, and this is the hardest one for us to navigate. What if I'm not enough? What if when I look at my life and I look at myself in the mirror, what if I'm not enough? Hey, time out real quick, church. I know this one cuts to the core of our identity, and I know that there are a lot of us who probably wrestle with this one, like, what if I'm not enough? Can I just say that, like, as you open the Word of God, you begin to see things about God's people that He says in His Word, like, we are fearfully and wonderfully made, right? And that reminds us that we are enough. Things like we are created in the image of God, and that reminds us that we are enough. And listen, I'm not sure who needs to hear it, but I got sent here by the Lord today to share it with you. I want you to hear this. I want you to know this. I want you to walk in this. You are enough. You're enough. God made you enough. Start living like you're enough. He's got you. This is a life of what if, and what Jesus is compelling us to in the passage is to exchange the what if for a life of what is. What is actually true? What is actually important? He wants us to see what He's actually up to, and what is true? What is God doing? What is God calling us to? And those are nested in the idea of God's kingdom. And so, when He's shifting our

lens from a what if to a what is, He puts our focus on His kingdom. And as you look at the text, and we continue through the story, Jesus gets to verse 33, and here's what He says. He says, Seek first His kingdom, God's kingdom. the what is, and his righteousness, and all of the things that you're worried about, all of these things, they'll be given to you as well. It's important to know what we're talking about when we say God's kingdom. God's kingdom is God's reign through God's people over God's places. And it becomes our priority. And here's the reality, we don't have time to build the kingdom if we're doing a whole bunch of worrying. We start worrying about all the things that are pressing in our lives, and all of a sudden, God's kingdom becomes a secondary thing, and we get our priorities out of order. But Jesus takes the time to reorder our priorities here. And I just want you to think about how much kingdom building we could actually do if we weren't spending hours in each day worrying. How much time we would have to pray? How much time we would have to read the word of God and apply it to our lives? How much more presence we would actually have with our families, and our friends, and our co-workers to share the love of Christ with them? How much more intentional kingdom work that we could actually do if we weren't spending all of our time worrying, and we put as our priority the building of God's kingdom? It would change everything about how we live. So, Jesus is compelling us to live lives concerned with God's kingdom. Jesus calls us to reorder our priorities, and then he points us to how we can begin to do this, and he gives us some practical advice. In verse 34, Jesus says these words, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself, because each day has enough trouble of its own. You see, worrying about tomorrow is like borrowing trouble that you may never have

to repay. I told you before, most of the things that we worry about never actually happen. So what we find ourselves doing is trying to solve tomorrow's problems with today's information. And Jesus is like, I want you to live in today, because my kingdom is being built today. And so, the invitation that Jesus gives us in this passage, remember I said, he wants us to take this life of worry and to exchange it for something else. And the only thing I know that describes a life where we abandon our lives of worry, right, where we realize that worry doesn't work, the only life that I know is when we do those things, then we start to put God's priority first, his kingdom, that's called a life of worship. And I know that what we did earlier in singing was worship, but boy, worship encompasses so much more than that. It involves every fiber of our being and pointing all of those things towards God. And so, what God is actually asking us to do through Jesus, Jesus is compelling us to drop a life of worry and to pick up a life of worship. Now, right there, that's where we say amen. Right there. See, I got to do some amen coaching around here. That would have been a good place. He's calling us to replace worry with worship. Now, I want to give you some practical steps of how we can do this as we move through our week. And these are just some challenges that I want to put before you that will help us to live lives of worship rather than lives of worry. Here's the first one. We did this earlier. I want you to begin to name your worries. Name it. Call it out.

What is the thing that we're worried about? What does it reveal about who we are and about where we are? Like, let's go ahead and name them. Let's put a name on it so we can begin to turn it to the Lord in prayer. Let's name what it is. What's the thing behind the thing? What's the fear that's driving the worry? What's the gap in trust that we have? Because the areas that we worry the most about, they reveal where we trust God the least. So, let's go ahead and name our worries. Let me give you another one. Let's replace our worry words with worship words. Let's begin to replace our words of worry with words of worship. You know, when anxiety risings, one of the things that we can do is just kind of spin in a worry. And what I'm asking you to do and what I think Jesus is asking us to do is to begin to replace that with a different way of living. And a lot of that is nested in our words. You see, the words that we use, they matter. And in changing our wording, we oftentimes change our reality. Let me give you some examples. When you start saying things in your life like, God has not given me the spirit of fear, it changes things. When you start saying things out loud like, I am fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God, it changes things. When you start saying things like, the Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing, it changes things. And so I want us to begin to replace words of worry

with words of worship. Like even just speaking the very names of God over our situation changes things. You know, Emmanuel is a name of God and it means that God is with us. And that should remind us that I'm not alone, right? When we think about God, one of the other names is Jehovah Jireh. That means that the Lord is a great provider. He's not a provider, he's the provider. And that changes the way that we see the world. And even just speaking the name of Jesus into our problems changes everything. Yeah, it changes everything. One of my favorite songs is a song that says, I speak Jesus, I speak Jesus. Yeah, and here's the last thing. I want us to stop trying and to start trusting God. You know, what I've learned about this is that whenever you share a message like this, our tendency is to get to Monday. And when we get to Monday, we say to ourselves out loud, hey, I'm just gonna stop doing this. And I'm gonna try really, really hard to do something different. And can I just say like, that's not gonna get us there. Like what God wants from us is not for us to try hard. The truth is, is if trying hard got us there, we already would be people who don't worry. It's not trying that's gonna get us down the road

in all of this. It's trusting. It's choosing to trust God. What I know is that some of us are caught up in this life of worry. Can I just offer for you where I think a lot of the problem lies? I think a lot of this gets mixed up when it comes down to these, these phones, right? Now I'm old enough to remember when the first iPhone came out. And I remember it was supposed to be this way that we talk to each other, we spent more time together. And I've just watched over the years as it's turned into a TikTok, Instagram, Facebook fest. And something that was actually supposed to be a phone for communication, we use it for everything else but to talk on the phone, right? And so something that was actually meant to be something that we used, like a little bit of a conduit for communication has become a catalyst for comparison. And now we use our phones to compare ourselves to each other and to the algorithm. And when you live that kind of life, the next inevitable step is to worry. Because you start living in the what if. What if I don't match that? What if I don't have that?

That's not where God would have us live. Jesus wants us to live in the what is. And what is true is that God is still our provider. He still has power over all things. He still has great plans for our lives. He still wants us to build His kingdom. And as a church, we need to start living more in the what is. In the what is. And maybe for you, this has always been a struggle and maybe you have tipped over from worry into something that feels a little bit deeper. Maybe this has always been a battle for you and you just can't seem to get control of it no matter how hard you trust or how hard you try. And maybe you've tipped over from worry into anxiety. You know, anxiety is like this accelerated sense of worry. And it involves a bunch of different symptoms in our lives. Like we start to ruminate on things a whole lot. We start to lose the trust of people. We start to feel it in the physical symptoms in our body. Listen, if you have tipped over into this side, I need you to hear a couple things. The first one I need you to hear is that listen, we see you, we love you, and we wanna help you to walk through this journey. we can reduce the anxiety, reduce the worry. Let me tell you also that God sees you, that he loves you, and that he wants to help you as well. So at Willow Creek, one of the ways that we do that

is we have a whole page full of resources that are designed to help you on this journey through whatever mental health struggles you might be facing, whether it's anxiety or something else. And you can go to willowcreek.org slash mentalhealth, and there'll be a whole bunch of ways that we, as a church, would like to help support you on this journey. I mean, things like coaching so that you can find a really good counselor. Things like a button at the bottom of the page, if you scroll down, it says talk with a pastor, and a pastor will call you, pray with you, try to point you to the right next step for the journey ahead. And all of that because we love you, we see you, and we wanna help you with this. You know, one of the best ways that we can get help as we're dealing with this worry stuff is to see who God is sending us to around us, and to invite them into this journey of following Jesus. You see, the Jesus way wasn't just reserved for one person. God wants to call whosoever will come into this journey of following Jesus and living life the Jesus way. And one of the best ways that we can do that is through a simple invite. So early today, you should have received a card, or maybe you'll get one as you exit.

At all of our campuses, I want you to realize the power of that invite. There are so many people in our world right now who are living lives of worry. And an invite might change everything for them. They might begin to see that there's a different way, a better way, the Jesus way to do life. And all they're waiting for is for you and I to invite them. When God's kingdom, when the building up of this kingdom becomes our focus, then we drop a life of worry, and we pick up a life of worship. Church, that's the Jesus way. Come on, let's pray together. Father, I thank you for your grace and mercy. I thank you for your goodness. Help us to be people who live life the way that you designed. We can drop worry and pick up worship, or we can drop worry and pick up worship. We can live lives free the way you intended for us to live. We be people who choose to trust you instead of turning over and over again into our worries. God, when we turn to you, we choose you, but we live to build your kingdom. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.