Gateway Church Sermons
Alder Road Site | 11th August 2024 | Nathaniel Hobby | The Birds Of The Air
It's such a pleasure to be here with you this morning, because it doesn't happen very often. Now, most people here I know very well and it's a pleasure to see you again. If you don't know me, my name's Nathaniel, I'm one of the elders at Gateway Church, but the reason that you don't see me very much is that I spend most of my time down at 502 on Ashley Road. So that's where I am, Sunday to Sunday, so you might see me there a little bit more often. But it is such a pleasure to be up here with you today. You must excuse me, as soon as I'm done here, I'm dashing back down there to go and share the same message with them as well. But it is a real joy to be here with you. Now, last month I was texting with an old friend, I woke up, I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but I woke up in the morning and just felt this real sense that, "Man, I feel like I need to pray for this guy." I really feel God's laid them on my heart to pray for them, so I sent them a text message and said, "Hey, for some reason God's put me on you on my heart, is there anything that I can be praying for?" And they came back with, as you would imagine, because this is how things usually work with God, a big long list of, "Actually, yeah, I would love some prayer, it's exactly the sort of thing I need, and here's some things that I can pray for you about." And then they said, the same thing back to me, "Is there anything that I can pray for you about?" And I said, "Actually, yeah, do you know what? I feel like I'm just getting towards a very long stretch at work, and getting towards the end of it. I'm a little stressed, overworked, over tired. We've got a holiday coming up." And to be honest with you, there's some Bible verses that I've been reading that I'm particularly challenging me at the moment. And I sent him the verses that I'm preaching on this morning. And I said to him, word for word, in my response, "I'm finding these to be the hardest verses in the Bible at the moment. Please pray I learn to rely on God." Now, God's obviously got a sense of humor, because next week the preaching road came out, and guess which verse I got? So there you go, this is where we are this morning, exactly. But you should know that actually, as we go through this morning's passage, and there are some things in here that I do think are quite challenging for us this morning, please know that I've wrestled with them as much as you have this morning, that actually I'm preaching to myself as much as I'm preaching to you when we open these verses. So we are in Matthew 6 today. If you've got one of these church Bibles, it's page 971. And we've just got a few anchor verses to read, starting in verse 25. So I'll read them for you. They are up on the screen as well, just in case you haven't got your hands on a Bible. And you know you're in trouble when the passage starts with the title, "Do Not Worry," right? So that's where we are this morning, that's what we're looking at, okay? So, "Do Not Worry," it says, "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 life not more than food and the body not more than clothes, look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns yet your heavenly Father feeds them." Are you, are you this morning, not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? Like I said, I reckon these are up there with some of the hardest verses in Scripture to apply to our own lives. Don't worry, so simple yet, so profound, so difficult. And like I said, I've struggled with this on more than one occasion as life has gone by. Actually, I don't think there's a single person here this morning that hasn't at some point struggled with the problem of worry, right? Please put me at rest, right? We all have that problem time to time and it's pretty much universal to the human experience, our ability to worry, especially over the big things in life and to worry unnecessarily over the small things as well. And so, the title of this morning's message is "Consider the Birds," and we're going to look at how the birds as a part of God's creation can help to point us towards God. For those of you who like a little bit of a road map to a preach, I've got three points that I'm going to be making, point number one, birds point to the God of all creation, point number two, consider the birds not to survive but to thrive, and point number three, unsurprisingly, do not worry. So, point number one, birds point to the God of all creation. Who's ready for some amazing bird facts? Yeah, great, me too. You'll be surprised to hear that I'm not the world's leading expert on birds, but I have thoroughly fact-check these, so please don't worry too much about it. Did you know there are well over 10,000 species of birds all around the world, 10,000 species? That's incredible, isn't it? And some of them, like the hummingbird, weigh less than a penny. So that penny, there you go, Becky, can you catch? How about that? Hummingbirds weigh less than that, and they can also fly backwards. They're the only birds that can do so. The fastest falcon can give a race car a run for its money. Think of the precision and the ingenuity that goes into creating a race car, the aerodynamics involved in, those marginal gains that create the fastest possible race car. Well, did you know a peregrine falcon when it's diving for prey can reach speeds of up to 200 miles an hour? That's fast, isn't it, right? All that precision to create a race car, and a bird does it like that when he sees its prey. Speaking of incredible, the migration patterns of birds are incredible. Look at the migration patterns. This is a map from the British Trust of Ornithology, like I said, a fat check this morning, so don't worry. But it shows the migration patterns of swallows in the UK when autumn hits, and I mean, you would if you could, wouldn't you, right, migrate down to the south sunny climates and then back up when the summer hits in the UK. But it's just an incredible journey that these birds go on every time they go to migrate. There's also academic research that shows that birds can bring certain coins or rocks like the penny that you've got there in exchange for treats, and research that shows that some birds even use tools as bait to catch their food. They're incredibly intelligent creatures. These birds are just, there's not only loads of them, they don't only migrate in incredible ways, but they are intelligent birds. So intelligent, in fact, that the Lincolnshire Wildlife Park had some problems in 2020 when five parrots learned how to swear, and so had to be taken away from the public so that they didn't disturb anyone. So, you know, they are clever, clever creatures, all right? So, as we're looking at our series as in the God of all creation, creation, for me, is one of the greatest arguments in favor of a creator. For me, I can't look at the world around me and put it up to cosmic chance. For me, it takes more faith to look at the beauty of birds or the magnificent landscapes of mountains and rivers and seas and beaches and coves and brancy island and chimerage and all these places that we enjoy here locally and put it all up to chance, a happy accident. For me, when I consider the birds or the trees or the intricacy of the universe, these things clearly point to God as a creator. I can't look at those migration patterns or hear about the incredible intelligence of birds and say that it's just evolved that way without the thought and without the care and without the attention of a creator who holds his creation in perfect balance, who designed birds to be intelligent enough to survive and migrate and fly backwards if they need to, to go to speeds of 200 miles per hour. I can't put that up to chance. I've got no theological explanation so far for the birdswaring, but that's back next week you can ask him. But I appreciate that you might be here this morning and come from a very different viewpoint. You might be skeptical of Christianity and its claims and that for you, my faith position on creation might be totally at odds with what you believe, but please don't let that put you off. Please stay with me this morning because I truly believe that God wants to speak to you through this morning's message too. And there are others in the team here. We'd absolutely love to talk to you more about the claims of Christianity at the end if you've got any questions about it. So as the subject of this morning's message is to consider the birds, the first thing I want us to consider is what birds point to. Next time you're at home and you're looking out your window and you see a bird flying or resting or diving or searching for food, I encourage you to allow yourself to think about its creator who made this bird this intelligent species to interact with the rest of creation as a part of this ecosystem, that this bird is being held and cared for by its creator who's placed this bird in a creation that sustains it and gives it the food that it's searching for. When we read the creation story in Genesis chapter 1, you get to day five of creation. And it says in Genesis 1 verse 20, "And God said, 'Let the water team with living creatures let the birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.' God created and commanded them to fly and sustains these birds. The God of all creation made these birds and knows them and cares for them. And so to see them is to see this creator who so intricately made them the way that they are, to see what their beauty and their intricacy points towards. Not just that these birds are also a reminder for us that if God cares for them, the next time you see those birds in their environment, if God cares for them, our passage this morning tells us how much more than will he care for us. That's what our passage is telling us. So if God cares for you, this means that as we consider the birds, this is point number two now, we must also consider that they weren't made just to survive, but to thrive. They weren't just made to survive, but to thrive. The first time we took our kids abroad, we took them to New Yorker, thought it was quite a safe bet for a little trip, just a couple of hours on a plane. And we found a Geordie fella online who was able to rent us an Airbnb for a couple of weeks up in the north of the island. And so we were in a place called Alcudier inside this like walled old town. It was a really beautiful place to go. And our favourite thing was sitting on the roof terrace each night and watching the starlings swirling and dancing above our heads and chirping as they went in these massive flocks. I actually think the group name for a group of starlings is a flight of starlings. There you go, another bird fat fool you this morning. But so these birds were swooping and dancing in the sky in these great numbers and it was the most beautiful thing to watch. And we really enjoyed just going out on the terrace each night and just watching the world go by and watching these birds absolutely thrive in their environment. Our kids at the time were I think two and four something like that and they really enjoyed pretending like they were part of the flight of starling. And so they'd be squawking around on this terrace up the top and pretending to be a part of this flight as well. I can't say that the neighbours thought it was quite so beautiful listening to my kids screeching rather than the birds. But actually it was this wonderful moment watching these birds absolutely thrive in their environment. And as I was preparing this message I felt God lead me to that memory. And so the fact that these birds in this environment weren't just surviving. They weren't just getting by. It wasn't just scrapping and scrambling for the little bits of food they could find. But they were absolutely flourishing in this environment. For these birds it wasn't a case of getting by but having the energy to dance and glide through the air as the sunset and display this sense of beauty in God's creation. It was the most awe-inspiring sight. If God cares for them and cares for us all the more then we should be expecting that the God of all creation doesn't just have survival in mind for us either but has a great plan and a richness for us as well. For anybody who's starting to get worried that I'm straying close to prosperity gospel territory let me put your mind at rest. The birds of the air obviously also can struggle. And we do see that there are times for birds and for us as humans where life doesn't feel very much like flourishing. And I've certainly had those seasons in my life as well where God has allowed a measure of suffering that might make it hard for me to dance with joy at times. And sometimes surviving is enough and we can still be thankful to our God our creator and sustainer in times where it feels like we're just holding on. And certainly those times in my life have been some of the times where I've actually felt closest to God, most reliant on God. But I believe that a proper exposition of this passage today isn't to tell us just not to worry because God's going to look after your basic needs that you're going to kind of survive through life but that we're able to take joy in God in season and out. That we're able to take joy in God. God made us to experience joy to be able to look at birds dancing in the air and get pleasure from it. And I think understanding not to worry is understanding that in the good times and in the bad times when you feel like life is going well but even when you feel like perhaps it's not. Whether you're experiencing joy or experiencing pain we can still look to God as the author and perfecter of our faith. We can still look to the God of all creation and know that he's about a greater work than that which we can see. It's understanding that even when we walk through pain we can take comfort and joy in knowing that the God who holds the universe in his hand is in control and is moving towards us in love, in love even when we might not feel like it. And that's what I think for me it means to thrive and not just survive. It's on the understanding that even when we feel threadbare God won't let the threads snap and that's what it can sometimes mean in that context. Zambian pastor and theologian Joe Capoglio says this Jesus' instruction not to worry about tomorrow does not forbid thrift, thoughtfulness and careful provision for the future. These qualities are good. It does however forbid the sort of worry about clothes and food and future that so consumes the person that there's no joy left in life. Not worrying doesn't mean prosperity gospel when it doesn't mean carelessness either but I do believe that it is a gospel issue because worry can sometimes be a symptom of a lack of trust in God and that can sometimes rob us of joy. Let me say that again because I what really want you to hear this I do believe this morning this to be a gospel issue because worry can sometimes be a symptom of a lack of trust in God. Choosing not to worry means trusting God in all circumstances and finding joy in God in all circumstances and not letting worry consume and take joy from you in season and act. It means working hard using the gifts that God's given us and maintaining quiet confidence in God for the future, trusting in that future brought for you by Jesus and trusting that our faithful God in season and act will move towards us in love and provide for us what we need. And this is important to know because God will provide for you, God will provide for me, God will provide for us but it might not be in the way that you might think but he can and we can take comfort and joy from knowing that as we continue to put our God our trust in the God of all creation he has proven trustworthy. We come this morning to a trustworthy and to a faithful God and so when I say that this is a gospel issue what I mean is actually if we have the God of all creation looking after us those worries those temporary things that consume so much of our energy and time actually it's a gospel issue when we hold on to those rather than giving it to the only person who we can know does can do something about it okay that's why I say it's a gospel issue. One thing I can say for certain and I think many others can attest here as well is that my life hasn't always gone the way I'd planned it. If I'd have got to the point of 18 years of age and sat down and mapped out what I think the rest of my life would have looked like and I'd have put little points in here and but it's there and I'd have got this amazing job and traveled the world I've done all this stuff. Actually my life hasn't turned out the way that perhaps I'd have thought it would have and I've had prayers that have gone unanswered and my thoughts and plans have sometimes come to nothing while other aspects of my life have surprised me in ways that I didn't think were going to happen but God's plan for my life hasn't failed and I think an understanding about of this passage is more about understanding and more about me getting on board with God's program for my life than me trying to convince God that my way is the best way okay. That's what it means to thrive as a Christian it's not about health, wealth and happiness prosperity gospel but it's about allowing God to work by strife in him in all situations no matter where God leads you because God knows infinitely more than we ever will and he's working for our good and for his glory and so that's what it means to thrive and not survive okay great. So we're told to not worry about our future why because we can't control it anyway but God can. His plan for your life might not be what you'd expect but he is the God of all creation with infinite wisdom outside of time to see and know what's best for you and that's what a quiet confidence and a joy in the Lord is about it's about aligning yourself with God's plan rather than your own plan saying staying in step with God and then you don't worry because God's got it anyway okay that's it. So point number three then do not worry this is the crux of today's message this is what today's passage is titled and this is kind of what we're all about so I'm going to read the passage for you again but we're actually this time going to read the longer context that this passage is based in so we're now going to go right the way down to verse 34. So it says do not worry 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 life is not life more than food and the body more than clothes look at the birds of the air consider the birds like we've been doing this morning they do not sow or reap or store away in barns and yet your heavenly father feeds them are you gateway church not much more valuable than they can any one of you by worrying at a single hour to your life and why do you worry about clothes he had the flowers of the field grow they don't 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 clothed 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 so do not worry saying what shall we wear or what shall we drink or what shall we eat for the pagans run after these things and your heavenly father knows that you need them but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well therefore do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow we'll worry about itself each day has enough trouble of its own and don't we just know it there you go that's the full context there for you I said at the beginning that I found these verses to be amongst the most hardest verses in all of scripture and really I mean it because it's easy enough to say hey don't worry don't worry about it God's got it it's all it's all fine but actually it's much harder to apply it to your own life to actually live in a state of that and trust and confidence in God in all things and sometimes worry creeps up on us often for me it's at 2 a.m. when my brain's in overdrive and I just can't sleep and that's when all those worrying thoughts come right the way into overdrive a couple of weeks ago we went to the cinema to watch Inside Out 2 anybody seen Inside Out 2 okay well I'm gonna avoid spoilers just in case you want to go and watch it after this all right but it's an animated movie it's meant for children and the whole point is it kind of personifies the emotions in your head that drive you to do the things that you do and in the movie there's this big control panel and all of the different emotions kind of fight to gain control of this panel to help you run the emotions of your life as you go through and in Inside Out 2 we're introduced to this emotion anxiety isn't she beautiful and so this whole movie is essentially a lesson on what happens if anxiety is in the driving seat at the control panel of your emotions and how it can end up overtaking your life and I must say for what's supposed to be an animated child's comedy it's harrowing oh my goodness can't believe it but behind all the animation and the funny jokes there's a point as humans we're not supposed to let anxiety and worry sit in the driving seats and rule our decision making and the way that we act and that's true whether you're a Christian or not and it might be that if you are a Christian here this morning the worry you experience has been in charge has been in at the control panel of your emotions for so long that it's ended up taking the place rightly reserved for God our ultimate authority in life isn't based on how we feel but who we are through Jesus it's our identity in Christ who set us free from sin and condemnation through the power of the cross that gives us the freedom to choose to move towards God and let him rule when our emotions are tempted to get the better of us but here as we consider the birds they're as we're told in the passage not wrought with emotion they don't they don't store up their food for the future they rest in the moment that they're in they don't sow they don't reap or worry about tomorrow and then the passage as we read continues as we consider the flowers or the grass in the field or any other number of things in God's wonderful creation all held together by God without the problem of worry which seems to be a uniquely human thing for us to consider if our God can look after the birds and feed them and sustain them and help them to flourish how much more will our Father look after you to help sustain you and to help you to flourish and so our role is not one of worry but one to rest in God our creator our provider our sustainer and our father and to let our identity in Christ rule our decision-making and our identity in Christ be what we set ourselves on not how we feel and not our emotions that's a really hard thing to do Worry as a human feeling can't add a single hour to our life but what it can do is rob joy from it it won't add a single hour to your life but it can rob many many hours of joy from your life and that is true we were on holiday last week it's partly where I'm sporting this sunburn from so thanks for asking this morning and we were in Somerset and we explored a little bit of Dorset and one day we went to Linton and Limoth in North Devon has anybody ever been to Linton and Limoth yeah it's a beautiful place it's this wonderful little seaside town in in North Devon and the thing you've got to know about it is it is steep like to get there it's like really really steep the hills like if you think older roads bad getting up here in the morning right the hills in Linton and Limoth are to be honest with you a bit out of hand I think I think it's it's gone a bit wrong and so Linton and Limoth is famed for this cliff railway and this cliff the cliff is so steep that it needs this railway to take you from the town at the bottom to the town at the top and you get on this old railway which when it was built was the the steepest railway in the world okay which tells you something about that just how steep it is to get down into this little town to go and see it I'll admit perhaps I can put it this way but it has the smell of burnt clutch in the air permanently it's kind of that's the that's the smell of Linton and Limoth when you go there that's what it smells like and so we do we we're I'm like driving down this hill and I'm it's getting steeper and steeper and I'm thinking oh no I actually hadn't quite anticipated this and then it gets steeper and steeper and you think I'm in try I feel like we're gonna fall off like this is this is getting really problematic for me okay and so we get to the bottom and like everybody else our clutch is absolutely stinking and we find a parking space and we park the car up and then the rest of the family have a wonderful day out in a seaside town in Devon whilst I spend the rest of the day worrying myself stupid about how I'm going to get this car back up the top of the hill we're going on this cliff railway and we pay our money and we're going up the railway and the kids are going well this is fantastic isn't this brilliant I'm thinking I've got to get a car up this oh my goodness what am I going to do I can't believe it and I'm asking that I'm asking the locals so I mean I went that way down but if I went that way up is that any better they're like no mate I mean I really don't know what you're gonna do and so like by the time we actually get this car started I am like basically having a panic attack how am I going to get this car back up this hill and I will say this very much like all day whilst I worried about the best way to do it my kids were having an incredible day out and so was my wife and their day was full of joy whilst mine was full of worry and do you think I had a reason to worry well if anybody knows a mechanic who's good with clutches please can you send them my email because I really know of course there was no reason to worry we actually found a way out of lint and limous that was practically flat the whole thing was stupid I worried for the entire day for absolutely no reason worry did absolutely nothing that day to add any time to my life but it did rob an entire day of joy from it it was all so unnecessary it's a really silly example and the things that we worry about can sometimes be so trivial and other times not so much and I appreciate that even this morning I'll be speaking to people who are worried about things that are far less trivial than getting a car up a hill you might be worried about money or putting food on the table or worried about work or making rental mortgage payments you might be worried about your children about their behavior or whether they'll grow up to know God in the way that you do these are all really serious things you might be worried about the next academic year at school or at university if you're going into that you might be worried about relationships or your parents and how you look after them as they get increasingly older or your own health and actually all of these things seem much much less trivial don't they they seem actually pretty fundamental to our lives our health and our family and money and putting food on the table and so when we're faced with these kinds of challenges how do we apply this morning's text then how do we shrug it off and say oh well don't worry when actually these things seem so fundamental to the way that we live of the things I've listed I'll be honest and say more than a few have occupied my mind and caused me to worry and I've spent far too many nights awake with my mind worrying or pacing the living room because I just can't get to sleep might actually be that you've stopped watching the news because every time you turn on the news and you see the riots taking place up and down the world or the effects of climate change or whatever it might be that you're particularly passionate about or worried about that actually these things cause you to worry and truly as well and again what do we do in these moments do we let that worry take over or do we trust the God of all creation to have even these things in his hand do we let ourselves worry about it more than we should I'm not trivializing these things they can be worrisome things but I do believe that God is calling us to a greater discipline this morning in the way that we react when these things come along the worst thing that could happen after preaching a message about worry is that you walk away worried about being worried okay that's that kind of feels like a circular problem that I can't do very much about but this this morning's message isn't supposed to bring conviction at all but what it's supposed to do is to point you to the God of all creation the one who can do something about the worries that we have when they come the one who holds all things creation together in the palm of his hand he's the one that we can go to in times of worry and he's the only one that can do something about it my message this morning isn't to tell you that if you ever worry that you're wrong if you ever find yourself in a state of worry all of a sudden it's got you've gone against God that's not it at all but it's about what you choose to do about that worry that Jesus is dealing with here when he addresses the issue as I was preparing and meditating on these verses I think the real application here isn't to make sure that we never find ourselves in a state of worry to go through life in this kind of permanent state of joy and the second we worry we're in trouble that's not that at all but it's about what we do about it when worry comes worry essentially is this lingering concern about things which are largely outside of our control and in those moments we're not trying to quash those feelings but we're trying to put our trust in something more powerful and more permanent than anything else that we might face and that is what I'm talking about we put our trust like I said earlier in the one who has proven trustworthy and can do something about it rather than let those worries rule the rest of the way that we act the command to not worry is less about feelings we're not we're not trusting on our feelings in those moments and more about action when worry comes will you give into its grip will you let the worry consume you or will you give it over to God will you purposefully turn worry to prayer and turn towards God trusting your worries into his hands that's what we're talking about it's not about how we feel it's about what we do about it how we act how we move towards God instead a chap called David Holden wrote a book called battle for the mind and he speaks of the mind as a battleground and he says that winning the battle isn't about the removal of thoughts because that's not always possible but replacing them with something better as with worry we can't remove it from our lives we're never going to get rid of it but we can actively work to replace that worry with something bigger and something better in the book David Holden says we need to exchange those thoughts taking captive for Christ with the right thoughts the Bible's very clear about that Paul tells us to set your mind on the things above not earthly things successful substitution comes from being rooted and grounded in Christ's word if your mind is full of the truth of God there is no room for the enemy to land next time you're prone to worry will you lean into that worry and obsess and fixate or will you turn that worry to prayer to look to God to look to your father in heaven and turn that worry instead into trusting him replace the worry with truth about who God is the God of all creation who feeds the birds and clothes the flowers and who knows you and loves you and has a plan for you who is more powerful than any force or person or circumstance you might face and who is working for your good and for his glory even in the times where you don't feel like it okay God loves you so much that he sent his son to earth to live the perfect life and bring wisdom like this that he spoke this morning and he died taking the punishment that we deserve so that those who believe in him can have a relationship with the father a relationship with the God of all creation who draws us close who gifts us with peace and patience and strengthens us and has given us a new identity and a hope and a future it's Jesus that's saying to you this morning don't worry why because his blood has paid the punishment for the sin that you and the things that you've done wrong so that you might be free and free to thrive in relationship with God free to go to God in all things in all situations when worry comes you can move to God who is already moving towards you in love and know that he is in control isn't that incredible yeah so take action and take captive the worries when they hit and give them to the only one who is consistently trustworthy and can do something about them that's God believe on the words of Jesus the act of not worrying is active it requires action from us when it comes to ensure that we never let anything take away take us away from the joy of God that nothing would rob us from the joy that we can have in God now as we come into respond I'm aware that for some this subject is an incredibly difficult one because for you anxiety and worry isn't just something that happens from time to time when circumstances get in the way but it's a daily reality or a real daily battle in your life and please don't miss hear me you know there are some I know even in our own community that have medical diagnosis who are acutely experiencing and working through with incredible difficulty this subject and my message this morning like I've said really isn't to condemn I understand that there can be some real medical issues at play but I also believe that God can bring healing and relief and freedom for these things as well this morning too few weeks ago our church weekend away Abby stood up and felt that she'd heard from God that actually God wanted to deal with this in people's lives that those who were experiencing anxiety and depression might feel a sense of freedom and the very next Sunday we had somebody come and give testimony in our Sunday service about how they felt God had provided a measure of healing for that exact issue isn't that incredible that God's even working in in those most acute of circumstances to see freedom and we want to believe that God can do that today as well so let's be quick to go into battle for one another on this prayers a powerful weapon that we can use both privately and together when we're faced with worry remember we need to take action when worry comes it's not about giving into the worries and the feelings and the emotion but putting our trust actively turning to God through it and it might be this morning you want to speak to somebody here and ask God again that he might meet you in the midst of what you're facing and bring freedom that he might bring peace to you and an understanding to you that he really is in control the longer context that we read in Matthew 6 provides us with the solution to worry it says but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well we need to be people who look to God in all circumstances who replace worry with the truth our identity of who we are in Jesus instead we are children of God we need to get a bigger view of the God that we worship the God of all creation who made the birds and keeps them and feeds them and helps them to thrive all powerful eternally are thrown and our father who loves us and moves towards us in all situations it might be that even this morning you're feeling worried about something you've kind of walked through the doors this morning with your mind worrying about something that you're facing in the week to come or an issue in your life at the moment that's occupied far too much of your thoughts and caused worry over and over that's done nothing to add any time to your life but has certainly taken joy from it and it's my belief this morning that God wants to restore joy to you joy in him and joy in your identity and who you are in him and so I encourage you to respond to move towards him because I know and I trust that he has already moved towards you okay I really want you to encourage us to be on the front foot with praying for one another this morning of speaking the truth of God into one another's lives of going into battle for one another over these issues so that we might be more like Jesus and come closer to God through it God loves you and God cares for you and this morning you need to give your worries over to him move towards him and trust that the God of all creation has got those as well okay great well we're going to come back we're going to worship we're going to get that bigger view of who God is that God that we worship and then we can spend some time praying for each other after that it's okay great let me pray for us why don't we stand I thank you that you are the God of all creation that you are over and above all things that you hold creation in the palm of your hand that there is nothing that is too far removed from you that you couldn't move towards it and bring change and Lord I do thank you I do thank you that that is the God that we worship all powerful eternally enthroned trustworthy and faithful forever and ever and ever and in the face of the temporary things that we worry about we look to the eternal God the one who has the power to change circumstance and the one who has the power to do something about it Lord I do pray that you would train us and discipline us when worry comes to move quickly towards you not to let worry and emotion rule our lives but to let you the creator of the universe be the the the the only thing that sits on the throne of our hearts so in your name I pray that you would do it I pray this morning you would work a mighty work in us Lord that you would bring freedom release us from worry and move us towards joy in you and our identity in you in Jesus name I pray Amen