Strength For Today

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."
Matt 6:34

I was thinking about Rach Pavey's contribution at church a few weeks back about 'strength for today' - that God doesn't give you strength for the year, or for a decade or a month. He gives you strength for one day at a time. Rach is experiencing this to the extreme, but I was thinking that it's an incredibly important principle to learn in general life. Hard times or not.

You see it over and over again in scripture. Manner falls from Heaven - God provides out of thin air for his people when all natural means of provision are absent. But they're commanded to gather only enough for one day. God wants our confidence set firmly in him. In the Lord's prayer Jesus gives us a template - to pray for our daily bread. Nothing more. And the Lord's prayer itself sounds like a daily prayer. Daily we ask for strength against temptation, daily we forgive, daily we seek first God's kingdom and daily we pray for deliverance from evil.

I was wondering, off the back of this, if a lot of lethargy and apathy in out struggle against sin is born out of thinking too far ahead. We think about whether we can struggle and fight week in week out, year upon year, for the rest of our lives. The task seems impossibly big and we collapse under the weight of it. We don't even try. But if you broke it down and just focused on today, the next 16 hours you're awake, suddenly it sounds okay. One day at a time. And tomorrow - we wake up and do the same.

This no doubt has a similar application in a number or other areas. Provision, health, singleness, marriage, work, relationships... pretty much anything about you life that causes worry, stress and anxiety.

Abiding

"If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you"
John 15:7

That word 'abide' means to dwell within, to consistently live in Christ and have his words living in us. It's a call to consistency, on a daily basis. It's not a fluctuating obedience or discipline, it's total trust in Jesus, in our hearts and minds, and backed up by our actions. It's an unshakeable belief that every word of God is true, right and good. What I believe this verse is saying is that as we enter into this state, our prayers become more inline with God's thoughts. What we ask for, how we ask and why we ask will be more Christ-like, and perhaps our prayers will have a greater degree of success.