The Way You Live

Meditations on the Sermon on the Mount 

NOTE: My meditations on May 7-14 were on the Lord’s Prayer so I will not include this part of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:9-13, in these meditations.

June 11, 2024

The Way You Live

Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. (v19)

Read Matthew 6:19-34 

Sometimes, Jesus may seem too out of reach for us mere mortals. When he was in the wilderness being tempted by Satan, he didn’t turn the stones into bread, but that doesn’t mean He didn’t have the power to. In Matthew 14, Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish. When you have that going for you, it’s easy to tell other people not to worry. For people with real life worries about bills, jobs, families and their future, Jesus can sound a bit out of touch.

So, how can we understand what He means in today’s reading?

I hear Him continuing the theme He began in chapter 5. My relationship with God is all about trust. Can I trust God with all my life? It is one thing to serve a god that only gives me a list of moral and ethical standards to obey. It is an altogether different thing to trust God with my life, my wife, my children, my job, my retirement, my future. This difference causes many people to hear Jesus’ command to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself,” as a thirty second sound bite, but not a realistic way to live life--unless you live in a Monastery and don’t have jobs, bills, and family to worry over.

 But Jesus wasn’t into sound bites. He was very serious in His call for me to enter a trusting, loving relationship with God the Father. Because such a relationship is so out of the realm of anything I have experienced in my life, in today’s reading, Jesus gives concrete examples of what our life will look like when we live our life by trusting in God.

My Takeaway: I made these examples into a little checklist to help me stay focused on what I want to be important to me:

Do I give more time and attention to my retirement accounts than I do to investing in the Kingdom of God?

What do I invite into my mind the most? Mystery novels and nonsense TV shows? Or Scripture, literature and other materials that help me contemplate the richness and beauty of God’s Kingdom?

Am I anxious about meeting my needs? Or do I trust God to meet my needs out of the abundance of His riches and glory in Christ Jesus?

Am I anxious about tomorrow? Or do I remember that God’s mercies never end, they are new each morning?

 Sē’lah

 

(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

 

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com.

 

Copyright © 2024 by Alex M. Knight

 

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.