Calvary Baptist Church

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Don’t Get Lost in Your Troubles and Pay Attention to How You Live

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Our minds cannot be full of God at the same time they are full of fear! Don’t get lost in your troubles. Life up your eyes! Isaiah 26: 3 says: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.”

Are you troubled, restless, or go sleepless at night? Then rejoice, rejoice in the Lord’s Sovereignty. Expose all your worries to an hour of worship and watch all your concerns melt like ice on the sidewalk in July! Jeremiah draws a direction between faith and peace. Jeremiah 17: 7 & 8 says: “Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.”

Folks, pay attention to how you are living. One day we all will have to give an account of ourselves to the Lord, so it is of the most importance that we pay very close attention as to how we live our lives. The rich man in Luke 16 made a tragic choice of living for himself without regard for the Lord. He also made two other mistakes.

First, he invested everything for himself and nothing for the life to come. When we are blinded by our own desires and personal satisfaction, it is easy to become lukewarm about our spiritual matters. We forget that life is not all there is. Scripture tells us to store up treasures in heaven, not on earth. Where our treasure is reflects where our heart is.

The rich man’s other mistake was to prepare everything for himself and nothing for others. Crumbs falling from the table were the only form of assistance he gave a poor man named Lazarus. The one who had all the wealth did not share it with the one who had very little. Jesus explained what our priorities should be to love the Lord wholeheartedly and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

We see the rich man’s mistakes repeated again in another parable. This time a wealthy man builds bigger barns to store crops so he will have plenty for the future. God calls him a fool for such shortsightedness (Luke 12:20).

Folks, the Bible repeatedly warns us to pay attention to spiritual matters – the Lord is to have first place in our lives and be the center of our affections. He urges us to store up heavenly treasures by caring for the lost and hurting people around us. On whom is your attention focused? Folks, please don’t get lost in your troubles and pay attention as to how you live. Ask God to help you, he will you know. All you have to do is ask.