"Therefore, I tell you, Don't worry about your life, & what you will eat or drink; or about your body, & what you will wear. Isn't life more than food, & the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not: sow; reap; or store away in barns, & [still] your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you much more valuable than they? Can anyone of you add a single hour to your life by worrying? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. [Still,] I tell you that not even Solomon, in all his splendor, was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, & tomorrow is thrown into the fire, won't He much more clothe you-you of little faith? So don't worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, & your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But first seek His Kingdom, & His Righteousness, & all these things will be given to you, as well." Matthew 6:25-33 NIV Bible [adapted]
Years ago, before the Lord God [allowed] this great weight loss of 80+ pounds, I used to worry about my finances all the time, and about having enough money to pay the bills. I used to buy powdered milk, because we quite often didn't have enough milk for the kids to last until the end of the month.
I spend a great portion of my days calculating, and recalculating my budget, trying to think of strategies that would make the money go further. All this worrying didn't get us very far. I may have saved a few cents here, and a few cents there, but it didn't make a dramatic difference in our finances. Then, I read this Bible verse, after having read it so many times, it finally clicked. Through this passage, the Lord God was telling me that He would take care of what we need to eat, if I would only listen and turn to Him, rather than turning to excess food for comfort from my financial worries.
And once I started listening to what He said to me through this passage, it made an immense difference in my finances, in our ability to buy the food we needed, and in my weight loss, because He showed me that I could turn that over into His very gracious hands, and He would take care of that, as well. And He has kept the majority of that weight off for over 40 years!
