Trusting God With All Your Tomorrows — David Wilkerson

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Trusting God With All Your Tomorrows

Trusting God with all your tomorrows. You heard me? Trusting God with all your tomorrows. Would you go to Matthew, the sixth chapter, starting at verse 25. A very familiar portion of scripture. I want God to change our thinking this morning and do something that can really impact our lives in the future.

Trusting God with all your tomorrows. Matthew six, beginning, read verse 25. Jesus speaking. Therefore, I say unto you, take what? No thought for your life, what you shall eat, what you shall drink, or yet for your body, what you shall put on.

Is not life more than meat, the body more than raiment? Behold, the fowls of the air, they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are you not much better than they?

God’s Care for His People

Skip down to 28. Why take thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin. Yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which is today and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Take no thought, saying, What shall we do?

Or what shall we drink? Wherewith shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.

Here's my message. Take, therefore, no thought for the morrow or tomorrow. For the morrow shall take thought of the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Putting all, trusting God with all your tomorrows.

Heavenly Father, this is a message I want you to make real to my own heart. We have such a tendency to worry about tomorrow. We have such a tendency to worry about things that have not yet come, but we anticipate or fear.

And I pray, Lord, that you take all that fear out of us this morning. We're here, O Lord, to hear and understand and hear what the Spirit has to say. Lord, it's not right that your people be anxious, that your people be in despair about the future.

We are, Lord, to turn all our tomorrows over to you. Speak it to us. May we take it to heart and may this be a challenge to us. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. By the way, Israel, we are going to Israel.

We're going the first week of June. Those who have signed up to go, I think there are still some spaces. You can contact the literature table back there and find out. But what you hear in the news and all about Gaza and some of the turmoil in the streets of Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv, there is peace and calm and there is not going to be any danger.

We're believing the Lord. We're going up to Jerusalem. People are coming from all over the world for these meetings. We have delegations coming, pastors and prisoners from many parts of the world. We're going to have a wonderful time in Jerusalem for a week.

So if you have not yet signed up, you still have some time, I believe. So you can check that in the back. God, we're talking now about trusting God with all your tomorrows. If you remember the story, God appeared to Abraham one day.

Abraham’s Total Dependence on God’s Promise

He made an incredible declaration, incredible command. It's simply this. Get out of your country and from all your kindred and from all your father's house to land that I will show you. He just suddenly comes and picks a man and he says, I want you to get up and I want you to leave your family, leave your country to a place that I'm going to tell you to go.

Scripture says in Hebrews 11, 8, by faith, Abraham, when he had been called to go out into a place, which he should have to receive for an inheritance, he obeyed and he went out not knowing where he was going, not knowing where he was to go.

Now, why? What is God up to? Why would he search the whole all the nations of the world until he found a man that he believed he can trust? And he calls him to pick up everything and go. He has no map.

He has no idea or concept of where he's going, when he's going to arrive, how he's going to get there, who's going to finance it. He's just told, I want you from this day on to give me all your tomorrows.

I want you to throw yourself at my mercy. I want you to believe what I'm telling you. And I want you to simply walk on my word. I want you to commit your life to a promise I'm going to make you. If you will get up, if you will go, I'm going to take you to a place you've never been.

And folks, it's a place I want you to see that God wants to take all of us as the body of Jesus Christ. And that is total dependence on the promises of God, total dependence for every tomorrow from today on the rest of your life.

That you will make a commitment. This was a call that received not only by Abraham. Paul the Apostle calls those who are in Christ the children of Abraham. Abraham was a pattern man. God says, I'm going to take a man and I'm going to show all the nations of the world.

I'm going to show all the peoples to come. What it means to please me. And how a man should live and walk before God. I'm going to make him an example. I'm going to thrust him into my care. Now, he's up in age now.

He's up in life in a number of years when he got this call. He was not just a young man. Now, he had surely had many plans for his family and his wife and for Lot, his nephew. Those who were with him in his immediate family.

Surely they had made plans for the future, for the children to come. And for Lot, there had been surely plans made. You make a lot of friends. There are so many things involved in this. Any of you know what I mean?

You've got a command to pick up and just go and not told where to go. And Lord says, if you would just trust, I'll guide you. I'll tell you if you take the first step what the next step is going to be.

And I'll take you one day at a time. And that's all. And you will trust me for your food. You will trust me for everything. Now, that's an incredible demand that is made on this man. And the Bible says, And Abraham believed in the Lord, and God counted it to him for righteousness.

And Jesus picks up the theme here now. And he said, Don't take any thought for your life, what you eat or what you drink. Take therefore no thought of tomorrow, for tomorrow shall take thought for the things of itself.

Sufficient in the day is the evil thereof. This does not mean that you cast aside all your plans and you don't make plans. Lord is talking about don't be anxious. I will show you the way, but don't be anxious about it.

Don't get in despair about it. Don't preconceive what might happen. You see, there are two little words that the enemy uses to disturb our spirit mentally, spiritually and physically and every other way.

Two little words. What if? What if the economy fails? What if I can't pay my mortgage? What if I don't have a job? How am I going to live? What's going to happen to my family? What's going to happen to my children?

What if I get sick and what if I'm in the hospital? What if my insurance runs out and we have a thousand different what ifs? And these cause anxiety can lead to depression. And the Lord comes along in the midst of this and he provides a call and he makes a call to his church and to his people.

He comes in the middle of one of all of these. What is and he says, Your father knows what you have need of. Your father is going to take care of you. He said, Look at the lilies. Look at all of these things that I'm showing you.

And I'm trying to prove to you that you have nothing to worry about. You don't need to say what if you have to say God is. God will supply. The Heavenly Father will feed you. He will clothe you. He will care for you.

Oh, ye of little faith. Now, we gladly turn all of our past. Over to the Lord, all of our past sins and all of our past failures, and we take it to the victory of the cross and we say, thank you, Lord.

My past is under the blood. I'm clean and we are so ready and so glad to give him everything in the past. And we love that scripture for getting all things that are behind. And we give him the past. But we want to hold the right to the future.

In fact, we make our plans and then we go to God and pray, Lord, bless my plans. Bless my dream. Now, we live in an incredible age, unlike anything in history. We have a doctrinal disarray in the world today.

Doctrinal disillusioned illusions because the pressure. Now you hear it from pulpits all over America. You have to be great. You have to ask. You have to do big things. You have to be a success. And we have a driving.

Now there's a spirit in America, especially of driven and our kids are driven that they are driven to be a successful sort of they're just ordinary kids. They feel that they're nothing. They are under stress.

They are stressed out. Now they tell us that the great numbers of high school students are taking all kinds of amphetamines and all kinds of drugs trying to calm their spirit. And there is stress like we have never seen before.

And parents are trying to plan their children's lives is all the way out into the future. And this cry for bigness and success and drive. In the middle of it all, you hear this cry that God gave to mankind through Abraham and all the children of Abraham.

That's not what I've called you to. And I think I don't think that's a testimony to the world that God's people should be as stressed as the ungodly. That we should be stressed out, that we should be in despair, that we should be walking in depression because we fear tomorrow.

And most of you that are sitting here know what I'm talking about. The fear that comes upon us, the anticipation of the future. We know that God has taken care of us up to this point. You can't tell me that God hasn't been faithful to you.

I don't care how old you are. God has been faithful and he supplied. Some of you have faced death and the Lord has given you grace. Some of you face divorce and God gave you grace. Some of you face poverty and God brought you through.

And you know that. And we all know that. And we say, I will trust God with my future. I'll give him tomorrow. But then about midnight, it comes creeping back in. What about tomorrow? Paul, the apostle, wrote an epistle to the Philippians and he was in prison in Rome at the time.

Paul’s Suffering and the Advance of the Gospel

And Paul is chained between two guards, the praetorian guard. At that time, if you read Josephus, if you read biblical history or secular history, you find that the custom at the time was that two praetorian guards were chained, one to each foot.

And they were 24 hours working in various shifts. And Paul is chained between two ungodly guards day and night. And these men, I'm sure, are hardened. You see, they look at everyone. Everybody says they're innocent.

But these men are hardened. They've seen it all. And to them, Paul is a criminal. He's guilty. He's not innocent because when you are in this kind of work and a police officer can tell you, you have the tendency to think that everybody is guilty.

Everybody's got an alibi. This man must have lived in such such horrible condition. The tearing down of a man's dignity is so easy at this kind of treatment. He has to have his food brought to him. And he's in it.

His ministry is stopped as far as the church is concerned. The Philippians, there were some in Philippi, as I preached last Sunday, some in Philippi that were saying that Paul was bringing disgrace on the body of Christ because of this kind of treatment.

If he were really holy, if he were really a man of God, nobody could put him in jail. Or an angel would come and release him. Where is his power in prayer? All kinds of things coming down on this man while he's imprisoned.

You see, he's an active man. He loves to travel. Paul loved just going from house to house to meet God's people and to establish churches. He was always going. He loved the open road and the open sea.

And here he is chained and he is down. And here's reports of his young preacher boys that he's raised in the spirit. They are having great results. And God is blessing Apollos. Apollos is not in jail.

He's not suffering. Timothy and Titus are having results. Epaphroditus is moving in the spirit. And so many things are being done. And here's Paul sitting chained to a circumstance beyond his control.

Now, how is Paul going to react when he's changed, chained by circumstances? I want you to keep that phrase in mind, changed by circumstances. Because you see, your circumstances can change overnight.

You've heard it said bad things happen to good people. And that's true. There are many bad things that happen to good people. I remember one time when Gwen was going through a very, very difficult time and I overheard her.

I heard her quietly weeping and I overheard her cry. And she said, oh, God, did I do something wrong? Did I hurt you? Because she couldn't understand and it broke my heart. So I ran into the room and said, oh, honey, please.

The Bible says many of the afflictions of the righteous, many of the afflictions of the righteous. You haven't hurt God. You haven't hurt him. And it was an encouragement to her. But you see, overnight, you can lose control of the future.

You can lose control because everything changes. And we don't like to hear that. But that's the reality. And I doubt there's a person hearing me right now that couldn't say amen to that. Some something that happened in your life, a death of a husband or wife.

Some tragedy or some circumstance came into your life that you did not anticipate. And it changed everything. You were chained by your circumstances. I was in a doctor's office recently when Gwen had an appointment with a doctor.

And I was sitting out in the doctor's outer office and an elderly woman, someone had come up to me and said, are you Pastor Wilkins? And I said, yes. She had found or overheard that I was a pastor. And she said, can I talk to you a moment?

And I was waiting. This elderly woman said, you know, my husband, we had such a wonderful life. We had such fun together. And in his early 70s, he was afflicted with a stroke. And she said, I've been, I was his caretaker for five, almost six years.

And he was crippled. I had to take care of him 24, I mean, it was 24 hours a day I was on call. And there was no other caretaker and I was the only one. And she said he became very depressed and he died last year.

But she said just before he died, he called me into the room and he was so depressed. He said, wife, I want to tell you, you don't know what it's like to lose the ability to walk. And there's no more joy.

There's nothing you can do. You can't drive. You can't go out. And I've been robbed of my future. I've been robbed of my tomorrows. And and there's been no happiness. There's been nothing but sorrow. And I can't tell you the pain that is in my heart for having lost everything of my future.

And to sit here suffering in this bed. And the lady turned to me, she said, sir, you know what I told him? I said, look, you're forgetting something. I was here, too. I went through it, too. My future was robbed from me.

My tomorrows were taken away from me. I've spent all these years just waiting on you. And I did it with love. And I love you. But you do not think of my pain. You see, it comes on. And there was just a little bit of bitterness in her heart.

She said, I miss him. But, you know, I feel that through his condition, I, too, was robbed of my future. Was robbed of my tomorrows. You see, with Paul, the apostle, I'm going to say again, suffering comes to all of us.

And many of you here now, I've got to get this through to you. I'm not trying to preach a good sermon. I'm going to talk to you as a father. And there are some of you now that are chained right now to a circumstance.

It may be in a marriage that seems to be out of control. It can be a financial situation. I know what it is. There are so many ways that people suffer. So many incredible things that happen. Our mailing list, by the boxes of letters that come in, of elderly people losing their sight.

And suddenly it's gone. Slowly, but then one day they wake up and it's gone. And all of the horrible, incredible sufferings we read about and hear about. Now, see, with Paul, the apostle, there are two options.

And the same two options we all have. One, you can spin out of control in despair. You can just spend the rest of your life in a morbid investigation or contemplation of why am I here? Why does God allow this in my life?

And, folks, if you're not careful, you can spin out until you become so depressed, you become so down. You forget those around you that suffer. You forget those all around because you become so centered on your own pain.

And centered on that suffering because you've taken this option. You say, I didn't deserve this. I don't know why it's happened. Why me? And you spend the rest of your time saying, why? Why me, Lord? What did I do?

Why are you mad at me? Why don't you answer my prayer? And you can get so involved in your mind and so confused that you become a burden to yourself and a burden to all around. And there's no joy. There's nothing but depression.

And if you don't get a hold of this truth today, some of you could spin out into depression that cannot be cured outside of a miracle. Paul took the other option. And that is to say, it's not a matter of not the question is not why, but how I'm going to react to it.

How I'm going to react to this circumstance that has come into my life. God has allowed this, that the steps of a righteous man are ordered by the Lord. I mean, God's will. I'm going to make this count.

I'm going to let this preach to others. By the way, I react. I'm going to become a testimony. And Paul writing to the Philippian church, he says, don't worry about me, said, I want you to know. Yes, I'm in chains.

I want you to know. Yes, I'm suffering. But I want you to know something. The gospel is being preached through my suffering that with all boldness as always. So now also. So now while I'm in chains, now I'm in circumstances above my control.

You may think I've lost my ministry. Paul is saying you may think that I don't have anything to do for Christ anymore. You may think that my hands are tied, that I'm a hopeless case. He said, no. Just as sure as I've been preaching to churches and raising and building up churches.

So even now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be life or by death. My he said, I'm going to take advantage of my present situation. Now, when I talk about turning your tomorrows over to the Lord and and taking this option of saying, I want this to be a testimony, I want this to be a ministry.

Paul said this has become a matter of rejoicing to me. My affliction to become a cause of rejoicing. He's not going around saying, well, thank you, Jesus, for these chains. He's not going around saying, I'm so happy I'm in.

I'm so happy I'm eating rice three times a day. He's not doing that. No, no. I believe that he's human. And I think many times during the day said, oh, God, deliver me from this bondage. I believe if if he's not thinking like I'm thinking, then he can't help me because he's human.

And many times he had to pray through the day. Go, God, give me grace to get through this next day. Because every visitor is being monitored, everything he says is being monitored. And he is with those men are within your shot.

They hear it. And someone was snickering. No doubt. Crazy preacher. But Paul writes and he says, don't go. What he's saying is, don't you have to pity me? You don't have to say poor Paul, because he said, I'll tell you something.

These guards that are guarding me, these very chains, he said, they're going back. They go back to their barracks. And what he said, everybody's talking about my gospel that I preach. And he's inferring, well, they go to the barracks and they talk about this man that that they're chained to.

And they're repeating. Paul said some of the repeating it just to mock him, so to speak. They're not preaching it honestly, but they're repeating what Paul said. And then they're going home to their families and they're telling their families and their friends.

And Paul said, I'm just sitting here praising God. I'm in affliction. But as always, I would that you should know and understand, brethren, Philippians 1, 12, that the things which have happened to me have turned out rather to further the gospel.

Now, think of it. These things that are happening to me. This looks like such a tragedy. This that I'm going through in my life, I could think about it and be depressed. But he said, it's turning out.

God's turning it around. And it's furthering the gospel because people know what I'm going through. They know what they would do in that case. They know that most of them would cave in and they'd complain and they would murmur and they would cry.

And everybody would be trying to pity them. But Paul said, no, I'm not reacting that way. My countenance, he's not going around just putting on a false smile. Paul is not murmuring. He's not complaining.

Folks, let me tell you something about when we ask why. When a tragic God understands, he's not a meanie. Jesus even said, Father, why the first impulses? Yes. And the Lord is paced with that. What I'm talking about, he's made provision so that there's what is and those wise can be answered and solved by his word.

So we have to go around always asking why. You have to bypass that. You have to get past that where you say, I want not a false smile, but I want a genuine word from the Lord that I don't have to question why this has happened to me.

You see, two weeks before my 12 year old granddaughter, our 12 year old granddaughter, Tiffany, died of cancer. The Lord came to me. I stood in this pulpit once and even tried to warn family and others that she was going home because I'd had a moment with Tiffany.

And she said, Grandpa, I want Jesus told me I'm coming home and I don't I don't I don't want to suffer like this. I want to be with Jesus. And the Holy Spirit told me, you put her in my hands and you trust me with her, that I will never do anything contrary to my will.

And if I take her and I'm going to take her because there's something, you know, don't know about the future. And I have to do it this way. Will you trust me as a tender, loving heavenly father that if I take, I'm going to give you the grace to go through it.

I'm going to give you peace and I'll give it for your whole family. And my wife and two daughters were have a little chain around the neck with picture of of Tiffany. And it's furthering the gospel everywhere they go in every store.

Who's that? And then Gwen tells a story. Debbie tells a story. Bonnie tells a story. And there's one testimony after another. Folks, I'm trying to say something maybe very weakly, may not be coming across like I wanted to.

But God is faithful in our time of suffering and time of a pain. And God is looking at us how we react to that. What is going to be our reaction? How long do we go sulking? How long do we keep on touting?

How long do we keep questioning the faithfulness of God? Oh, but if you were in my shoes, Pastor Dave, if you only knew what I'm going through. Well, everybody can say that. I can say that. That doesn't answer anything.

And Paul, the apostle, says, no, the issue now is how I react. Paul wrote another word to the Philippians in four, four. Rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice. He had not resigned just to the will of God and said, well, this is what has been this is what has been served out to me.

This I was in the hospital visiting a rather wealthy man in this from the city, and he was dying of cancer in a hospital here. And he was Jewish. And a friend of mine, I went in to just to console him.

And I said, may I pray for you? I said a few things to him. And he said, look, Pastor, these are the cards. That have been dealt to me. I just have to take it. This is these are the cards have been dealt to me.

No, folks, Paul, the apostle didn't resign to this. Well, this is the card. This is the life that God has handed to me. He didn't resign. He was not ignorant of the future. He was not just giving in. No, he said this.

This has to be not only give us tomorrow, but believe that you can rejoice. He's saying to the church, rejoice now. And again, I say he's so infers it and so wants it. He says again and again, I ask you to rejoice the testimony.

It doesn't mean that you don't have times that you cry. It doesn't mean that there are times that you just wonder if you can make it another day. But it's something that says, Lord, my life is in your hands.

I don't have to do something great for you. I just have to trust you. I just have to give my life over to you in my future and believe that you will do what is best for me. Paul, the apostle, says, I am set for the defense of the gospel.

Christ is being preached through my affliction. Therefore, I rejoice. Yay. And I will rejoice. I'm going to read it to you again. I am set for the defense of the gospel. Christ is being preached through my affliction.

In other words, says I'm going to make sure that the gospel is validated. I want to make sure that I don't despise or disgrace the word of God, preaching to others that God can give me grace through any situation, preaching and telling others about the glory of Jesus Christ and how he can take you through storms and floods and fiery furnaces and lion's dens.

The message that we preach to the world. And Paul said, I am set. This is going to be my defense of the faithfulness of my Christ. The whole world is going to know and everybody knows me that the gospel I preach takes me through my hard times.

I'm set for the defense of the gospel. Christ is being preached. I'm going to ask you the question, is Christ being preached through your reaction now to what you're going through? What do your relatives and what do your friends see and what do they hear?

Is it panic? Is it questioning of the faithfulness of God? Is it the why me? What if you've said it pass on? Is Christ being preached to people who know you, that you're a Christian and they know you're going through something that is serious?

They know that you're going through a deep trial and they're looking for the reaction. The whole world is looking for their Sam. One of our elders sitting on the platform here told me one day, said, Pastor, I watch your life, how you respond, how you react to your hard times.

But you see, I watch Sam. Sam has been a testimony to me. Sam, I've never he's never been in this pulpit. He has no license to preach. He's one of our dear elders. But he's had years of pain. Doctors can't help him.

He gets most times two hours sleep at night. And he is in pain now. He's in constant raging pain. But he spent his first Sunday. I've seen him up here in a long time. He's sitting on the end. He's downstairs underneath leading prayer services, praying for the pastors while they preach.

And he's a testimony to everybody who knows his life. He's not up quoting scriptures. He's not given sermons. But his life is preaching Christ. I ask you again, I don't know what you're going through.

I don't know what you brought into the service this morning. But is your reaction preaching Christ and who he is? Otherwise, all that you say, all that you preach, all your testimonies, all of your teaching, everything, all of our preaching, it's in vain.

Because I am not validating it by my reaction to my suffering. I'm going to wrap this up. Paul speaks of the day when he's going to stand before the Lord. Philippians 2, 10, holding forth the word of the life, word of life, holding forth the word of life, that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I've not run in vain, neither labored in vain.

He said, let me tell you why I'm reacting like I do. Because Paul's picturing the day when he stands before Christ. And Paul taught that we're going to have our eyes open. We're going to have a revelation.

We're going to know who Christ is. And Paul is picturing himself before the presence of the Lord on that day. Paul said on that day of Christ, he said, let me tell you why I'm holding forth the word. Let me tell you why I'm making my reaction something that preaches Christ.

Because he said, one day I'm going to stand before him and he's going to open our eyes and I'm going to be there. He's going to show us his glory. He's going to show all the guardian angels, the warrior angels that encamp around about them.

That from the very beginning, those angels have been there, always available. We're going to have a revelation. We're going to see them face to face. He's going to show there's going to be a revelation.

We're going to see what they did and how available they were and the work that they did in camping around God's people. And then he's going to reveal the Holy Spirit's ministry to us, how he was always there and his power and his majesty.

And then he's going to show us the father and we're going to see the majesty of almighty God, creator of all things. The great I am the majesty of God. And Paul said, when I stand before Christ, I don't want to be standing there saying this was all available.

I was blind and I missed it. Paul said, no, I want to stand there rejoicing, knowing that I didn't waste my time in vain.

Worry. He said, I'm holding forth.

I'm holding the gospel. I'm letting Jesus being preached through my by my countenance, by my not murmuring, by not complaining. He covers it all in Philippians. Don't complain. That's your affliction.

Be the message of Christ faithfulness. I'm preaching to myself this morning. I have never needed a message like this more than I do now. And I thank God I'm getting it. I'm hearing it because I've spent enough time worrying about the future.

By God's grace. And I'm going to need a lot of grace to keep this. Paul said, I'm not yet apprehended, but I know where I'm headed and I know the answer now. Glory be to God. I wrote something down here before I close.

Rejoicing in God’s Faithfulness

We stand for just a moment. You want to know what your future is going to hold you, hold, bring to you. Paul, the apostle says, one thing I do for getting those things which are behind. I'm reaching forth now to those things which are before.

He said, I know all about tomorrow. I don't have any details, but I know God. I know I have a heavenly father and I'm going to rejoice because he cares. I rejoice because he keeps his word, because all things are going to work together for my good.

According to his purpose, because he's with me, because he said he never forsake me. His eyes are on me because his thoughts toward me are good because he said his promises never failed. He's made me a promise.

He's going to keep his promise. I'm not afraid. Raise your hands and give him praise. Hallelujah. God, you're so good. You said my thoughts for your future. Nothing but good. I have good thoughts concerning you.