Daily Devotional

July 16

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website

Do your part—and leave it in God’s hands

We are going to consider the case of those who ... are afraid of the future ... a very common condition and it really is most extraordinary to notice the way in which the enemy often produces the self-same fundamental condition in the same people by these apparently diametrically opposed methods. When you have put them right about the past, they immediately begin to talk about the future, with the result that they are always depressed in the present. You have satisfied them about forgiveness of sin, yes, even that particular sin which was so exceptional.... And then they say, ‘Ah, yes, but...’, and they begin to talk about fears concerning the future and what lies ahead.... Now it is right that we should think about the future.... But what we are always warned against in Scripture is about being worried about the future. ‘Take no thought for the morrow’, means ‘Do not be guilty of anxious care about the morrow.’ It does not mean that you do not take any thought at all, otherwise the farmer would not plough and harrow and sow. He is looking to the future, but he does not spend the whole of his time wondering and worrying about the end results of his work. No, he takes reasonable thought and then he leaves it... although it is very right to think about the future, it is very wrong to be controlled by it....


To take thought is right, but to be controlled by the future is all wrong. Now that is a fundamental proposition and the world has discovered it. It has told us not to cross our bridges until we get to them. Put that into your Christian teaching, for the world is right there ... many Scriptural statements to the same effect have become proverbial—’take no thought for the morrow’, ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’... That is sound common sense.... ‘One step enough for me’... do not let your future mortgage your present any more than you should let your past mortgage your present.

Spiritual Depression, p. 94, pp. 98–9

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“Text reproduced from ‘A First Book of Daily Readings’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, published by Epworth Press 1970 & 1977 © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. Used with permission.”