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33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:33 NRSV) Dear Friend, as we pray, please pray for the family of Carrol and Kathleen Erwin, who died close to each other, Kathleen dying on Wednesday, April 1, 2026 at 3:30 am. Carrol and Kathleen are uncle and aunt to our sister, Donna Hisey. Pray God's comfort be with all the family and all who loved them. God bless you for all the prayers you lift up for others!
I was called into ministry when I was in the eleventh grade. I resisted and did not commit to it right away. Long story short; here I am! But it's been wonderful how God has provided for me every step of the way. I remember seeing couples gathering at a singles event and one of the guys who had a fiancée, came to me and asked me if I needed a wife. I know needed ia a tough word, but I said that yes I would like to one day be married and this friend said, “And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:13). That moment stayed with me and more so because years later this same guy is in the insurance business, and of course I thanked him again for having given me hope and he asked, "Did I say that?" But in 1977 I was an intern minister in Mission, Texas. The church provided a converted garage as my apartment and I got a stipend of $120 a month. All for 80 hours of work per week. Believe it or not, I did not care about the money. I was more worried about whether I was in the right place or not; if ministry would be what God truly wanted from me as I explored the many exits out of Mission. But God provided out of His riches a young lady who caught my attention right away. I wanted to date her immediately and she said no. She was on the Staff Parish Relations Committee and said it would not be ethical. "Who's worried about ethics," asked I? Hey, I was young and lonely! Had I truly been thinking about this situation, $120 then in 1977 would provide for maybe two dates a month, but I knew God would provide a way. I knew that if Nellie was the one whom God was providing I would have more than half of the battle won in having her by my side. I knew her heart to be right, for when I asked about her, my pastor who suggested I call her (I didn't need that suggestion - I was on the case!) said, "She's a teacher. She's a woman of prayer, and she's a tither! She's the kind of woman who will be praying for you all the time, especially as you travel for the Lord." Gulp! I replied, "Sign me up!"
As Jesus prepares the Twelve for ministry, He shares this verse at the end of His discourse on many important things that had people of HIs day, and even today, worried and stressed. Jesus has been watching people. He has watched them exhaust themselves in the pursuit of security — storing up treasure, serving money with the devotion that belongs to God alone, scanning the horizon of the future with the panicked calculation of those who are not sure anyone is in charge. And He names it directly: you cannot serve God and wealth. Not — you should not, or it would be better if you didn't. You cannot. The two masters make mutually exclusive demands, and every life will ultimately reveal which one it has actually been serving.
Then He pivots to anxiety — the internal experience of a life organized around the wrong center. Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. He points to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field — creatures and flowers that do not produce or spin or stockpile, and yet are fed and clothed by the Father's provision. The argument is not that work is wrong or that planning is faithless. It is that the frantic, stomach-tightening anxiety of those who believe everything depends on their own management is a failure to reckon with who the Father actually is.
And then, having named the wrong orientation — wealth, worry, the anxious striving after things — He names the right one. Strive first for the kingdom of God.
Jesus does not say strive only for the kingdom — as though the practical concerns of daily life are irrelevant or unspiritual. He does not say strive eventually for the kingdom — as though it belongs at the end of the agenda, after everything else has been settled. He says first. Before the other things. Prior to them. As the orienting priority from which everything else takes its proper place.
Jesus diagnoses this arrangement as the source of the very anxiety He has been addressing. Anxiety is what happens when the wrong things are first. When security, comfort, and the management of outcomes sit at the center of our lives, every threat to those things becomes a threat to everything. The soul that has organized itself around God's kingdom, by contrast, has a center that cannot be shaken by market fluctuations, health crises, or an uncertain future — because the kingdom of God is not subject to any of those things. I have a friend whose father-in-law used to tell debt collectors, "If you guys don't back off I'm taking your name out of the hat!" They would ask, "What hat?" "The hat where I put all of the names of my debtors; I draw one or two names a month depending on who I can pay; and if your name is not in the hat you won't get paid!" This from a generation that used to see men in suits knocking on doors trying to collect debts. And little ones were taught to fib about mom or dad being home! First is not just an instruction about priorities. It is the prescription for the anxious heart.
The kingdom of God is not primarily a place. It is not a future destination we are waiting to enter after death, though it has a future dimension. It is the active, present reign of God — the reality that comes into being wherever God's will is done, wherever His purposes are accomplished, wherever His character is reflected in human life and community.
Jesus announced that the kingdom had come near in His own person — that wherever He was, the reign of God was breaking in. Where He healed, the kingdom was present. Where He forgave, the kingdom was present. Where the hungry were fed, the excluded were welcomed, and the captive were freed — there the kingdom was happening. To seek the kingdom first, then, is to align our lives with what God is doing in the world.
Righteousness here is not merely personal moral rectitude — the avoidance of individual sin. To seek God's righteousness is to care about what God cares about: the poor, the marginalized, the truthful ordering of human community, the dignity of every person who bears the divine image.
You cannot genuinely seek the kingdom while remaining indifferent to the things the kingdom is concerned with. The one who seeks the kingdom first will find themselves increasingly shaped by kingdom concerns: mercy, justice, peacemaking, purity of heart, the love of neighbor that costs something. The righteousness we seek is not our own — we do not generate it by effort. We seek His righteousness, which means asking God to form His character in us and to align our lives with His justice in the world.
All these things refers back to the practical concerns Jesus has been addressing — food, clothing, the daily necessities of physical life. The promise is not that those who seek the kingdom first will become wealthy, or that faithful Christians are exempt from hardship and want. The history of the saints will not support that reading, and Jesus Himself walked to a cross. The promise is that the Father who clothes the lilies and feeds the birds is the same Father who knows what His children need — and that the one who trusts Him enough to put the kingdom first will find that the Father's provision, in one form or another, does not fail. But the one who has genuinely released the anxious grip on self-provision, who has handed the management of their life to the Father, will discover that the Father manages it — often in ways that could not have been engineered from below. There is also a deeper promise embedded here. The one who seeks the kingdom first discovers, over time, that the kingdom itself becomes the thing they most deeply wanted.
The traditional Lenten practices — fasting, prayer, almsgiving — are not ends in themselves. They are instruments of reordering, tools designed to loosen the grip of the wrong things and strengthen the grip of the right one. When we fast, we practice the truth that life does not consist in bread alone. When we pray, we practice the truth that our deepest need is God Himself. When we give, we practice the truth that we are not the owners of what we have been entrusted with.
All three practices are, in their different ways, acts of seeking first the kingdom. They are the deliberate, repeated choice to put God at the center and to let everything else arrange itself around that center.
The question Lent presses us to ask is not merely theoretical. It is practical and personal: what is actually first in my life? Not what I say is first. Not what I intend to make first eventually. What is actually, functionally, operationally first — revealed in how I spend my time, my money, my attention, my energy at its best? And then: am I willing to let it be the kingdom?
PRAYER: Father, forgive me for the things I have placed before Your kingdom — the securities I have chased, the anxieties that reveal where I have actually put my trust. Reorder me. Make Your kingdom genuinely first — not in name but in the actual shape of my days. I trust that You know what I need, and I release the management of those things to You. In Christ Jesus' strong name I pray, Amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Look honestly at where your best energy went yesterday. Then ask: what would it look like, in one concrete way, to redirect that energy toward the kingdom today? Do that one thing.
I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me! Bless everyone with the peace you have from Jesus!
Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.
