Jesus told us to seek first the Kingdom of God, and the rest would be added (Matthew 6:33). There are no exemptions to this. Even if life has you busy with your job, family, school, or other pressures, these things never exempt us from our duty (and pleasure) to seek God first. Instead of seeing these challenging providences as reasons to put ourselves first, we should view them as trials and tests God has given us to prove that the faith he has provided us has the power to overcome the world.

Matthew Henry once suggested we can sometimes neglect to obey God because we misinterpret trials and challenges as permission to shirk our responsibility when, instead, God allowed these hardships to test and exercise our courage and faith. Here is an example.

Imagine you are a pastor the Holy Spirit has called to preach the whole counsel of God. As you are expositing a book of scripture over several months, you come to a difficult passage that goes against the cultural zeitgeist. Not only does the culture not want you to speak the truth plainly, but some church elders also start to counsel you against it.

Your church and ministry have a large online following, and to preach these truths and post them in the usual outlets could lead to big tech taking away your platforms. This conflict with big tech could arise because this teaching of scripture violates their standards of conduct.

The church’s ministry is doing wonderful things, reaching hundreds of thousands of people. You begin to rationalize that it is better to bypass this passage or gloss over it because the benefits of doing so far outweigh the costs for your ministry.

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