No Worries, Mate! – by Desmond Ford

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Mar 1, 2016 2777

Our Lord did not deceive people when he said, Come, follow me” (Lk 18:22). He did not say we will have a crown from the start, and no more worries.

I was the only traveller on a bus in New Zealand once. I stopped and chatted with the bus driver, and to just about everything I asked him he said, “No worries, mate … No worries, mate .. . No worries, mate.” What a lucky guy, I thought! All he said was, “No worries, mate!”

In a sense, that was good gospel. If you are in Christ, there will be all sorts of things that threaten worry. But our Lord says, “If you live one day at a time – even though you take up a cross, even though you hate the world, even though you have tribulation – if you are in me, you will have peace.”

Jesus does not disguise either half of the paradox. He does not tempt us by saying there will be no problems. He doesn’t say to us that it will be all, “No worries, mate.” He says that you will take my cross, and every day you will die. We die to selfishness and our own willfulness.

But he says our cross will become a crown.

– Des Ford. Rom 8:27–32. Adapted from “Christ’s Recipe for Lasting Happiness – Part 1.”