The Sermon on the Mount_ The Key to Success in Life - Emmet Fox [43]
Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye 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.
(Matthew VI)
Many Christians have accepted these facts theoretically, but have been less than half-hearted when it came to their practical application, and this vacillation has landed them in the mass of difficulties that always follow upon inconsistency and weakness. It is found that those who are altogether upon the material basis have, on the whole, a better time, for they are at least living in accordance with the best that they know, and playing the game as they understand it. To try to rest sometimes upon one basis, and sometimes upon the other, is to try to serve two masters. And this of course cannot be done. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Man is essentially spiritual, the image and likeness of God, and therefore he is made for the Spiritual Basis, and he cannot really succeed on any other. The birds of the air and the lilies of the field furnish a striking lesson to man in their complete adaptation to the laws of their own respective planes. They thoroughly express their own true natures; they go through their lives perfectly themselves, and without knowing anything like the worry and anxiety that warp so many human lives. The lilies referred to are the beautiful wild poppies of the East, and whoever has seen a field of poppies dancing and swaying in the breeze will appreciate the sense of relaxation and freedom and joy that Jesus had in mind as being our true birthright.
Of course, he did not mean that you as a human being are to copy the lives or the methods of the birds or flowers literally, for you are infinitely higher in the scale of creation than they are. The lesson is that you are to adapt yourself as completely to your element as they do to theirs. Your true element is the Presence of God. Augustine said: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they repose in Thee.” When man accepts the Truth that in God he lives and moves and has his being, as completely and unquestioningly as the birds and the flowers accept the truth of their condition, he will demonstrate as easily and as thoroughly as they do.
If anyone were so foolish as to take these beautiful similes literally, instead of spiritually, and should, let us say, lie down in a field among the poppies waiting for God to perform a dramatic miracle on his behalf, he would speedily learn by experience that this is not the way. Possessing faculties infinitely above the vegetable or the animal kingdoms, he will truly emulate the wisdom and the glory of these by being ceaselessly active in his own realm, that of prayer and meditation. The Spiritual Basis does not mean laissez faire: it means intensified activity, but on the spiritual as distinct from the material plane. This is the only way in which one can be said to be seeking first the Kingdom of Heaven; and all needful things will be found to follow upon that.
If you are very worried and confused or very much discouraged, that is the time to lie down among the poppies mentally, and read the Bible or pray gently but persistently until something happens; either something within yourself or something in the outer picture. This is not laissez faire, because you are praying. A woman in London, whose affairs seemed to have got into a hopeless tangle that meant utter ruin, was persuaded by me to drop the whole burden mentally and “let the worst happen,” while she spent two or three days browsing through the Bible and praying for peace and happiness. Everything cleared up like magic within a week without her having taken any material action.
The normal mode of obtaining one’s supply is by following