What Jesus teaches about anxiety, provision, and carrying the weight of other people’s livelihoods.

“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”
Matthew 6:34 (MSG)

Dear Friend,

There is a particular kind of quiet that many business owners know well. It’s the quiet at 3 a.m., when the house is still, the phone is face down on the nightstand, and the mind keeps running numbers. Will the receivable come in on time? Can we carry the slow month? What happens to the people who depend on us if this doesn’t work?

Jesus asked His followers to “teach them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20), and this series keeps asking what His words look like in the places where we actually work. This week I want to sit with something He spoke about very directly, and something almost every leader I know carries, often quietly.

Worry.

Jesus spoke about it in the middle of His Sermon on the Mount. He turned to the people listening, most of whom lived close to the edge, and said:

“Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds.” Matthew 6:26 (MSG)

I’ll be honest. When the bank balance is low and payroll is due on Friday, that verse can feel a little too poetic. Birds don’t have employees. Birds don’t sign leases, carry a line of credit, or look into the faces of people whose families depend on the next cheque clearing.

And yet Jesus wasn’t speaking to people with easy lives. He was speaking to farmers who depended on rain, fishermen who depended on the catch, and day labourers who depended on someone hiring them that morning. They knew uncertainty far better than most of us. That is exactly why His words carried such weight.

So what is He actually asking of us?

I don’t think Jesus is telling us to stop caring. He isn’t telling business owners to ignore cash flow, skip the forecast, or stop planning for next quarter. Elsewhere He praised the builder who sits down first to count the cost. Responsibility is not the problem. In fact, much of what keeps a leader awake at night comes from something good: love for the people who depend on them.

The problem is what happens when responsibility turns into worry. Responsibility asks, what is mine to do today? Worry asks, what if everything falls apart, and what if it is all on me? Responsibility moves us to act. Worry tends to freeze us, isolate us, and slowly convince us that we are alone with the weight.

The Message captures Jesus’ heart in this passage beautifully:

“What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving.” Matthew 6:31 (MSG)

I love that Jesus isn’t scolding anxious people. He is trying to help them relax. That isn’t a rebuke. It is an invitation from someone who knows the Father far better than we do, and who knows that the Father is not distant, distracted or stingy, but already paying attention.

In 1985, David Green faced the moment many owners dread. He had opened the first Hobby Lobby in 1972 in a tiny storefront in Oklahoma City and built it to twelve stores. Then the oil economy across Oklahoma collapsed, banks were failing, and in a single year Hobby Lobby’s profits fell by a million dollars. Until then, whenever the business ran into trouble, David had always found a way to figure it out. This time he couldn’t. He called his family together and told them honestly that he didn’t know how they were going to make it.

What he did next is what strikes me. He has described how the space under his office desk became his prayer closet. He would crawl under the desk and bring his need to God. He had prayed before, he says, but that was when he got really serious about it. He also says the Lord humbled him in that season, helped him narrow the focus of the business, and reminded him that it had never really been his to carry alone. In time the regional economy recovered, and Hobby Lobby went on to become the national chain many of us know today.

I don’t share that story to suggest that every cash-flow crisis ends in a turnaround. Jesus never promised that. Some seasons stay hard for a long time, and some businesses don’t survive them. What strikes me about David’s story is not the outcome. It is the turn he made in the middle of it. He stopped pretending he could figure it out alone. He told his family the truth, and he took the weight to the Father.

That may be one of the most practical things Jesus’ words do for us. Worry thrives in isolation. It grows in the dark, in the silent hours, in the spreadsheet we look at by ourselves again and again. Trust, on the other hand, opens the door. It allows us to say, “Father, this is heavy, and I don’t know how it will work out.” And very often it also gives us the courage to say the same thing to a spouse, a trusted friend, a banker, a board, or a peer group of leaders who understand.

It helps me to remember that Jesus Himself knew what it was to feel overwhelmed. On the night before He died, He said to His closest friends:

“This sorrow is crushing my life out. Stay here and keep vigil with me.” Matthew 26:38 (MSG)

Jesus did not pretend to be fine. He didn’t hide His distress or handle it alone. He brought it honestly to the Father, and He asked His friends to stay close. So when He tells us not to worry, He isn’t asking us to put on a brave face. He is inviting us into the same trust He lived from, a trust that holds real pressure inside a real relationship.

That changes how we can lead through a lean season. We can still make the hard calls. We can still call the client who owes us money, renegotiate with a supplier, trim what needs trimming, and have honest conversations with our team. But we can do these things from a different place. Not as orphans scrambling to survive, but as sons and daughters of a Father who knows what we need before we ask.

And notice where Jesus places our attention: on today. “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now.” Worry lives in a tomorrow that hasn’t arrived and in a hundred scenarios that may never happen. Grace meets us in this day, with this conversation, this decision, this next faithful step. Jesus taught us to pray for today’s bread, not next year’s. That isn’t poor planning. It is a different way of carrying the future, holding it in open hands rather than a clenched fist.

So yes, make payroll. Do the forecast. Count the cost. Take your responsibility seriously, because the people who depend on you matter deeply to God.

But you don’t have to carry it as though you are the only one holding it all together.

You were never meant to.

Reflection Questions

1. What am I carrying at work right now that keeps returning in the quiet hours?
2. Where has healthy responsibility in my leadership slipped into worry?
3. Who am I keeping in the dark about the pressure I’m under, and who might I need to let in?
4. What is truly mine to do today, and what am I trying to carry from a tomorrow that hasn’t arrived?
5. How might I lead differently this week if I believed the Father is already paying attention to my business and the people in it?
6. Is there another leader around me who may be carrying worry alone, and how could I come alongside them?

From the series Working the Jesus Way, Learning to Follow Christ in Business, Leadership, and Everyday Work

Story source: Decision Magazine, “God Owns It All” (Feb 1, 2026), https://billygraham.org/decision-magazine/articles/god-owns-it-all; Preaching Today, “CEO’s Prayer Saves a Business,” https://www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/2006/october/8100906.html; Baptist Press, https://www.baptistpress.com/?p=171369