Two Kinds of Slavery

All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.  For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back again into fear, but you have received the the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba!  Father!" The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs - heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified in him. (Romans 7:14-17, ESV)

Two Spirits

 "The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit."  Here is one of the clearest pictures of the "still, small voice" Elijah and many other friends of God have detected.  Through the agency of our own spirit, God speaks.  He speaks to us through us.   In this passage, Paul identifies the Spirit of adoption as the one who speaks through our own spirit of our dear place in God's hands and heart.

In contrast there is another spirit at work.  Another voice has spoken to us through our self-absorbed flesh, the systems that support this pride all around in the world, and the being that pushes and orchestrates it all - Satan.  The voice is the voice of slavery that pulls each person toward fear.  Many live is fear due to the slavery they sense.  The spirit of slavery may very well be the Devil himself and his work, which Jesus came to destroy.  He came to destroy the bondage to sin and the spirit that accompanies it.

Bondage to sin is accomplished by being "weakened by the flesh."  Our determination to live life without God and by the power of our natural abilities makes us unable to live a life pleasing to God or even ourselves.  We fail miserably.  We suffer deeply, knowing we cannot manage our lives, but we blame God for making a life unmanageable.  We find some comfort in building up our pride through various deeds and distractions.  We also find God's presence in his words, his works, and his ways only fills us with fear leading to loathing or indifference.  Such is the way of the flesh.  It brings a spirit of slavery that leads to a hateful fear of God or an indifference to God.

The freedom of the children of God stand in contrast to this life.  Freedom from sin is accomplished through the power of the cross.  Fundamentally this means that we accept the futility of the work of our flesh and actively put such works to death.  We learn to dispose of our natural abilities as avenues for our success and savlation.  This is the suffering and death of the cross in our lives.  The cross also points to resurrection.  A new life which begins immediately.  This new life is one not lived by our own means and in our own way, but under the instruction of Christ and empowered by his Spirit.  Just as we used to find comfort and pleasure in satisfying our desires, we now find comfort and pleasure in satisfying God's desires.  Instead of serving our desires and allowing God to get the leftovers of our efforts, we serve God's desires and allow our own desires to get the leftovers.  Instead of fearing God's presence, we find ourselves fearing and suffering sin and its consequences in our lives and in the lives around us.

The Spirit bears witness to this life within us through the cry of "Father" that breaks out from our hearts for God.  The Spirit uses our spirit as the voice for this cry.  Another witness to our adoption is that we suffer with Christ.  We suffer in the presence of sin instead of seeking it out.  We seek God out instead of just suffering his presence.  The thoughts and feelings associated with this love for God as Father and with the suffering of sin against him is the testimony of the Spirit through our spirits pointing to the new life in us.

Knock It Down or Cover It Up

There are two primary forms of religion that operate under the spirit of slavery.  Both lead to self-righteousness.  One form manages sin by speaking against it and feeling bad about it.  The other manages sin by trying to cover it up with certain good deeds or rituals.  Sin does not die in either religion, but ends up leading people away from Christ and his gospel and leading to further disappointment and corruption.

In both of these types of religion, sin is managed instead of destroyed.  The efforts to knock sin down or cover it up must be maintained.  When the will of the person or group is weakened and slackened, the sin resurfaces.  Religion then becomes the managment of such sin and the ways to maintain control.  This is not the teaching of Jesus nor the way of the Spirit.

Sin can only be destroyed through forgiveness.  Forgiveness is only received through the peace of a re-established relationship.  Forgiveness found through peace with God demonstrated and established through Christ at the cross makes such a relationship possible.  Both God's complete love for sinners and God's absolute rejection of sin are evidenced through Jesus' work on the cross.  We are forgiven, kept alive by his love, and scrubbed clean by his anger at evil.  Forgiveness is accomplished for the purpose of relationship.  Without the relationship, forgiveness has no meaning.

Sin management methods are ways of seeking forgiveness without relationship.  It seeks to make God happy without actually seeking him out.  It seeks to be right with God without actually being right with God.  Sin cannot be condemned or covered away, though.  God must take it from us manually, from our hands into his, for destruction.  Christ came to take our sin from our very own hands and breath his Spirit into our very own breaths.  Sin will only die in this "face to face" encounter with God in Christ.  There is nothing automatic about it.  Whether fast or slow, such freedom must come directly to a person through an encounter with God.

Forgiveness Is Freedom

Those who practice sin managment find such news disconcerting.  What if sin is not knocked down?  What if we don't do enough to cover it?   It seems to them that the world will fall apart.  Really sin management is a over-reliance on human ability to get God's work done for him.  Behind these methods is the suspicion that if sin is not managed, it will take over, and God will let it.  Sin seems to need our attention.

Forgivenss is certainly mentioned, but not really enacted or trusted.  People hear about forgiveness, but are not brought into relationship.  Instead they are excused from sin and brought to work for the all-to-human endeavors of managing sin and its consequences.  In their lives they are taught how they can keep their sin at bay without letting it destroying them.  Sins are defined by rules instead of relationships, by what hurts the organization instead what hurts the soul, and by what can be seen and controlled instead of what happens in the hidden parts of one's life.  The best they can offer are methods for coping.

In some cases, forgiveness that leads to freedom is called heresy.  We must feel bad about sin.  We must try to cover it up.  Statements that oppose these "golden rules" are treated with great suspicion, fear, and anger.  The managers of sin management set up their organizations to avoid or even condemn such freedom.  We find such places to be filled with rules and rituals concerning church and its leaders with very little about the kingdom of God.  The church receives all the attention and and concern and work and it is assumed the kingdom of God will take care of itself.

It turns out that sin does need our attention.  It needs our attention to continue.  Sin dies without adequate attention.  With Jesus, seeking the kingdom of God was the focus of his attention and the church and its leaders would "take care of themselves."  A good relationship with God is what matters to Jesus, and sin (both individual and corporate) will take care of itself.  The fear of sin and the extensive structures erected to manage it inside and outside of our lives come from slavery to sin - an existence apart from the influence and action of God in human life.  The solution lies in the personal reconnection of the human life to God in his words, his works, and his ways in the form of being received as a child and student.  God as "Father."

The Keys to Freedom

Abandoning church does not answer these problems.  Even "starting over" involves some level of rehabilitation from the ideas of sin managment that dominates the modern church setting.  No matter how big or small, in homes, churches, or coffee houses, young or old, the prevalence of sin management makes its presence felt.  Fierce individualism has never been the path forward for followers of Jesus who works to build his church.

It turns out that sin does need our attention.  It needs our attention to continue to exist.  Sin dies without adequate attention.  So in every age, people have needed to come face to face with God, to turn their attention to him.  From the beginning of time, that is what God has sought and developed.  Through various mediators and helps, he has sought once again to walk with each person the cool of the day as he did in the Garden long ago.  He still works in this way through his church, even if some have forgotten about this invitation.  The best reminders are those who will once again walk with God, allowing his presence to teach and keep them, to burn and heal them, to gather and unite them.  We give the cold shoulder to sin and our attention to God.

The work of Christ is continued through his church, those who respond to his invitation.  The access ("keys") to the kingdom of God continues to be mediated through those who trust in God and his plan to forgive and establish a relationship with each person.  The ones with the keys are the ones who have received the blessing of seeing Christ as he is and of hearing his voice as he speaks.  Only those with the blessing of such a revelation can hold the keys.

Being physical beings, we need places and times and groups to find such meetings with God.  We do not merely approach him abstractly.  Churches provide such a meeting ground.  They are not the only place or time or group where people can find God, but they do supply his address for those who would seek him.  The church is faithful enough to provide those who want to find Christ with encouragement and help and a place to serve.  The church is broken enough to provide those who do not want to find Christ with discouragemnt and disappoinment and a place to complain about.

Prayer and the God Who Wants to Know You

Search me.O God, and know me. (Psalm 139:23)

And he walks with me; and he talks with me,
and he tells me I am his own.
And the joy we share as we tarry there
None other has ever known.

HOW WE ARE KNOWN BY GOD

One of the foundations of prayer is knowing that God wants to know you.  The invitation of the psalmist is not that God would know something that God does not know propostionally, but that God would become familiar with him.  Also, that he would have the experience of being known by God.  That experience is laid out in intimate detail in the psalm:

You know when I sit and when I rise;
You perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
You are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue,
You know it completely, O God.

Perhaps the psalmist intended for this to be read as a description of what it is to be known by God instead of as an argument for God's omniscience.  God knows because God cares.  He knows where I am because he cares about where I am.  He knows my thoughts and my ways because he is so familiar with my voice, how I speak, and what I like to do.  He knows what I am going to say before I say it because he adores me and knows mr as his child with a love I can only dream about.

Maybe this is what it means to walk with God.  If we are to follow Adam's fallen path in the Garden and hide from God, God must hide from us.  We will not be known and familiar to him.  We will escape from the experience of being known as only God can know us.  Walking with God is the opposite of hiding from him.  Walking with God is a continual longing to be known by him.

That longing can only come if we realize he wants to know us.

HOW GOD GETS CLOSE TO US

You hem me in behind and before;
You have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me
Too lofty for me to attain.

It may be that we have trouble grasping God's love for us because it makes no sense.  It is "too wonderful," "too lofty to attain."  The value of each human being is incalculable.  That comes from God's accounting.  It makes no sense.  We are not only small in the scheme of things, we are often despicable.  We may not see this in ourselves, but we are quite conscious of it in others.  How could God bear to have us "hemmed in" so close to him?

The amazing thing in knowing and following Christ is that we discover how God can come to know us even when we can be so small and despicable.  He has a plan to change all of that.  Christ's death on the cross reveals how helpless we are.  Like the Pharisees of Jesus's time, our religions only end up rejecting this God who is with us.  Like the Romans or the first century, our governments gladly crucify him in favor of their own convenience and power.  Like Peter his follower, even our friendship with God turns to betrayal.  We are indeed helpless in our brokenness, in our darkness, in our disregard for God.

If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me,
and the light become night around me"
even the darkness will not be dark to you,
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

In the cross of Christ, our darkness becomes light.  He sees a way through it and makes what is horrible into a good thing.  The cross shows our deep value to God.  He gave his own Son to keep us near him and to find our worth in him.  He also gave his Son with hope, knowing that we could be recaptured and rejuvenated as rulers over his creation.  In order to know each of us as worthwhile creations of hope, he made a way for each of us to know him.  Through Jesus we can really come to know a God who wants to know us.  He sees us in our darkness and we are not hidden from him.  He reaches out to us with the light of Christ, who died for us.

RENEWED MINDS AND BETTER PRAYER

Here is the ground of prayer.  We must begin with a God who longs to know us.  He wants to walk with us in our hours and days, months and years.  Although such knowledge can be too wonderful for us, we can find certainty of that knowledge in Christ.  As we come to trust him, we find a God who made us, let us go our own way, and yet called us back to him.  The deeper we are grounded in God's heroic love for us in particular, the more prayer will make sense to us as a part of that searching and saving God.  Only in the light of God's work for us through Jesus can we find ourselves able to say, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful.  I know that full well."

Our minds must be renewed by knowing God in this way for our prayers to begin to be effective.  God wants to know me.  God wants to know you.  If we do not care about this, then we will not care about praying.  If we do not believe this, then our prayer will be marked by uncertainty.  We must weigh the evidence that we are given in Christ and his followers and allow it to deepen our faith.  Our certainty depends on it.  We must remember how far God has brought us and see it as an indication of how far he will take us.  As we  ground our minds in such thoughts, we will find prayer is more natural, more real, more beautiful, and also more effective.  With a God like this, who wouldn't pray?

Be a Voice

In this dark, cold world
a voice cries out.
Just a city on a hill,
I am a lamp being lit,
not the light,
but another blind man
needing sight.

In this dry, barren world
a voice cries out.
Just speaking to the rock
of living water,
and just as thirsty, I say,
as every other wanderer
finding this one way.

In this empty shell of a world,
a voice cries out.
Just a word made flesh
dwelling among other men,
I am only a messenger,
not the speaker,
also desperate for the good news
to each Kingdom-seeker:
being found.

Cry out
in this wilderness world.
Be a voice,
just a voice,
for the Man.


One of the greatest freedoms in life is knowing what you don’t have to do.  It focuses the mind on what is necessary and saves me from just trying to get people to do what I want them to.  Like Mary, I want to find the “one thing needed.”  For John and myself, I see I am not the light, but only a witness.  I need not be so concerned with what people believe, but with what people see that I believe.

(Mediation on John 1:8)

The Gentle Ways of a King

The God We Can Talk to

David moves me with his hesitance to take control of things.  I see it in the phrase so often used of him, "David inquired of the Lord."  Even though David had been anointed king by Samuel, even though God had dealt with Saul, even though the opportunity seemed right with an opening for a king, "David inquired of the Lord." (2 Samuel 2:1)  David knew that hearing God was more than just grabbing a word from him and doing whatever seemed right.  He knew that the Lord not only has a truth to give, but also a way of seeing it carried out.

At the heart of the way of the Lord is communication and relationship.  In David I see that God doesn't just want someone to follow orders nor someone afraid to do anything on his own (David did not alway inquire directly), but someone who would talk and share and obey him from his heart.  This was conversation, which comes out so well in David's prayers:

O you who hear prayer,
  to you all men will come.

You answer us with awesome deeds of righteousness,
  O God our Savior
the hope of all the ends of the earth
  and of the farthest seas.

You care for the land and water it
  you enrich it adundantly.
The streams of God are filled with water
  to provide the people with grain,
  for so you have ordained it.

(Psalm 65:2, 5, 9)

David's God hears.  He answers.  He cares and provides.  Such is the One David asks.  Do I inquire of this hearing, answering, caring God or just complain at him?

God Next Door

 When God answers David in 2 Samuel 2, I find that God is not always - maybe even not generally - forceful.  Instead of installing David as king immediately, he instructs David to enter the land of those who will support him initially, the kingdom of Judah.  God moves in next door to the rest of Israel to call and invite them rather than force their cooperation.

Such is the way of Jesus and his church.  God moves into communities, workplaces, offices, and homes, so he can be next door to others.  Jesus became the friend and neighbor of sinners before he became their savior.  He does not push, he wants to invite.

David continues to show the God's kindness by starting his reign slowly, but also with blessing.  He honors those people who have honored God by their care for Saul, the Lord's anointed.  "The Lord bless you," says David.  (2 Samuel 2:5)  He follows the Lord's kindness with his own, almost as an afterthought.  He sees the kingdom as not belonging to Saul or himself, but to God.  He understands that he is the Lord's servant, blessing as he blesses.

This seems to be God's way.  The first thing he does to Adam is bless him (Genesis 1:28).  Similarly, Jesus begins his ministry with blessing as well (Matthew 5:3-12).  The Lord begins his reign with blessing, not threats or false promises.  How very unlike this world.  The quiet invitation goes out from David as well, but is supported by the truth, "the house of Judah has anointed me king over them."  The Lord's blessing is inseparable from his rule.  What do I think of a God that moves in next door to me and announces his blessing on me?  How do I feel about that?  Does it move me to ask of him or to discount him?

The Response of Threatened Desires

I suppose that such gentleness from the Lord as shown in David brings some people to think they can somehow avoid or take advantage of him.  This is the way of the flesh and the way of the world.  Rather than accept David's kingship, Abner gathers a rebellion.  Perhaps he appealed to the lineage of Saul or the traditions of typical kingdoms that continue rule in this way.  Perhaps he really believed that David would not be good to him.  Probably at the heart of it, Abner wanted to maintain and increase his position of honor and power no matter what.

In defiance of God's gracious invitation shown by coming alongside and announcing his blessing, the flesh controlled by desire sees only a threat to its position.  Above all else, it will not submit.  When desire controls the flesh, it gathers its own resources to operate without God, which always ends up being against God.  There is nowhere else to go.  With God's invitation, there is always a challenge because he allows it.  How eager am I to retain or bolster my life and position in this life?  Does God's invitation to rule with blessing bring relief or resistance in me?

The Cost of Resistance

This challenge is the cost that God decided to bear.  In order to let people do (and see) what they want he orchestrates such situations which will winnow the wheat from the chaff.  The cost for David is a battle between brothers, a civil conflict within Israel.  I imagine David may have been tempted to think it could have gone better if he has seized control outright and quelled any resistance.  But this is not God's way.  It was costly to David and his men to do it God's way, for the sake of God's goodness to everyone.

Although the cost is high, it is always much greater on the side of those who oppose God.  In this case, it came out in terms of casualties: David's men lost 19, while Abner's men lost 360  (2 Samuel 2:30).  Abner has to retreat an ask for mercy.  He is beaten and decides not to fight anymore.

As I come to follow Jesus, he says I must count the cost.  The first cost is what God paid for my freedom, for his goodness to be known to everyone including myself.  Then I must also count the cost of not following Christ.  A disciple of Jesus finds that the cost of losing righteousness, joy, and peace is much greater than the loss of sinful desire and status in the world.  While the world typically sees obedience as costly and sin as freeing, a disciple sees sin as costly and obedience as freeing.  When I count the cost, do I feel short-changed and cheated or like I've found a priceless hidden treasure?

I am amazed at how God longs to move in next door to us in order to come alongside us.  He announces blessing even as he announces his reign.  He allows the flesh, the world, and Satan to have their way for a time, so that we can see that we are indeed getting what we want and choose.  We see that his way is costly, but he is willing to pay the cost so that some might be saved.  Christ shows me a God who wants me to seek him and ask of him and be with him.

Strengthening Ourselves in the Lord

And when David and his men came to the city, they found it burned with fire, and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep. David's two wives also had been taken captive, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel. And David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in soul, each for his sons and daughters. But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God. (1 Samuel 30:3-6)

Give ear to my prayer, O God,

    and hide not yourself from my plea for mercy!

Attend to me, and answer me;

    I am restless in my complaint and I moan,

because of the noise of the enemy,

    because of the oppression of the wicked.

For they drop trouble upon me,

    and in anger they bear a grudge against me.

(Psalm 55:1-3)

Two Roads

All too often weeping and grieving turn into bitterness.  Bitterness turns into blame and blame into abuse.  Abuse often begins with the leadership.  This is the road that David's people took.

Quite simply the story shows something entirely different in David from his people.  The words "but David" is the story of a good leader, but even more importantly, a good person.  "But David" indicates that something else was at work in David that moved him from weeping and distress to strength and encouragement.  "But David" most remarkably shows that he was prepared in the midst of trial and trouble and persecution to do what his people were not prepared to do: seek God.  David was ready; his people were not.

David found his strength in God.  He did not have a series of religious activites that he would drop when he got stressed or when difficulties came.  He found encouragement in what he did.  Whatever practices David had were not stressful or "just one more thing to do";  they were life-giving.  They relieved his stress.  Spiritual practices when rightly practiced provide strength, encouragement, and relief.  They open up a pressure relief valve in a life well-trained in them.

Because of the many different influences around us, the idea of David strengthening himself probably brings up the wrong sort of picture.  If it's like most movies, David got mad and powerful enough to get even.  If it's like most self-help, David found his own truth and was "himself" in spite of everyone else.  If it's like most workplaces, David found someone to complain about or blame.  Such actions seem to bring a certain sort of strength from anger, but lead down a more dangerous road: pride and self-justification.

The Easier Way

David did strengthen himself, though.  Plainly, he could not deal with his situation on his own or in his own way, but he did have to take action.  He could not get pulled down into bitterness with his people.  Here is where soul-strengthening practices come in.  David strengthened himself because he knew he was weak and vulnerable and through practice knew what to do about it.  David strengthened himself because he knew no one would do it for him.  The easy yoke of life with God is not easy because it takes no effort, but because God always lifts the heavier load.

David's strengthening was "in the Lord."  He needed to reorient his focus to the Lord.  The beginning of David's practice is not with making the situation better, but refraining from making it worse.  Before he did something, he did nothing.  He retreated to God.  He knew that in the Lord he was safe and strong because he knew the Lord, so he pulled away from the situation and drew near to God.  David was warrior enough to know when he was threatened with defeat, so he found refuge in the Lord.  Such knowledge and ability does not usually come during trouble without some level of training.  Battle is not the time to learn to use your sword.  Prayers for help and guidance are important, but without the context of an interactive relationship with God, they are often abandoned.

Finally, David did not just find strength in the Lord, but "in the Lord his God."  It was not in the Lord Abraham's God, or in the Lord the priest's God or in the Lord Israel's God.  On this all spiritual practice stands.  Fundamentally, we cannot approach or depend on the Lord as someone else's God.  Perhaps the people wanted to stone David because they had come to rely too much on him and he failed them.  Perhaps they idolized him too much, so they sought their strength in David rather than God.  Perhaps one way of knowing who we have as our God is watching ourselves when we go for strength and encouragement in the midst of trouble and persecution.

David's Practice

We find a lot of information about the right practice of soul-building exercises in this little phrase about David: "But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God."  We find that such exercises prepare us to face grief and distress without falling into bitterness and blame.  We find them to be relief and strength rather than more stress in out lives.  We find them to be necessary effort we put out in response to God's ever-present grace

and strength.  We find them to be based in the knowledge of the Lord as a refuge and the source of our strength.  We find them to be effective only in the context of a personal relationship with the Lord our God.

We wonder what David actually did to strengthen himself.  Quite likely, he did what he had practiced so often.  He sang and worshiped and prayed.  What calmed Saul in his madness may have also calmed David in his own distress.  No wonder we are encouraged to do the same.  "Let the word of Christ dwell richly in you. . . as you sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God." (Colossians 3:16)  Perhaps the word of Christ is not only what we might read in our Bibles, but also the praise of God we find coming from our own mouths, truly dwelling richly in us and breaking out in gratitude from us as we daily practice our trust in the Lord.

Hallowed

It is your name

Your name alone

that calls out to me

even as I call it out.

Not to me, not to me,

but to your name

be all the eyes and ears,

cries of joy, thankful tears.

Let the burden roll off my back

Into an empty tomb:

that weight off my frame,

that drudgery of my empty name.

When the sound of your name

fills my breath, passes my lips,

It is not just words, but your heart,

that entrances me into self-forgetfulness.

Your name, your name,

never the same.

Always teaching, always healing

always commanding, always walking beside.

Let it be your name,

your name alone,

that haunts my house

with its unseen presence 

of joy.

I dropped my name.

I let it fall,

when yours came by

and filled my sky 

with hope.

It is not the syllables, the sounds,

the tunes, the rhymes that make it live,

but finding you never more 

than a breath away

in your name.

I bury my face in your robes,

I touch the hand that touches me.

Can I say it without shame?

Can I speak it with truth and love?

Your name.

Life According to Jesus

Faith is not " believing in spite of evidence," nor "believing what you know isn't true," as some have cynically suggested.  Rather it is an open-eyed adventurous affirmation that in and through things is a Good Will, and that Good Will is God.  Therefore faith relates itself to that Good Will by betting its life on it.  (E. Stanley Jones, Is the Kingdom of God Realism?)

WORRISOME STORIES ABOUT LIFE

Two false stories about life cause a great deal of worry.  The first is that life is about sowing and reaping.  Planning and results.  Doing and getting.  Although we do know that life has definite cause/effect chains, this is not what life is about; it is not the whole story.  "Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy."  (Ps. 126)  There is an incongruency about life.  We do not always get what we deserve.  We thank God for it.

Another false story is that life can be "stored away in barns."  Somehow we can save up for later.  We work so we can retire.  We save so we can spend.  We do good so that good will be done to us.  Although we are encouraged to "store up our treasures in heaven," the reason is not so we can get to them later, but because where our treasures are, that's where our heart is.  "I said to the Lord, 'You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing."  (Ps. 16:2)  Life must be lived and cannot be kept for later.  Many things are best left behind anyway.

THE BIRDS' STORY

The birds live the true story of life by instinct.  "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them."  (Mt. 6:26)  Life is about being fed.  The birds are not fed if they remain still, but they do not worry.  They do not live the "sowing/reaping" story nor the "storing away in barns" story.  They live the story of being fed.  What the birds do naturally, we must do by faith and choice.

Life is more important than eating and drinking.  It is more important than sowing and reaping and storing away in barns.  Life is about hungering, but not for food.  Life is about thirsting, but not for drink.  "I am the bread of life." (Jn, 6:35)  "The water I give to him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."  (Jn. 4:14)  Life is about hungering and thirsting for Christ and being satisfied by him.  Not just by what he said or what he did, but by him.  It is about our daily bread.  It is about the heavenly manna that spoils if it is not eaten that day.  (Ex. 6:13-23; Jn. 6:32-33)

The systems of human life set up against Christ promote sowing and storing up.  Both stories are about a world of scarcity.  In such a world the first thing we think in the morning is how we didn't get enough sleep and the last thing is how we didn't get enough done.  Shame is the whip that keeps us going.  (Brene Brown, The Power of Vulnerability)  Conversely, life according to Jesus is set up on trust (faith).  We trust that there is enough time to finish what God has given us.  We trust that he will give us the resources to do so as we ask him.  Massive systems of propaganda speak against such trust.  Part of us rebels at the thought of such trust.  But it is before us, as plain at the birds in the air.