Seek Ye First by Kim Jackson

   Karen Lafferty’s rent was due. Her car payment was, too.

   Having left a well-paying job to pursue a call to ministry, Karen began a journey into uncharted territory. Believing that where God guides, he provides, Karen stepped out in faith.

   But now her savings were gone, and bills were due. She spent the day on the phone trying to stir up interest in guitar lessons. She didn’t want to go back to singing in nightclubs. If only she could get a job where she could make money and still be involved in ministry. But nothing seemed to be working out.

   Karen went to a Bible study that evening. The pastor was teaching on Matthew 6. Karen remembers, “When he read verse 33, ‘But seek first his kingdom ...,’ I thought Yeah, that’s the answer. When I got home my rent still wasn’t paid, but my joy was back."

   Karen picked up her guitar. “I started plunkin’ around and wrote a little melody. The words of Matthew 6:33 began to fit the tune, and an ‘alleluia’ descant sort of formed over the top of it.” Other passages became additional verses.

   Karen shared the new song at a church youth service. It was easy to remember and caught on immediately. It was 1971, the height of the Jesus Movement, and people from all over the world were in attendance at Calvary Chapel. When they returned to their native countries, they took “Seek Ye First” with them.

   When Karen woke the next morning, her rent was still due, and her checking account was still empty. But within days she received a letter promising unexpected funds. That check paid not only her rent and her car payment, it also covered the cost of the Bible training she had been hoping to take.

   But that was only the beginning of God’s faithfulness.

   The next year Karen recorded her simple Scripture song on an early Maranatha! Praise Album. By the time she felt the tug to missions in 1978, God had taken “Seek Ye First” around the world.

   And as a testament to God’s promises, as well as Karen’s obedience to the challenge of the words she set to music, the royalties from “Seek Ye First” have provided 80% of Karen’s income as a “Musicianary” … for over 30 years!

   “It’s really incredible,” Karen says today. “I am very grateful and very humbled. The song is the simplest thing I’ve ever done musically. It wasn’t any big feat because anyone could have written it. I’m just really grateful God allowed me to write it.”

   And not only write it…but live it. 

Matthew 6:25-34

   "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 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. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."