“casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:7
These days, most of us are dealing with high levels of worry, stress, and anxiety. We no longer have two or three degrees of separation from COVID-19. Now we are forced to consider what a global pandemic means for our lives, our close neighbors, relatives, and church members. What will this mean for the folks we know and love who are especially vulnerable? Even if we haven’t personally lost someone to COVID 19, we almost certainly know someone who has. If that weren’t enough, we are all adjusting to the pressures of life under quarantine. Most of us are doing all we can to keep our sanity during these crazy times, to remain patient with our loved ones, hopeful about the future, and to resist loneliness and depression.
This morning’s passage from 1 Peter 5 was tailor-made for times like these. The apostle Peter is addressing weary saints across Asia minor who are deeply anxious about the future. They are grieving the death of loved ones and hearing more unsettling news each day. Amidst their struggle, Peter gives them some gospel grounded instruction meant to bring divine comfort to their troubled hearts. Despite what some people believe, the Christian life is not “all peaks with no valleys” or “all sunshine with no rain.” Every Christian has anxieties and emotional burdens. Notice that Peter assumes that fact. He doesn’t pretend that believers are ignorant or insensitive to the cares of life. Drawing upon Psalm 55:22 which says “Cast your burden on the LORD and he will sustain you” Peter expounds on the cares of life. He interprets the Hebrew word for “burden” using a greek word which means “distracting worries.” The greek word literally means to be divided or pulled in multiple directions at once. Peter is absolutely right! The burdens of life not only weigh us down, they also pull us in every direction, distracting our hearts and minds from attending to the things that matter most, loving the Lord and loving our neighbors. Christian author Corrie ten Boom once noted, “Worry does not empty tomorrow of sorrows, it empties today of strength.” So our passage tells us what to do with the cares of life. Here are three things to do with our worries.
POINT 1: Cast your Cares on the Lord Conclusively
Our passage begins “casting all your anxieties on him.” The word “casting” conveys the sense of removing a burden from our backs and tossing it away from ourselves onto someone else’s back. Giving it to someone else means we no longer carry the crushing weight of worry. Think of a bank. I was grateful when I finally got a banking app on my phone because I could finally deposit checks directly after receiving them. Whenever someone hands me a check I immediately feel the weight of keeping up with that check and making sure it gets to the right place. But as soon as I deposit the check, my mind is put at ease because the weight of responsibility for the outcome of that check no longer rests with me, it’s in the bank’s hands. With receipt in hand, I can walk away with my mind at ease having entrusted the matter to the bank whose job it is to take care of the matter. Prayer is like that. When you take your burdens to the Lord, you can actually leave them there. His resurrection and outpoured Spirit are the receipts guaranteeing that he will safeguard the deposit that you have entrusted to him. When Jesus was raised from the dead, the Lord revealed to us the final chapter of our story. He said to us in essence “Don’t worry, this is all going to work out better for you than you could ever imagine or think.” That doesn’t mean that you no longer have any concerns over the matters of your life. But it means that you entrust the outcome to the Lord’s almighty resurrected hand. You can say, “Lord, I trust you with my health and safety. Lord, I trust you with my loved ones. Lord, I trust you with my children. Lord, I trust you with this world and this pandemic. I can actually rest because Lord you really have got this. You have the whole world in your hands.”
POINT 2: Cast your Cares on the Lord Completely
“casting all your anxieties on him” The word translated “all” is actually the first word in the original Greek. The word all simply means casting every worry and each part of every worry on the Lord. The scripture must reveal this to us because we are habitual worrywarts, we naturally collect and hoard worries. The Lord must tell us to hold nothing back, to bring all of our worries, the worst of our fears, the greatest of our sorrows, the ugliest most painful parts of our experiences, the most petty of our concerns, all of them. We must formulate words with our hearts and mouths and speak them all out loud to the Lord to be relieved of our burden.
Modern science is only now catching up to this ancient piece of wisdom. A research study in psychology followed several Holocaust survivors to find what practices were most helpful to their healing. They interviewed survivors and recorded their accounts of horror and bloodshed. Researchers found a stunning correlation between the level of detail the person used and their health. Those survivors who held nothing back and spoke the worst aspects of their experiences were nearly twice as likely to be physically healthy a year later. This seems counterintuitive because some things are so painful, they seem better left unspoken. But burying our worst fears and worries doesn’t make them disappear. They only build up steam in our minds like a pressure cooker and rebound even stronger. We only gain healing by processing and shaping our cares into concrete words, externalizing them by speaking or writing them in prayer, and casting them away from ourselves onto the Lord. We can only rest once we give it all over to him. Think of a man who’s afraid to fly. He walks onto a plane, nervously finds his seat, but never puts his full weight down into the chair. He leans forward, sweating and straining to keep himself somewhat suspended for the entire 3 hours on the plane. As long as he holds some of his burden back, he’ll never be able to rest. Let’s entrust the Lord with our whole burden.
POINT 3: Cast your Cares on the Lord Confidently
“casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” This passage offers the most amazing gospel hope to God’s anxious children. The Greek words literally read something like this “with Him [The Lord] there is attentive care surrounding you.” He is more attentive to the concerns of our lives than we are and he literally surrounds us with his Fatherly care. One of the biggest lies the devil ever whispered is that nobody cares. Beloved, God has been caring for you from before time began. God has care from you from the moment you were formed in your mother’s womb and has carefully sustained each beat of your heart. Every moment of your life he has carefully watched you. Your Father cares attentively and continuously, so much so that he surrounds us in a cocoon of his Fatherly care. I’m grateful that the Lord is a helicopter parent, a divine hoverer, the kind that won’t let his children out of his sight for a single moment. We’ve all seen parents like this out with their children. They wrap their children in safety gear and a helmet just to walk down the street. From our human perspective, this can seem over the top. But we can be glad when the helicopter parent is God.
He wraps us in his promises and his providential hand. Our lives are safeguarded and shaped by a host of promises and by the omnipotent power of God, the Holy Spirit. Though he holds the entire world in his hand, the Father holds us with special attentive care ensuring that everything works together for our good and nothing that comes along can separate us from his love. As you cast your cares on the Lord, imagine Jesus our great high priest at the right hand of the Father, stretching his hands over you in blessing even now. If you could hear his prayers for you and see the spirits work protecting you even now. Beloved we have every reason for confidence even during times like these.
(I’m thankful to Rev. James Merritt, pastor of Cross Point Church in Duluth, GA for the basic outline used in this week’s devotional)
Questions and activities for reflection:
Make a written list of your current worries and worst fears. Use as much detail as possible. Be brutally honest. Write exactly why each one worries you so much.
List two worries or two aspects of worries that you have never spoken about or prayed about. Answer the question “Why have I not spoken about this yet?”
Pray over each one of the items on your list and the two new items one at a time casting these on the Lord.
Watch this video of the “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” challenge and carefully listen and meditate on the words. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcVhEMmLixM
Sing the song a few times adding your own name and other concerns in the verse.
Here’s mine:
He’s got the whole world, in his hands (3xs)
Vs1 He’s got Mika and Christina, in his hands
Vs2 He’s got Zoe, Shiloh, and Lovey in his hands
Vs3 He’s got New City Fellowship, in his hands
Vs 4 He's got our healthcare workers, in his hands