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What to Do with Your Worries and Concerns

You may sincerely feel like you are at the breaking point. Like everything is crumbling around you and there is nothing to stand on or hold you up. You may grasp frantically for an answer and in a panic look for anything that might answer your wounded heart; some solution that will bring relief. You may be despairing even of life. Caught in the uneasy space of unknowing. The wind thrashing, the waves crashing in all around. You may feel surrounded with no place to flee. The terrifying place of no escape. You may cry out "How long, O Lord?" You may even cry out to God to take you home to Himself. It truly feels like there is no other option.

Then it hits you. You see a book on your table. The Book. The Word of God that has comforted you and consoled you and cheered you and corrected your faulting thinking so many times before. The inerrant Word that has always told you the truth and has never led you astray. And you open up that Book to 1 Peter 5:5-7 and you realize painfully that it is humility God wants from you in this moment; and it is pride that has led you nowhere good. "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble" (1 Pet. 5:5). And in your low estate you desperately want what is good. God has brought you to a place of surrender. You bow your heart before His. "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God..." (1 Pet. 5:6a) You realize that He has been holding you up and sustaining you faithfully and patiently the entire time. He wants you to submit your entire being to Him so that He might use you to serve His glorious purposes. "...so that at the proper time he may exalt you..." (1 Pet. 5:6b) Not vindicating you before others so that your pride is fed in knowing you were in the right all along, not serving your selfish need to be exonerated, but taking you to glory in his perfect time. Where all questions and quandaries and quirky misconceptions and quasi-understandings will all be as nothing in the light of the Lord God. Trustworthy and true is He and His Word.

So now, before you go to him, or he comes to take us home, whenever he ordains, there is one simple thing for you to do as you humble yourself under his mighty, caring, compassionate hand: "...casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you." (1 Pet. 5:7) Every wearying worry, every frustration, every daunting doubt, every piercing pain. Every sorrow, every anger, every resentment, every hatred. Every unrelenting desire, every coddled tyrant sin. Lay every burden down. Put all the weight on him. He carries it all. Jesus took it all to the cross. His shed his blood for this. He died to pay your debt. It is all covered. Take nothing back. Grasp no captivating sin. Hold on to the mighty hand that upholds you. He sees. He knows. He cares for you. You are the object of his care, his concern, his righteous and holy worry. Cast it all on him. Throw it now. And you will know his peace. Because He...cares...for...you.

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