May 31 – He Cares For You

"Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you." - 1 Peter 5:6-7 (ESV)

So, how are you doing with the task of humbling yourself? Not easy is it. Sort of like we pray for patience and immediately we encounter a circumstance where patience is needed.  It doesn’t take long to fall like that. Pride is the same.  If we want to give up pride, we must accept being humbled by circumstances and people. It can be a pretty bitter pill to swallow.  Successful at humility comes from God and submitting to His leading. As we allow ourselves to accept opportunities for humility, we do so under the might of God’s hand.  He is able to give us all that we need to swallow pride and give up all our self-needed sufficiency. At the proper time (which is God’s time, not ours) God will exalt us by manifesting Himself through us. People will see His work in our lives, not our own efforts. When they comment on such times, we give credit and glory to God.  Our other promise is: God cares for us so much that he is willing to take on all things we worry about. We do not have to worry because He cares and takes care of us.  

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November 8 – Learning To Cast

“…having cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares about you.”  1 Peter 5:7 (NASB)

What is before the ellipsis in our verse?  It is the instruction to take on humility under God’s mighty hand. He promises He will exalt us in time. This is after we have turned over to God all that we are anxious about. That is the requirement. Everything that upsets us. 

• Every worry. 
• Every concern. 
• Everything that is not working out the way we believe it should. 
• Every apprehension about the evil, hateful, ungodly, despicable cheating, lying, and underhanded manipulations, affecting our future. 
• Every fear of losing our freedom and liberty and our major dismay with who will be leading our country. 

Wrap all these up and cast them on Jesus. He does not want us to lug these cares around. They get in the way. He can do something about it and we can only give them to him. God cares and that’s our promise you, He cares about me, about us –all who He has chosen and called and redeemed from permanent spiritual death. He does not want us to be stirred up or to stir up others with things we really can’t change. He cares about us enough to take these anxieties away for us. 

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September 21 – Trust and Cast Off

“When I am afraid, I will put my trust in You.” Psalm 56:3 (NASB)
“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time,  casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.”  1 Peter 5:6-7 (NASB)

Two verses today affirm the promise that we can depend upon God to care for us and to take care of us – especially when we are in upsetting circumstances. Notice: the verse in Psalm 56 does not say, “I never struggle with fear.” Fear strikes without warning sometimes and other times we see it approaching like a stampede of buffalo on the prairie. The battle begins. The Bible does not teach that true believers will have no anxieties. Instead, the Bible tells us how to fight when they strike. The promise in 1 Peter 5:7 gives us our strategy when fear and anxiety come upon us. Are we feeling fear, worry, or other forms of anxiety these days?  Has an uncertain future disturbed the life we had several months ago? Dealing with feelings of anxiety every day is more or less normal. The question we have is: How do we fight them? We fight anxieties by fighting against unbelief and fighting for faith in future grace by meditating on God’s promises and assurances of future grace and by asking for the help of his Spirit. (1 Timothy 6:12; 2 Timothy 4:7)

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June 2 – Casting Cares

“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.”  -1 Peter 5:6-7  (NASB)

We have a comforting promise to consider today. "He (God) cares for you."  Yes, he does and that is why in our verse today we find a way to obey and follow the command given to us.  Humility is a very important state of mind for the Christian.  Matthew 5:5 tells us that God blesses those who are humble.  Humility is also described as being gentle, or meek. Another promise today is that those who do humble themselves will be exalted by God’s mighty power and hand at the proper time.  The humble while on earth are often cast aside and ignored but one day in His kingdom God will lift them up. Humility is one of the ways those entering the Kingdom will live while on earth.  Sometime we hear the term “real humility,” or “authentic humility.”  That is the only kind that ever is.  And this is how we do it - entrusting oneself and one's troubles to God.  He cares for us and He wants us to depend fully on him no matter what our cares are.  Let’s cease from trying to manage and cast them instead on God as he has told us to.  

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December 3 – Shifting the Burden

“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:7 (NIV)

As we are told by the Apostle Paul in Philippians “be anxious for nothing,” here Peter tells us what to do with our anxiety – get rid of it! Cast it ALL on Him! This is a good practice to follow and we have a good reason we can trust it – He cares for us. How wonderful it is to know that we have a heavenly Father who cares about us. Yes, He knows that we have special concerns and that we sometimes become anxious about things, wondering how things are going to turn out. We stumble and fall because of our worry but He is always there to help us up. Our Lord tells us here to turn to him and turn those cares over to Him. Transfer the anxious thoughts and worries from your ledger to His ledger. Then observe how He cares for you and me. He really does, it's a promise.