From Anxiety To Peace - 1 Peter 5:7 Series

Peter’s reason for why we can cast our cares on God is the fact that God cares for us. You can offload a task onto someone else, but the anxiety about it stays on your plate until you are convinced that person is 1) competent and 2) that he cares about it as much as you do. This message will help you go deeper in your understanding of how much God cares about the little things in your life that cause anxiety and offers practical steps for how to cast your anxieties on God.

Excerpt:

If your concept of God's love is easy to understand, then your concept is probably not very accurate, because according to Ephesians 3, understanding the love of God requires a special work of divine enablement.

Ephesians 3:16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power... 17 ...I pray that you ... 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge

It takes a massive work of divine enablement for you to even begin to understand the dimensions of God's love.

1 Peter 5:5 Young men, in the same way be submissive to those who are older. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Introduction

How many of you would like to reduce the level of anxiety you have been feeling lately? Raise your hand if you would like to feel less anxiety over the next few weeks than you have the last few weeks. It is no shock to anyone to learn that there are a lot of people who are feeling more anxiety than they want to feel. So why don't those people just do what this verse says?

8 cast all your anxiety on him

If they don't want the anxiety, why not just throw it off?

If we found some Christians who struggle with worry and anxiety and asked them that question, what answers do you think they might give? If we are going to obey the command in this verse it is going to have to start with understanding what it means. Obviously it is a figure of speech, right? Peter is quoting Psalm 55:22, except there in the Hebrew it says Cast your burdens on the Lord. That is a figure of speech. Anxiety is not a physical thing like a sack of potatoes that you can just pick up and throw somewhere. Nor is God a physical thing you can throw something onto. So this instruction is meaningless and worthless unless we interpret the figure of speech so we know what it means. And then from there we need to figure out how it is done.

But before we do any of that, let's make sure we know what we are talking about when we speak of anxiety. What is anxiety?

The Meaning of Anxiety

Anxiety is the feeling you get when something you care about might go wrong. God designed us in such a way that when there is something that matters to us that needs our attention, we feel a sense of pressure. And the more the thing matters to us, the more intense that pressure is. That is a gift from God that helps us get moving when we need to take action. If ten days from now your rent is due, and you have no money, you feel pressure on the inside.

"I need to do something about this. I need to earn some money, or borrow some money, or find another place to live, or something."

You have ten people coming over for dinner tonight, and you feel some pressure.

"I need to think of something to cook."

"The car is making a horrible grinding noise - I need to get that checked out."

That tense feeling you have in your stomach - that pressure or distress or feeling of unrest - that is a gift from God to help motivate us to do the things we don't really feel like doing but that need to be taken care of. If you get a rock in your shoe, maybe you don't feel like taking the time to stop and untie your shoe and remove the rock, but physical pain has a way of forcing the issue. And it is the same way with emotional distress. Something needs your attention, and those feelings of distress or pressure keep putting the issue right in front of your face, so you cannot ignore it and you have to take action.