Because He Cares
Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
1 Peter 5:7 (NIV)
Peter, in chapter 5 of his epistle, makes the bold theological assertion and affirmation to people who are being gripped by anxiety, weighed down by worry, and living excessively concerned about so many cares.
Peter gets a peek behind the veneer of our worries, and he responds to us like this:
Child of God, amidst the backdrop of so much for which you ought to have anxiety, cast your cares on Him. Why? Because He cares for you. The word “cast,” when transliterated from the original, means to toss or to throw.
Casting our cares on Jesus is the appropriate spiritual response to the questions that worry will often raise.
Jesus’s care for you gives you a reason to wake up every day against the backdrop of all we are dealing with in the various seasons of our lives. Casting your cares on Jesus challenges your assertions and forces you to wake up every day to ask yourself, “How deeply do I believe in Jesus?”
He is concerned about what is worrying you. In fact, He grieves over it. He has an emotional response to your lived experience. He feels your pain. He is acquainted with your grief. He is touched by your infirmities. Therefore,
- Don’t feel like you’re putting too much burden on Him. He can handle it.
- Don’t feel like you’re talking to Him too much. He prefers you to talk to Him.
- Don’t feel like your complaints are going to reach ears that are too sensitive to hear.
When worry is squeezing us, He wants you to cast your burdens on Him in humility.
As Christians, we live remembering that we did not come here to stay. Our total emotional investment therefore can never be deposited, nor should it be withdrawn, in one season alone. That is to say, don’t let worry make you offer a withdrawal of your healthy emotionality.
Because of Jesus, we are assured a salvation that results in Him being exalted and His people being elevated to rule and reign. We have to really trust what scripture says when it teaches that all things are working together for our good (Romans 8:28). Despite the persecution, the pressure, the people, the problems, the peril, and the pain, we have a living hope. We stand in the midst of uncertainty, but we are certain of this truth: Jesus Christ is the complete fulfillment of God’s intent for humanity—and He cares deeply for you!
Jesus Is Willing
Now a leper came to Him, imploring Him, kneeling down to Him and saying to Him, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.”
Mark 1:40 (NKJV)
A leper came to Jesus begging for healing, and the first words out of his mouth speak so much to his life experience. He says to Jesus, “If You are willing…”
Do you catch the intonation of that? Do you hear the emotionality of it?
In those few words, it’s almost as if I can hear the leper saying, “I live every single day with people pushing me to the periphery. I am the nagging observation of everybody I come in contact with. Nobody wants to step into my malady. Nobody wants to get involved in the trauma that I’m living with every day. Nobody wants to extend compassion or sympathy. And I’ve heard about You, Jesus. I’ve heard You’ve caused blind eyes to see. I’ve heard that You’ve worked miracles. You probably wouldn’t want to waste time with a leper like me… but if You want to—if You are willing—You can make me clean.”
This man has been nurturing the fatigue that has gripped his life because of the way people around him have given up on him being anything other than a leper.
Verse 41 says, however, “Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I am willing; be cleansed.’”
In those words, we can read Jesus’s empathy. “Your condition doesn’t change who I am. Nothing about your leprosy is a threat to me. The threat in your life is not causing me any angst or anxiety. The horror of your life is not causing me to flinch or fear at all. I want to get involved. It’s maladies like yours that I step right into and speak to until they give way to health, wholeness, and restoration. I want to help you, and since you haven’t given up on yourself after all this time, I’ll step into the fight with you.”
Friend, this is why you can’t ever give up on you. Jesus will never not want to help you become a better you. Don’t ever walk away from your aspirations, your goals, your dreams, and your visions—because you are in relationship with the Christ who says, I’ll never leave you.
As long as you’ve got fight in you, you can count on Jesus being in there with you because He wants you to prosper. He wants you to be more than a conqueror. He wants you to experience life and to experience it more abundantly.
Jesus will always be willing to help you.
Be Faithful with Money
“His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.’”
Matthew 25:23 (NKJV)
The parables that Jesus told tell us how important it is to Him that you and I not separate money from our spirituality. Our spirituality includes our money—how we view it, how we use it, and how we steward it.
Why does the topic of money scare us as Christians? I can tell you that high on the list of things people really worry about is money. In fact, it ranks second to the worry people have about relationships.
People are worried about their money:
- The fear of not having enough
- The fear of losing what we have
- The fear of money controlling us
- The fear of decisions made because of money
- The fear of how others will view us if we have money
- The fear of how people will view us if we don’t have money
- The fear about how long our money will last
- The fear of who we might become if we get a lot of money
- The fear of who we might become if we don’t have any
I’m not as interested in why money scares us as much as I’m interested in how we erase those fears and worries about money.
The Lord wants us to live not only grateful for what He gives us, but He also wants us to work it. He wants us to apply strategy, to have a plan, and to live with a certain mindset about our money.
He doesn’t want us as Christians to be repelled by money or afraid to talk about it, but to use it for His glory and purpose. Jesus clearly makes money an important part of discipleship. He makes it important to what it means to be a Christian.
And the big question that would be asked by most is, “If this is how the Lord wants me to think about my money, how does He want me to steward it without letting it change me?”
The answer is this: He wants us to steward our money by being faithful with it.
Your money is a chance to demonstrate faith in God. You can show your faith by being a good steward of your money.
The Pinch of Worry
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 than food, and the body more than clothes?
Matthew 6:25 (NIV)
So many people live with constant worry that is negatively affecting their health and tempting then to live with far too deep a sense of insecurity.
It’s obvious that people these days are uneasy. They are edgy, disquieted, unsettled about almost everything, ranging from dealing with personal identity all the way to fear of future events. We are a worried people.
Worry is everywhere. It’s straining theological thought. It’s frustrating the pursuit of individual dreams. It’s creating limitations and making imaginative leaps of faith. It’s unsettling many people’s deep core convictions. It’s bringing conflicts to human exchanges and relationships.
But Jesus gave us comforting words that can be summarized like this: “Do not worry about your life. Don’t worry about what you will eat or what you will drink. Don’t worry about how you will clothe your body. Living is about more than merely eating, and the body is about more than dressing up. Look at the birds in the sky. They do not store food for winter. They don’t plant gardens. They do not sow, nor do they reap, and yet they’re always fed because your Heavenly Father feeds them. You are even more precious to Him than a beautiful bird. If He looks after them, of course He will look after you.”
Worrying does no good. The image of worry that the original Greek text gives is of being pinched all day long.
If you trust that God has promised to take care of your needs…
If you trust that He was part of the imagination that created you…
If you believe He will be there to receive you when your life reaches its finality…
If you believe that He’s preparing rooms for you in the kingdom of heaven...
If you believe that He can prepare a table for you in the presence of your enemies…
If you believe that He answers prayers and makes ways for you…
If you know that He is a hedge of protection around you…
…then here’s what He says: “Do not worry about your life.”
Through our relationship with Jesus, He inserts His presence, His power, and His promises in our lives—particularly in places where we are restless, overly concerned, disquieted, and feeling like our emotions, experiences, and encounters are pinching us.
Here’s what God wants us to understand: worrying doesn’t weigh as much when you know what you are worth to God. When you realize just how valuable you are to Him, you won’t feel the need to worry about anything.
The Power of Spiritual Purity
It is God’s will that you should be sanctified…
1 Thessalonians 4:3 (NIV)
I invite you to consider what areas of your life contain those not-quite-right things that are permitted to exist, to persist, to remain, or to linger because we are somewhat unsure about what they mean in terms of threat if we were to decide to address it.
All of us deal with this. “I don’t want to confront that because I’m afraid if I confront it, it might open something worse.” “I don’t want to have that conversation, because if the conversation goes sideways, I don’t want the topic to move into another area.”
We feel unsure of the threats that might arise if we were to make attempts to address some of these maladies, these connections in our lives that are causing such bad issues. They may be related to parents or children, jobs or health, finances or future—these crippling toxic habits and demons and weaknesses and annoyances where we would rather avoid the conversation or avoid the encounter because we are afraid to address certain conditions.
It's like saying, “I don’t want to go to the doctor. I know if I go, he’s going to find something.” There are certain parts of our lives that we don’t touch because we are intimidated by the impurity of it all.
And sometimes we are intimidated by the strength of the impurity of a thing more than we trust the power of the purity we possess in Jesus to affect change, to heal hurt, to bring resolution, to provide a vision that is headed somewhere.
We hesitate to face these areas of impurity, not fully realizing that in addressing them, God can help us to:
- finally embrace peace
- stop hurting
- rid ourselves of a crippling habit
- change maladjusted behavior
- transform twisted thinking
- accept God’s amazing grace
- live with peace that surpasses all human understanding
- own our place in the kingdom of God
- enjoy the prevailing presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit
I hear it all the time—the hesitation in many people’s voices about addressing things in our lives because we fear what opening that thing may further present. We pull away from seeking help because we don’t want any poking or prodding. “Leave that alone. Don’t mess with that. Don’t bring that topic up. Don’t even attempt to touch it.”
While reasons may vary for each one of us as to why we do this, I suggest that among them often is the lack of faith we have in the power of the purity that Jesus has nurtured and is maturing in us.
There is this subtle doubt as to whether or not Jesus’s presence in us is really stronger than what the enemy is doing. We doubt whether that purity is strong enough to confront, to change, and to correct the impurity that is wreaking so much havoc in our lives.
We have to learn how to trust the power of spiritual purity.
