Wednesday Words of Encouragement

 

1 Peter 5:7 ~

"Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you."

Have you ever felt so anxious about something that it consumed your every waking moment? I have and when that happens it leaves me feeling exhausted. It feels as if I'm in an ocean with waves pouring over my head. 

We've heard this verse in 1 Peter many times, but what does it actually mean? What does casting your anxiety on the Lord look like? 

The idea in this verse is not just to casually pray and hand your worries over to God, but to hurl them onto Him. Think of it as casting a line in fishing. The fisherman throws his line far away into the water. In other words, throw your worries so far away from you that you won't be tempted to keep taking them back.

When I'm upset about something, I have a tendency to think about it all day long. Or I'll talk about it constantly to my husband. I replay the situation over in my mind. It consumes me to the point where I have a hard time focusing on anything else. All that manages to do is keep the anxiety in the forefront of my mind.

Yet, when I pray and ask the Lord to work in the situation and then work to put it out of my mind, I really do start to feel less anxious. But that takes discipline. It takes constantly taking every thought captive. It means I work hard at focusing on something else.

It takes trust that God is in control of the situation. Being disciplined in this means I'm replacing the worry with praise and thanksgiving. Often, I need to read God's word, memorize some verses, sing some praise songs in order to replace the worry with trust. I get busy with doing something else rather than sitting and thinking about the concern.

I think that the reason worry can become a sin is because it places the concern at the center of my life with me as the one who needs to solve it. I set myself up as the controller of all things. 

The initial feeling of anxiety is a normal human reaction, but when I don't turn it over the Lord and it becomes to take over my thoughts, I have allowed the worry to take the place of the Lord. I start to think that I need to be in charge of the situation and take the focus off the Lord.

I'm learning to drop the anxieties on the Lord's lap. I need to do it more quickly, but through the years I am learning this lesson. I want to hurl those problems at the Lord and as far away from me as I can. God is bigger than anything that concerns me, so my goal is to let Him shoulder the burden. 

Today, I'm casting my burdens firmly on God's shoulders. I'm to rest my mind and allow God to handle the concerns.