1 Peter 5:7
Casting all your cares on Him because He cares for you.
Casting all your cares on Him because He cares for you.
Am I a God who is near," declares the Lord, "And not a God far off? 24 Can a person hide himself in hiding places So that I do not see him?" declares the Lord. "Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?" declares the Lord. 1. What does it say? Summarize the text in your own words. a. God asserts His omnipresence and omniscience b. God declares there is nowhere that man can hide from Him. 2. What questions do I have about what it says? a. What motivated God to declare His omnipresence and omniscience in this context? b. Is it possible to hide from God? c. Why would a person hide from God? When do they hide from Him? d. What implications does God's omnipresence have for our relationship with Him? 3. What does the text mean? a. God's declaration of His omnipresence and omniscience is a response to the false prophets who were misleading the people of Judah. These prophets claimed to have special knowledge from God, but their messages were often contradictor
O Throw/hurl your anxieties/worries/burdens to God
ReplyDeleteO Don't shoulder the burden/weight of your decisions without God
O God cares about what is important to His children.
O God wants His Children to be transparent and intimate with Him
GOD: Don't shoulder the weight of the world on your own. You are my child. I love you and care for you. I want you to share the things that cause you to worry. I want you to tell me about your fears, hopes and dreams. Include me in your life. Remember that I am here beside you and you are not alone. If you trust Me then surrender your problems to me. Fretting over your situation won't do any good. Release your burdens to Me. Give me control of the situation and find rest in Me. Those who do enter into My peace.
ME: God I struggle to surrender my worries to You. Letting go and giving You control of my situation is hard. I know that I've trusted my life to You when I trusted and believed that Jesus saved me from sin. But I have a hard time trusting and believing that Your grace and power are available to me in every decision and moment of my life. Help me to trust that You love me and that no problem that stresses me out is too much for You to handle. Help me to trust that You are more than enough for every situation I face.
REFLECTION
ReplyDeleteI was meditating on this scripture and thinking about how God has always been faithful to use the scripture that I've meditated on to be a blessing to me and to the people God has put in my life. What struck me about the passage.
One night a co-worker called sobbing as she told me she had just been in a car accident while on duty. She had rear-ended another vehicle on the interstate and had a kid from work in the car with her. As she recounted her experience and shared her fears and anxiety about the ticket she was getting she asked, "Tim am I going to lose my job?" As her co-worker and supervisor my thoughts were racing through all of the procedures that needed to be followed and hoping that I wasn't forgetting some step of protocol that needed to be covered. But when I heard her question, the trembling of her voice and the tears that followed my mind clung to this scripture. I shared with my friend the message God shares in 1 Peter, "Cast all your cares upon Him because He cares for you."
As I prayed with my friend and tried to encourage her with God's Word I was reminded off both the simplicity and difficulty that comes in trusting God and obeying His Word. It's easy to recite and even explain scripture but what makes the Christian life difficult is putting what we know about God into practice. Casting my cares on God is not a one time action. Casting is something I presently do and will continue to do because worry and anxiety are inevitable companions of life. However, it's because of the continual reminders of my infirmities and burdens that I can be reminded that there is a God who cares so much for me that He came down to my level, identified with me and took on my guilt and shame. A God who took on the crushing burdens of life and bore the weight of my pain to the point of death so that I could be called friend of God.
Whenever we face the burdens of life we have the opportunity to either lean into God trusting Him at His Word or to turn away and be overcome by our fears. Jesus invites us to lean on Him, to trust in Him and to surrender our burdens to Him because though we may be burdened by the tribulations of life He knows that we can not overcome what we face on our own. This is why he gently calls to us and invites us to throw our burdens onto Him because though we are weak He is strong and more than capable of shouldering our burden.
So the question before us today is will we trust God at His Word? Will we accept the invitation God gives to be His friend? Will we trust the God Loves us and wants us to unload our burden on Him because He cares for us. Will you trust Him?