He cares for you!
Anxiety, worry, and concern, all of these bring about stress in our lives. I am told that forty-three percent of all adults suffer adverse health effects from stress. Seventy-five percent to ninety percent of all doctor's visits are for stress-related ailments and complaints (WebMd "The effects of Stress on Your Body"). When we are going through things that overly concern us and we tend to be stressed out and anxious, what are we supposed to do as Christians? Where do we go with our anxieties and our cares?
There are things that we should show a proper concern over, but there is a fine line between that kind of concern and worry. When we worry, we take those basic concerns and inflate them to the point of worry and stress. Worry is a burden that God never intended for us to bear.
John Curtis, founder and director of the University of Wisconsin Stress Management Institute, says, ""I believe 90 percent of stresses are brought on by not living in the present moment -worrying about what's already happened, what's going to happen, or what could happen."
I had a former pastor who would say it this way, "If, If's and But's were candy and nuts, we would all have a Merry Christmas." His point was that we all tend to worry. Sometimes those cares can become more that we can bear. They can become the cause of our worry and anxiety and burden us down. That is not how the Lord wants us to live. He knows who we are. He knows all about us. Our circumstances did not catch Him by surprise. He loves us and He wants the best for us. He does not want us to carry these burdens alone. As 1 Peter 5:7 tells us, we should be "Casting all of our care upon Him, because He cares about us."
It is our cares that we must cast upon Him. Our cares are all the places that we are "drawn in different directions". It is where we see division in our lives and in our families. We feel it in the places that we are distracted, worried, and anxious about. We are to cast them on Him.
Casting means to throw upon Him our cares. When you cast your cares on Him, you let go of them yourself. It becomes His to bear. We should not be like the old man that was walking beside the road with a bundle over his shoulder and a kind man with a horse and wagon offered him a ride. He climbed up onto the wagon, took his seat, but continued to hold his bundle. The owner of the wagon said, "Why don't you just put your bundle down in the back of the wagon and relax?" The old man with the bundle replied, "Oh no! I couldn't ask you to take me and my bundle." The truth was that the man with the wagon already had.
We are like that old man with the bundle. We want to hold on to our burdens, and the Lord says, "Cast it on me because I care about you". When we cast our cares upon Him, He receives those cares, and He handles them much better than we ever can. When He says, “Leave that to me, you can trust that it will be taken care of”. When you cast your cares on the Lord, He puts His peace in your heart. He can restore our calm, and He will, because He cares about us. He cares for our well-being. He can take our earthly cares whether they be financial, family, physical, or physiological, and He can bring peace. He can take care of our eternal well-being. He cared enough to send His very best, His Son, to die for us.
God wants you to cast, throw your worry and anxiety on Him. He wants you to see those places that you are “drawn in different directions”, and let Him help you sort it out. The places where there are divisions and distractions, He can fix. I encourage you today to cast all of your care upon Him, because He cares so deeply about you.