Someone Cares for You
ICS Daily Devotions
1 Peter 5:7 (NKJV) Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.
It is God’s will for us to experience peace, which is part of the abundant life, instead of living in anxiety. In fact, Jesus has given us His peace, but we need to maintain that peace by casting all our anxieties upon Him. The problem with many of us is that we think we are self-sufficient and don’t need help from anyone or God. Pride hinders us from humbling ourselves before God to ask for His help and intervention.
Philippians 4:6 (NKJV) Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
The Apostle Paul encouraged us to pray in every circumstance and cast all our anxieties and worries unto God because God cares for us and hears us, but we need to articulate our stress to Him, tell Him how we feel, and thereafter believe by faith that His grace is infused into our hearts to see us through.
We need to know that once we are saved, we are no longer living without hope and God in this world. We have a natural tendency to think of the worst scenario whenever something happens to us, but anxiety is built on fear—fear of the unknown, or the possible scenarios. Fear is a spiritual force that can cripple and prevent us from doing anything. It keeps us busy thinking about the possible outcomes but contributes nothing to resolving the problem. Fear is an act of the evil one that causes us to focus on the issue instead of God, stealing the joy and peace in our lives.
As believers, we have the privilege of offloading our anxieties to God and resting in His love. God is bigger, wiser, more powerful, more resourceful, and limitless. God’s love established through an act of covenant commits Himself to be with us in good and bad times where our problem becomes His problem under the covenant obligations. If He has resolved our sin issue as our covenant partner, there is no problem in this life that He can’t solve. Understanding the covenant and knowing that God is our covenant partner enables us to draw on His resources.
There is no hopeless situation as long as God is in it. Prayer is the relief valve that God has given us, but prayer and casting our cares on Him are choices that we have to make. God invites us to an honest conversation and a time of fellowship with Him. Long prayers are not necessary but short sincere utterances of how we feel and experience. It also provides Him with a chance to assure us and bring Scripture into our memory as a form of comfort and strength.
Sermon Series: Up! Cell Group Campaign
