Casting All Your Care

I may conserve energy by sitting down and preaching to you. That's what the Jews used to do, you know. Well, it's good to be with you, and I invite you to open the Word to a very familiar verse. You might not even have to open 1 Peter 5:7, where the apostle Peter says, "Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you." It's a good verse to start the new year. "Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you."

Now, Peter wrote this statement to encourage us. We Christians ought to be in the business of encouragement. I have written in the front of the Bible I preach from a quotation from a very famous Scottish preacher, John Watson. He made the statement, "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle." It may not look like it.

You may look at somebody around here and say, "My, she's got it made." Or "He's got it made. And if only I were in his situation, I would be a lot happier." Bless your heart, you wouldn't, and I wouldn't. We don't know. "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle."

Now let's take this word from God through Peter, "Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you," and let's find some encouragements for our own heart. There are at least three of them.

Encouragement number one: Christians have cares. You say, "That's a fine encouragement," but it's true. I'll tell you why it is an encouragement. It keeps us from feeling guilty. Now, there are some preachers who major on guilt. If they don't send everybody home under a dark cloud with their neck in a noose, they feel they've failed.

And in my own pastoral ministry, I found people who say, "Oh, Brother Wiersbe, there's got to be something wrong with my life because I've got so many burdens and cares, and I've read these books, and I've watched people on television, and they tell me that if I'm really walking with God, I'll never have any burdens." And don't you believe that for 1 minute.

That's the problem Job had, you know. It was bad enough that Job lost all of his wealth, and lost his family, and lost the love of his wife. She came and said, "Why don't you commit suicide?" But his friends had to come, fine friends, sit and stare at him for a week because, in the East, silence is sympathy. And then they turned on him.

Boy, they had their guns all ready, and their theme was the same. I don't care who's speaking in the book of Job, they're saying about the same thing: "There's got to be something wrong with your life, or these things would never have happened."

And there's a brand of Christianity abroad today that's not much different from that of Job's comforters. I recall ministering to a dear lady, oh, she was a precious soul, and she was dying of cancer. And some well-meaning but ignorant saint, that's the largest denomination in the world, the ignorant, the ignorant brethren, had sent her a book on health and had written, "If you were right with God, you would not be where you are." That's cruel; it's not biblical. Christians have cares.

Now, I'll tell you why we have cares. Number one: we're human. The fact that I'm wearing bifocals is an indication that I appreciate Benjamin Franklin, who invented them, and I'm human. And I was amazed when I went last went to the eye doctor. He looked at me, and he said, "You know what? Your eyes are getting better." I said, "Praise the Lord. It's the only thing about me that is getting better." "Well," he said, "your your left eye is now almost 20/20." Praise the Lord. But the rest of me is falling into what Paul said: "The outward man is perishing."

We're human. And so, we get germs, and we have accidents, and we feel arthritis, and we go through physical problems. But I want you to know unsaved people go through them, too. I've visited a lot of unsaved people in hospitals who are dying of some affliction, and they have nothing to lean on. They're suffering for nothing.

We're suffering for someone. Paul said, "The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us." And so, suffering to us is making an investment. Suffering for unsaved people is making a withdrawal.

And so we suffer because we're human, and we suffer because we're Christians. If you weren't a Christian, you would not be sensitive to some things that make you suffer. You would do what unsaved people do: you'd steel your heart against it, and you'd say, "Well, I'll live my life; they can live their life."

Christians can't do that. We're serving one another, and we have this thing called Christian love, and we just can't build a wall around ourselves and crawl into a box and lock the door. We suffer because we're Christians.

We suffer because we have an enemy. He says in 1 Peter 5:8, "Be sober, be vigilant; your adversary the devil." The devil would kill you if he could. Don't you ever joke about the devil. That's dangerous business.

I was once giving a series on Satan, which is now in print, and the man who introduced me should have known better, but he introduced me like this. He said, "Brother Wiersbe is here to talk about the devil, and he's full of his subject." Now, that's an awful way to introduce a man, and you never joke about the devil.

He's a lion. We own a cat. No, I'm sorry, the cat owns us. Siamese cat, she's 15 years old, and I tell you, she's about ready to go to that great scratching post in the sky. But I think a cat, a cat is a beautiful creature. I've watched our cat as she has slowly, they're never too fast, slowly made her way across the floor.

I like to watch lions. We drove through a safari park once, and I tell you, those lions are beautiful, but I was glad I was in a car. And every place you looked, the signs said that "don't open the doors" and "don't open the windows," because that beautiful, lazy looking creature could suddenly turn on you.

Occasionally, when I was pastoring at Moody Church, I would walk up the street to Lincoln Park Zoo. It helped me to understand my members a little better. And I would go to the lion house. They had a beautiful white leopard. And I tell you, they're gorgeous, but they're dangerous. And we suffer because we have an enemy, and he'd kill you if he could. As a lion he destroys, and as a serpent he deceives. That's why we suffer.

Job didn't realize until the end of the script that the problem he was going through was actually the arena for the conflict between God and Satan. And you know, I've lived long enough, I have a lot to learn, but I've lived long enough to know I don't know all the answers. And you walk into a home and they say, "Pastor, why?" And I say, "I don't know." "But you should know; you've been to seminary." "They know less." "But you study the Bible." "I know, but there's some things we just don't know."

We suffer because we have an enemy. We suffer because we have responsibilities. He's talking about people who are servants here. He's talking about those who are caring for God's work. We have responsibilities, and that's what gives us opportunity for suffering: the work that we have and the job that God's called us to do.

So Christians have cares. And the worst thing you can do is listen to the devil when he says, "God doesn't love you. If He did, this never would have happened." He said that to Eve. He said to Eve, "You know, if God really loved you, He'd let you eat from this tree. How come God's holding out on you? He's such a great God of love. Why is He fencing off this one tree? He doesn't really love you."

That's what he said to Jesus. Our Lord had not eaten for 40 days and 40 nights. Satan comes to him and said, "A few weeks back, there was an announcement from heaven, 'This is my beloved Son.' Beloved Son indeed. How come you're hungry? If God loves you, why are you suffering?"

And, you know, sometimes, friends, we suffer because God loves us. I hear people pray, "Oh, God, give me a great spiritual experience." Watch out. He may. Then he has to balance it. He took Paul up to the third heaven, and Paul was able to hear things that he could not repeat, and he had this great experience up in heaven. And the next thing, he had a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet him, to keep him humble.

At the beginning of that verse and at the end of that verse, Paul says, "Lest I should be exalted above measure," "lest I should be exalted above measure." And God balances cares with great experiences. Otherwise, you and I'd get so big-headed, and so proud, God couldn't use us.

So, here's our first encouragement: Christians have cares. But the thing that Peter is saying is this: your cares do not have to break you; they can make you. What life does to us depends on what life finds in us. And we like to blame our circumstances and blame our heredity and and blame other people, and in the final analysis, folks, we have to look in the mirror. We're the ones who have to handle the cares of life.

Now you've watched this, I know. You've experienced it. Here are some people who go through tremendous difficulty, you just can't believe the wave upon wave of problems that come to them, and they come forth shining, victorious, rejoicing, tenderhearted, loving. Here's another family or another person goes through difficulty and problems, and he comes out bitter, criticizing, angry at God, angry at God's people. Peter says doesn't have to be like that.

Because there's a second encouragement here: God cares for us. "Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you." One translation says, "Casting all your care upon him, for you are his personal concern."

A couple of years ago, I was going through a gloomy time. We have them. You can't have mountains without valleys. And the world situation was a mess, the national situation was a mess, I was going through some personal problems, the church was having some difficulties, and I said, "Dear Lord, you have to give me something for my heart. You've just got to give me something to live on."

It was the beginning of a new year, and I was reading in in Jeremiah, and I thought to myself, "My, here's a man who really understands Wiersbe." He lived at a time of international upheaval, he lived at a time when his own work was being criticized, and here's what God gave me. It's a good verse; you know it.

Jeremiah 29:11. "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end." When I checked the NIV translation, it said this: "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."

Little boy said to his mother one day, "What does God think about?" That's a good question. What do you think about when you know everything? You can't teach God anything. God knows the end from the beginning. What does God think about? And Jeremiah tells us, God thinks about us.

God's thoughts are personal. "I know the thoughts that I have toward you." He knows the hair number on every head. With me, it's no problem. With others, it might be. He has counted them. He knows the names of all of his sheep. That's more than some pastors do. He knows those secret fears that sometime come out to haunt us. He knows us. He knows us.

Now, there are some people, the better you know them, the less you like them. Sometimes familiarity does breed contempt if the people are contemptible. God knows us, and God thinks about us personally.

God's thoughts are personal, and God's thoughts are peaceful. He said, "The thoughts I have toward you are thoughts of peace." Some of the saints get up in the morning, and they look up and they, they address a judge on a throne, and they cower their way through the day, scared. They're like galley slaves, and God doesn't want it that way.

God's thoughts toward you are not thoughts of war. To look at some of the saints and to hear some preachers, you'd get the idea that God does nothing else but think up ways to make us miserable. And you have this plan, and you've prayed about it, and God says, "I'm going to fool you." No. God's thoughts are peaceful thoughts.

God looks at each one of us today, he says, "The thoughts I have toward you are not thoughts of war. I, I don't declare war on my people. I settled that at Calvary. You have been reconciled to me, and you're no longer an enemy; you're in the family, and my thoughts toward you are thoughts of peace."

And God's thoughts are purposeful thoughts. He says, "I'm thinking about you. I have plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope in a future." I attended a retirement luncheon recently. Not for me, but for a very dear friend of mine. This man has been a real good influence in my life for, oh, I suppose 20 years now. And he's retiring.

And one of the persons who was making speeches (You know, everybody makes a speech at a retirement luncheon), got up and said this: "The scriptures say," Proverbs 4:18, "the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.' That means that the best is yet to come. That as we walk this path of life, retirement is not the end. It's just the beginning of a new step of light."

Now, this next year, if God gives us a year, we may be making changes in our lives. God may, God may move us around. God may call some home. But you and I don't have to be afraid of the future. There are millions of people in America who every day consult their horoscope to find out what to do. I would certainly hate to build my future on the American press. We don't have to consult a horoscope. In fact, I don't want to know what's going to happen next week. God says, "As thy days, so shall thy strength be." So today is the day I focus on.

The immediate is where we live. The ultimate is secure. "I know whom I have believed, I am persuaded he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day." Now, if the immediate means I'm living in the will of God, and the ultimate means God's going to come and take me home, the intermediate will take care of itself.

Joseph Parker was right when he wrote that beautiful hymn, "God holds the key of all unknown, and I am glad. For if some other held the key, or if he trusted it to me, I might be sad." Do you really want to know what's going to happen next week or next month? I don't. God knows. And his thoughts toward me are purposeful thoughts. God is working out a plan in each of our lives.

He cares for us. Every time the sun comes up, say to yourself, "He's caring for me. This whole universe He's keeping the whole universe working. Everything is being held together by Jesus Christ for me." The next time you have to go to the pharmacist with an illegible prescription from your doctor and he mixes it up, you say, "You know, God did this for me. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above. God did it for me." God does it for us because he cares.

Now, encouragement number three. Christians have cares. God cares for us. We can cast our care upon him. Now, some people you can't cast your care upon. Now, we've got to be very careful about this. There are some people who are forever unburdening and unloading their troubles on everybody, and they sort of become Christian cranks. We don't want to be like that.

We do want to follow the scripture that says, "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." But you have some burdens you can't share with other people. You have some burdens, you can only come to God with those burdens. And God says to me, God says to you, we can cast them upon him.

It's rather interesting when you read the book of Esther. Here is the great oriental king on his throne. And you know what? Nobody was allowed to wear sackcloth in his presence. When Mordecai put on sackcloth to mourn over the situation of Israel, he was sad. "Don't you go—" He was told, "Don't you go in the presence of the king." No one was allowed to appear sad in the presence of an oriental king. Couldn't ruin their day. They were not to be told that there were problems. They were sheltered. They were protected by a fan club.

My God is not like that. My God is far greater than any oriental king, and I can come into his presence in sackcloth. When Nehemiah showed up before his king with that, with that countenance that was just burdened, king took one look at him and said, "Are you sick? You didn't take your vitamins this morning. What's the matter?" "Oh," he said, "this is, this is problem in the heart." I can come to God with tears. I can come to God with heartache because he cares for me.

Now, how do we cast our care upon him? There's the hard part, because somebody right now is saying, "Oh, wait just a minute. I've read that verse. I've had problems. I've come and I've prayed to God, and nothing happened." He doesn't say, "Pray about all your care." Doesn't say that. "And I've read Philippians 4 in eight translations. Didn't do any good." It doesn't say reading his word. I'm for prayer. When I'm burdened, I pray. So do you. And I, I'm for reading the Word. But it says, 'Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you.'"

And this verb "casting" means once and for all. Once and for all, take everything, all of your care, everything. Now, if I come and say, "Lord, I can handle this, but you take care of that," I'm in trouble, because I can't handle this. "Well, it's just a little thing, Lord." Like Lot, when Lot was desperate to run someplace, he said, "Can't I go over here? It's just a little city." "Lord, it's just a little problem." "Yeah, but if you don't let me take it, it's going to be a big problem." So the first step is to take everything once and for all and give it to him. Just turn, give him all the credit cards, turn all the management over to him.

When we first moved to Chicago, the house we moved into had a stairway that went upstairs, and our Judy, who is now 20, I think, 20, yes. When she was just a little girl, loved staircases. The house we had down in Covington, Kentucky, had a staircase, and she used to enjoy sliding down it. When we first moved to Kentucky, she was only, I think, 16 months old, something like that.

And I recall one day, I was sitting in the living room reading, and Judy, who was then about 18 months old, had a whole collection of toys. I don't know where she'd gotten all this effluvia, but she had little bears and trucks and so forth, and she was trying to make her way up the stairs. She couldn't do it. It was either she would go up, or the toys would go up, or neither would go up. And I did what you would have done. Any father, any mother would have done it. I got up, went over, picked up my daughter, and all of the junk, and carried the whole thing upstairs.

That's 1 Peter 5:7. God says, "I'm going to come now, and I'm going to take you." Because, after all, the biggest burden you have is you. I am my biggest burden. D. L. Moody said, "I have more problems with D. L. Moody than any other man alive." And God says, "Give Me yourself, and give Me your responsibilities, give Me your burdens. I want to take the whole thing once and for all." And then day by day, as these things bother us and upset us, we just remind Him, "Lord, I gave it to You."

Now what does the Lord do when we do this? And here is the important part, and we'll go through this, and then go, go on our way. What does the Lord do? If today someone said, "I'm going to take my life and all of my burdens and everything and give them to Him," what will He do? How does He help us solve life's problems? How does He help us carry life's burdens? Real quick like, there are four very wonderful ministries He performs if we'll do this.

Number one, He'll give us the courage to face these things and not run away. Isaiah 41:10, "Fear thou not, for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee. Yea, I will help thee. Yea, I will uphold thee." You see, my problem is I want to run away. How easy it is for us, even as Christians, to try to evade or avoid these things. When you come and give them all to the Lord, the first thing He does for us, He gives us the courage to face them honestly, not try to run away.

Folks, it takes courage to live. Little children don't need a lot of courage because they don't understand what's going on. Many things are going on, we don't understand, but we feel it. If you want to be a child in a playpen, sheltered and protected, well, that's your business, but there's no fun being immature. There's more blessing in maturity and growing. It takes courage, and He gives us the courage.

Secondly, He gives us the wisdom to understand what we have to do. How many times we have quoted James 1:5, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God." Here is a burden, here is a problem. We've given it to the Lord. That doesn't mean we have absolved ourselves from responsibility. God does not work instead of us or in spite of us. He works in us and through us. And He gives me the courage to face it honestly, then He gives me the wisdom to understand it. Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. Wisdom is the light being turned on when everything looks so dark.

Thirdly, I'll tell you what else He does. He gives us the strength to do what we have to do. We don't sit in the sidelines and say, "Well, Lord, go to it. Get somebody else to do it." No, no. He gives us the strength to do what we need to do. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

Fourth, He gives us the faith to trust him to do the rest. Now there are some things we can't do. There are burdens that have come to us. We've obeyed the scripture, "Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee." He's given us the courage to face it, the wisdom to understand it, He's given us the strength to do what we can do, but there are many things we can't do. And so he has to give us the faith to trust him to do the rest. This is where the promises of God come in. "Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; he shall bring it to pass."

There's a beautiful illustration of all of this way back in the Old Testament. Quickly we shall run through this. When David was a renegade captain of a host of men, he was not yet the king reigning in Israel, he was at a place called Ziklag, and he left Ziklag to go out and do some marauding, and while he was gone, the Amalekites came down, burned Ziklag, took the women and children captive, took all of the loot and all of the possessions, and away they went. When David and his men came back, 1 Samuel 30, the city was burned, their families were kidnapped, all of their possessions were gone. What would you have done?

Well, I think I probably would have done what they first did, 1 Samuel 30:4. "David and the people who were with him lifted up their voice and wept." That's a normal response. When problems and burdens come, that's a normal response, but you can't keep it up. I know a lady right now who lost her daughter, and she has lost all of her peace and all of her joy because she lost her daughter, and it was four years ago. You can't keep this up. You just can't sit there weeping all the time.

Well, you can do what some of the men did. They said, "Let's stone David." That would have solved the problem. "Let's find a scapegoat. Let's blame somebody." No, no. What did David do? 1 Samuel 30:6, "David encouraged himself in the Lord his God."

God gave him the courage to face this thing honestly, not to blame somebody else. 1 Samuel 30:8, "David inquired of the Lord." He got a hold of the ephod, and he said, "Let's find out what God has to say about this." God gave him the wisdom to know what to do. And God said, "You pursue the enemy; you're going to recover everything."

In 1 Samuel 30:9, David went. Now they were worn out. They didn't have any C-rations. They were worn out. They'd been out fighting as it was, and they wanted to stay where they were. God gave them the strength to do what they needed to do. And while they're out pursuing, they meet an Egyptian in the field. They say, "Where have these people gone?" He gave them all the answers. God gave them the faith to trust him for the rest. They found the way, they found the enemy, they defeated the enemy, they recovered everything, because David knew how to cast all of his care upon the Lord.

Now, in every organization, every church, every family, you have people who say, "Well, we're in trouble. Let's stone somebody." Every church, every organization, every family, you have those who say, "Well, we got problems. Let's sit and complain, weep, pass the Kleenex."

How wonderful it would be if you and I could be the kind of person that David was. David knew the meaning of "casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you." He gave it to the Lord. The Lord encouraged him. The Lord gave him wisdom. The Lord gave him strength. The Lord gave him faith. And the result of that was, the Lord gave him victory.

What's a good verse to live on this year? Not the only verse, it's a good promise. I know not what the future holds; neither do you. But Peter says to me, "God cares for you." Christians have cares. God cares for us. We can cast all of our care upon the Lord.

Let's pray together. We're thankful, our Father, that you are a God who cares. You are not absent. You are present, for Jesus Christ is Emmanuel, God with us. He's with us in the valley. He's with us on the mountain top. Thank you that your heart of love constantly reaches out to encourage us and strengthen us, give us wisdom. Forgive us, Father, when we have tried to carry our own burdens and they have become weights that have broken us down. Help us to roll our burdens upon you and give ourselves to you, that our burdens in life might become wings to help us go higher.

Oh God, only you, in your greatness and your grace, could take seeming tragedy and turn it into triumph. Only you could take a broken heart and turn it into something beautiful and blessed. And, Father, we're prone to preach all this to other people; help us to practice it ourselves. And may the burdens of life make us. May we not say with Jacob, "All of these things are against me." Help us to say with Paul, "All things are working together for good," because we love God and God loves us and you're fulfilling your purpose.

Help us to be a blessing to others, and because we have learned how to handle the burdens of life, may we be able to share the burdens that others have. Help us today to be burden bearers, burden sharers, and not burden makers. Help us to be a part of the answer, and not a part of the problem. For Jesus' sake, amen and amen.

God bless you. Have a good day.