Not For Us To Carry
Cast All Your Cares On Him
“Give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about you.” (1 Peter 5:7, NLT)
What should we do when we worry about our problems? In 1 Peter 5:7, God says to cast all your cares on Him. He says to give Him ALL your worries, not just 75% of them. Every day we need to get up and say, “I don’t have worries today, because I have given them ALL to the Lord!”
In looking at the different English Bible translations of 1 Peter 5:7, we find different verbs that all carry a slightly different word picture with them: turn over, throw the whole weight, let him have, and leave with Him.
Use your imagination with me as we journey through the different word pictures to help us capture the meaning of this Truth.
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Turn them over…
Imagine the strong, loving hands of the Lord outstretched and you giving Him all your worries, turning them over to Him to take care of. Giving to Him, I would give my most beloved relationships – husband, children, father.
“God cares for you, so turn all your worries over to him.” (CEV)
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Throw the whole weight…
Imagine taking a very heavy backpack filled with all of your worries and throwing it into a powerful running river and seeing the Lord taking those worries fast down the river out of your sight. I can see my fears, bad memories, and negative words spoken to me, washed down the river never to be seen again.
“You can throw the whole weight of your anxieties upon him, for you are his personal concern.” (PHILLIPS)
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Let Him have…
Imagine letting Him have everything in your heart of value to care for. I would give Him my dreams for my children and husband and other hopes for the future.
“Let him have all your worries and cares, for he is always thinking about you and watching everything that concerns you.” (TLB)
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Leave Him with…
Imagine leaving with Him the things that have been impossible to fix yourself, like sicknesses of loved ones, like family and friends who have gone down a wayward path away from the Lord, and like the world with its divisions and strife.
“Leave all your worries with him, because he cares for you.” (GNT)
God has promised to take care of us. The Heavenly Father knows all our needs.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Mat. 11:28-30)
We need to take off the heavy backpack of worries that we carry on our back and place it down at the feet of Jesus. Then we can pick up the Lord’s burden to carry which is light and fits us perfectly.
God is the only Person that we never need to doubt. We can trust putting everything in His hands. But do we trust God? The option has been given to us to trust or to doubt Him.
It is part of being human to worry. But what we do with our worries is what is important. We need to give our worries to Jesus to resolve, care for, carry, and take from us. We should not hold on to them and carry them ourselves. The human body is not built to carry these worries. We end up with ulcers, mental health problems, insomnia, and other health problems brought on by carrying our worries. God knows our limits and asks us to take up his yoke and light burden.
We need to practice 1 Peter 5:7 every day: “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” (NIV)
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