In the last verse of what we read this morning, 1 Peter 5, 7, he says, casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you. Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you. I suppose I had never before connected this verse with the previous verses that I read today. And those verses obviously were about humbling ourselves before God, about forsaking pride, and that God would exalt us in due time if we would humble ourselves before God. And that the exercise of doing that is that we would learn by experience to cast our cares upon God. Knowing that he cares for us And so it goes to Say that that worry is a sin Because worry is a form of pride. I I was reading this afternoon about the subject of worry and there were a lot of interesting quotes that I read about worry. One of them was that, you know, I give all my worries to God whenever I go to bed because he's staying up all night anyway. I like that quote. And that worry was taking tomorrow's storm clouds and covering up today's sunshine. And I think those things are true and I think there's a lot of anecdotes about worry because all of us struggle with it to some degree or another. There's some of you that that's not primarily something that bothers you. You tend to be able to lay them at the feet of the cross and go on. You know, God doesn't want us to be careless. He wants us to care deeply. I believe He wants God's people to be passionate about things, that we care about things deeply and with all of our hearts. But there's a difference between being caring and having an interest in something and being worried. Worry is a form of pride because it involves taking concerns upon ourselves instead of putting them on God. The reason that it's a form of pride is because we're essentially saying that somehow we're going to do something about those things and we're worried about whether or not we have the strength to be able to do them. And guess who we're starting to focus on now? We're starting to focus on us. It's a back door for pride to get in, worry is. Because we don't think of it that way. But yet if we can get to where we're relying on our strength, we're relying on our power, our ability to perform, then the reason we're anxious is because we're not certain that our abilities are gonna be enough. Worry is forbidden. And I know that so often worry creeps in and anxieties creep in before we can even realize it. But when we see them, we are to cast them away. He says, cast all your cares upon the Lord for He cares for you. And so there's times when worry comes in and cares come in to our life and when we see them, it's appropriate for us to cast them away. God doesn't want us staying up at night worried about stuff. And some of you say, well, got this one down, I hit my head on the pillow and I'm gone. But there are others that really struggle with this. Really struggle with, can't turn it off at night, concerned about whether or not we're going to be able to do things tomorrow the way that we should. I read a scripture, it says in Psalm 127 verse 2, it says, it is vain for you to rise up early and to sit up late to eat the bread of sorrows. It is vain for you to do that because He gives His beloved sleep. And of course, as the illustration goes, and I thought that was pretty good, you know, that give them to God at night. Let God have those things that bother you because God is able to care for you and He does. Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount spent a good time dealing with worry. In fact, He forbade worry in Matthew 6 and 25, and He says, Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor yet for your body what you shall put on is not life more than meat and the body than raiment. Matthew 6, 25. And so He says, don't take thought about your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink, or what you shall put on. And that's hard for us because those are the things that concern us. And He says that God knows those things, and we'll get to that here in a minute. But He forbids us to worry. And worry is not just something that we should joke about, it's something that we should pray about. So often God's people worry because they're not trusting in God. And I'll just say for myself, I have worries. I have fears. There are times where I, you know, I handle my worries different. Some people stay up, I sleep. Everybody deals with it different, you know. Sometimes I'm concerned about something that's gonna happen tomorrow and I'll start thinking about it today. So I know where you're at, I feel you. But usually it's because I don't have the right perspective. Somehow I'm trying to devise how I'm going to be able to tackle something, and I'm coming up with a plan. That's how I approach worry, oftentimes, is I begin coming up with a plan, and how I'm going to solve this, and I'm going to conquer this. And sometimes, praise be unto God, He'll come in the scene and He'll say, you know, what's better than your plan is to pray about what my plan might be. And so many times, you know, we think about those that went to battle. You think about David. Whenever he went to battle, he would go before he would go to the battle. Sure, he was a strategizer, but he would ask God for his leadership. He would say, God, how do you want me to approach? And you know, it wasn't always the same way. Sometimes he would tell him one thing. Sometimes he would tell him another thing. But each time it was exactly the thing that was needed for that day. And it's because he asked. And so I understand and I struggle with the sin of worry. So I don't want you to think that I don't. We all do. In fact, it's common to man, everybody does, but yet God still says that it's a sin. He also tells us here what we're to do with them. And we've already alluded to that, but the lesson text tonight is a rendering of Psalm 55 and verse 22. Peter said, casting all your care upon Him, for He careth for you. And Psalms 55 and verse 22 says, cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee. He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved. Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee. He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved. It's not wrong for us to carry a burden. In fact, a burden means that we care. It's actually good for us to have burdens, and it's good for us to have concern. And He tells us what to do with those things. Instead of stewing on them, He says, cast them upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee. Now, one thing we know about God is anything that He starts, He also sustains. He's the Bible says that he is the creator and the sustainer of all things that everything that God has made he consciously and actively cares for Now we try to care for those things that are under our stewardship and we try to do them the best that we can but the one that takes care of all things is God and And God takes care of all things and He takes care of all things to the detail. And He takes care of all things and He's concerned about the minutia. And I believe that we learn something about God by how He's made things so detailed down to a level that we've never explored the depths of. You know, it used to be that they thought that the cell was the lowest, you know, or the most intricate and lowest order of life, but then they kept going further and further, dividing that up, and they never have found out how small things can get. That, you know, just the other day on CNN, they had an article, and it said that by the year 2030, they were going to find alien life, because they've just kept exploring and exploring out there, and, you know, they're going to find it. They just know it. And I don't know what they're going to find. I'm not really concerned they're going to find aliens, by the way. But the point is, is that they're saying there's so much that we don't know that we're going to go out and explore. This is so vast. You know, they've also not gotten down to how small things can be. They just keep on getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And our technology doesn't know how far it can get into the minutia of the detail. And what that tells me about God is that God, when he makes things, he makes things great and grand and vast and large. And he also gets down to the detail of the smallest matter because God cares about those things. You see, God is able to sustain us. And listen, it says that He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved. And we don't want to think this about ourselves because we feel like we're presuming upon God's goodness. And believe me, if God hadn't called us into His fellowship, we wouldn't have any place there. But He has called us righteous. He called us when we were sinners and He made us righteous. The Bible says He justified us, which means that He puts us in a legal standing before God in a right position. God looks at you, if you're one of His children, as a righteous saint of God. And I believe many times what we do is we live kind of below what God wants us to live because we don't see ourselves the way that God sees us. We think, and we make a lot of emphasis on the fact that we're just sinners, but you know, we're sinners saved by grace and there's something that God did to us. He made us not sinners anymore. Not that we don't ever sin, but He doesn't look upon us as sinners. He looks upon us as His children and as dear saints. And many times in the Bible it says that God's people are called the elect, the saints of God, the righteous ones, the chosen ones. We're the ones. And He says about those that are God's people, He will never suffer the righteous to be moved. In other words, He's going to sustain their footing. He's going to make sure that they are conquerors. That's what Paul knew when he wrote the book of Romans and he said, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. So he tells us what to do. We're to cast our burdens upon the Lord. And how do we do that? Well, we've got to do that through prayer. Prayer is vital. We are into material things so much that we think that something, some activity has to be done. We want to rationalize everything. And we want to get quick to say, you got to put legs under your prayers. I agree with that. But there's got to be the prayers there first. We don't want to put legs in something we haven't prayed about, because we might be running in the wrong direction. We cast them upon the Lord by praying. And even when you don't feel like praying, you should pray. Pray till you feel like praying. Have you ever been there where you go to the Lord just as cold as can be, and you start praying to God, and all of a sudden now you start feeling like praying? It's as if the Holy Spirit came on the scene. Because He did. And he just wants you to take that first step and start praying and show concern and say, God, I need you. And then where is he? He's right there. You start praying about something and all of a sudden your heart starts to tenderize and you say, well, my heart was pretty hard. Thankfully, I started praying when I had a hard heart, because if I didn't start praying when I had a hard heart, it never would have gotten softened. And then you start praying upon things and then you start being able to cast. the burdens upon the Lord. The word cast means just what it says, it means to throw them there. Just throw them there. And you can't do that physically. Those burdens, you can't get a hold of them physically. So you've got to do them through prayer. You've got to cast them through prayer. You've got to say, God, you know, this is bothering me. This is a concern. This is beyond what I can handle. I can't do this. And even if I feel like I can, I know that I can't unless you give me the strength and the direction to do it. And then when we cast those burdens upon the Lord, the Bible says He'll sustain us. And Philippians 4, 6, it says, be careful for nothing. And if we were going to translate that today, we would say, be anxious for nothing. Or don't care anxiety. Don't carry anxiety about anything. Because caring is not the problem. They said careful, and they meant anxious. That's what we would say today. So he says, be anxious for nothing. But in everything, what? By prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known unto God. And there's some things that are stated there. One, it's through prayer that we're able to do this in supplication. The other is that it should always be coupled with the fact that God is faithful and we're thankful that He's hearing our prayer. A lot of times we have our prayer list and we need to start thanking God more. And it's not meaning that we shouldn't ask for anything, but we're so prone to ask for something that we forget to thank Him for what we already have. And so He couples that with thanksgiving. He said, with thanksgiving, let our requests be made known unto God. And it could be thanksgiving for what we've already experienced or it could be thanksgiving for the fact that He's heard us and we know that what He's heard us about, He's going to be faithful. It's okay to thank God before He does anything with it. Because you know whatever he's going to do with it, it's going to be good. So you can go ahead and thank him. I thank you Lord for taking care of this. I thank you Lord for taking it off my plate. There was a picture, a story that I heard about a man that was carrying a heavy backpack down the road. And a guy came by in a pickup truck and he asked him to hop in, you know, he'd relieve him from a ride. You know, he stepped back up in the pickup truck, and the guy was driving him down the road, and he looked back in the back of the seat, and he saw that he was still standing there, carrying his backpack. And he said, you know, you ought to let that down. Why are you carrying that? He said, well, I didn't want to bother the truck any. And sometimes we're like that with God. I don't want to let loose of it, God, because I don't want to bother you with this. Well, He's already upholding it anyway. So you might as well let it off and let Him have it. Let Him carry it, for He's a lot stronger than we are. And by the way, when we're carrying that burden and that worry, He's carrying it already anyway. He loves you. He's not going to leave you alone. He's not going to leave you comfortless. He's going to be right there with you. So be careful for nothing. And everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God, that's what we're to do with our worries. And it's just like so much with the Christian walk. You have to consciously do that. The more I walk down this road, the more I realize that there's things that you have to decide you're gonna do. You can't passively just grow. You won't passively find your worries going, being cast at the feet of the Lord. You have to actually take your burden and leave it there. There's something that you have to do. You have to decide. You have to decide as a child of God that you're going to take that to God in prayer and that you're going to leave it. There's so much that we think is just going to happen by osmosis and passively, but Christian sanctification comes with much effort on our part. It comes with decisions and dedication and commitment to the fact that I'm going to kneel down on my knees before God and I'm going to pray. And I'm gonna take it to God, and I'm gonna make a decision to purposely do that. So often I just say, well, God knows my heart. If God knows my heart so well, why am I not doing with what I say that's in my heart? It shouldn't match up. It's because we're in a spiritual warfare here. The devil doesn't want us to give that to God. He wants us to keep it for ourselves. He wants us to be burdened down by it, filled with anxiety and filled with worry, lacking faith, filled with fear, so that we're not effective out here. And God says, just give that to me. If you're burdened about somebody else, take that to the Lord. Maybe He'll give you something to do, and maybe He just wants you to pray about it. Maybe He's already working on it. Maybe He doesn't need your help with it. We just need to take it to God. Then maybe He does. And then when you're in prayer and He calls, then you can answer. Because you hear His voice. So the last thing is, God will take care of our worries because He cares for us. And we know that. And we know that God is caring. We know that God is loving. We know that God is merciful. But many times we have to be reminded that He cares for me. I don't know if you suffer from this, but Satan sometimes whispers in the ear and says, well, he's concerned about all these others, but he's kind of forgotten you. I know that's not true. I'm sensible enough to know that God hasn't forgotten anything. If He hasn't forgotten anything, He hasn't forgotten me. But there are times where it feels like I wonder if He's heard. And then He comes along, faithful as ever, and shows you that He heard and that He's answered. He's been working on it the whole time. Satan gets in your ear and he says, God doesn't care. And I don't know, that bothers me sometimes, but I know it bothers a lot of children of God. Because I've heard them say, I just don't know if God cares. The Bible is very clear that God cares. So I want you to know that on the authority of the Word of God, God cares for you. And as we sing the song tonight, He will take care of you. I want to read the Scripture in Matthew 6. You know, I read verse 25 where He forbade worry, but then in verse 26 He begins to explain more about that. You can turn there if you want to, to Matthew chapter 6. It's wonderful Scripture that we all know, and that whole Sermon on the Mount is something that we should read over and over again because there's such good instruction there for us. But Matthew 6 and verse 26. He said, Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor do they gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are you not much better than they? Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit unto his stature? And there's some interesting things in the language about that. There's a lot of people that think that he meant, can you add one minute to your span of life? Either way, a cubit's about 18 inches. He said, how many of you can add a cubit 18 inches to your height by worrying? I always thought about Hayden, whenever I read that, about how he said he used to lay in the dark hoping that he would get taller by doing certain things that whoever told him to do. And I'll tell you, you can't get any taller by worrying, and you won't live any longer by worrying. Not 18 inches, not one inch. You're not going to grow any because you're worried about it, and you're not going to live any longer. In fact, they've found out that you live shorter if you worry. But either way, he says, how many of you can do anything like that because you're worrying? And why do you take thought for your clothing, for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field. How they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin. Yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. And we get that picture so clearly this time of year as you look out and how beautiful everything is. And God has just really made this world beautiful. Even with the marring of sin upon it and the thorns and the thistles and all the things that are because of the fall, yet you still see through it the beauty of God. He says, Wherefore if God so clothed the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore, take no thought, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. For your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Each day has its own problems, and it's sufficient. Three things that come out of that passage to me that sustain me whenever I get down to thinking about worry, and I need to be reminded of these things sometimes because I forget, like all of us do. But the first thing is that God knows. He knows everything. Nothing ever gets by Him. He's all-knowing. He knows our concerns, our needs, our cares, our worries. He knows our burdens. He knows. God knows, too, God is able. There's nothing that's too hard for God. He knows and He is able. to do all things. This morning I was touched by the song the sister sang that there's power in prayer. There's power in prayer because God is strong. My prayers are often weak, but God is strong. Our prayers are as powerful as God is powerful. Our prayers are as strong as He is strong. Our prayers can reach as far as God can reach. Our prayers can touch things as much as God can. And you start thinking about that, and you'll think the most important thing that you'll ever do is pray. Because God knows. He knows. He knows everything about it, more than you do. And He's able. But those two things wouldn't mean anything if the last thing wasn't true. God knows, God's able, God cares. Cast all your cares upon the Lord, for He cares for you. As a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. He stoops down to our lowly estate and He shows mercy. and He compassionates upon us. Not only does He care, but with His care, He does something about it. You know, Jesus, everywhere He went, He did within His power what He could to help someone. Except for with Jesus, He had a lot of power. So if they were lame, He could make them walk. If they were blind, He could make them see. If they were dead, He could make them live. I can sometimes do a little something. Jesus could do some amazing things. He looked upon the people and he had compassion because they were like a sheep without a shepherd. He cares. And so if God knows and God is able and God cares, then we ought to cast our cares upon him. And if we'll do that, we're exercising faith, which pleases God. We're acknowledging Him as the Savior and Sovereign of our life. And we're saying, God, it's yours. And I'm here to serve you in whatever capacity you want me to be. But I know that the burden and the care goes to you. And now here am I, and send me to do whatever you want me to do, but I'm not going to worry about it. I'm not going to spend my time fretting and becoming inactive because I'm so worried. I'm going to do, by your power, I'm going to leave the burden at the feet of the Lord. It's a good message to the lost, too. Good message to the saved. All those things God knows lay in the feet of God. He cares. He'll take care of them. And I'm thankful we serve a compassionate and merciful and loving God. And tonight we can trust Him. That's our message for this evening. I pray that God would bless your hearts and lives and that we would continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Let's all stand together and have a hymn and reflect and ask God to search our hearts. And it just feels good to be in the house of the Lord tonight.