1 Peter chapter 5, please, in your Bibles. 1 Peter 5. We'll begin the reading in verse 1. 1 Peter 5, verse 1. Let's hear the Lord's Word. The elders which are among you, I exhort, who am also an elder and the witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly, not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind, neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being in samples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd shall appear, he shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away. Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. May all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility. For God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, unto the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon him. for he careth for you." God will add his blessing to the reading of his Word, for his name's sake. Would you bow your head with me for a moment, please? Let's seek the Lord together. Our gracious God and Father, we turn to this throne of grace upon which thou dost sit, enthroned as King, And we pray that that gracious power that comes alone from thee will be granted to thy servant to preach the word and the power of the Spirit, and that those whom thou has gathered together this morning around this message will find themselves taken up with the greatness and the goodness of their God, their King, their Lord, And that Lord will be a means of great grace and comfort to their souls. In Jesus' name we pray, amen and amen. After having spent close to two years studying together Peter's first epistle, you will have a fresh insight on the well-known and well-beloved verse that will take our attention this morning, verse seven, casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you. You have now perhaps a better understanding of the context of that statement. You will remember that these Christians to whom Peter was writing were in heaviness through manifold temptations or trials and deep sorrow. They were facing very intense, fiery trials that were filling their own minds and souls full of intense sadness. If you learn nothing else from the fact, you realize that Christians are not immune to trouble. just because they're Christians. What is generally true of mankind is also true of God's people. Like all men, Christians are, as we read in the book of Job, born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. And to quote the Puritan John Trapp, one son God hath without sin, but none without sorrow. So, poverty, sickness, disappointment, persecution, pain, and death are as much a part of the saints' life as they are the sinners. Indeed, in many cases, it could be argued that God's people suffer these common troubles to a greater degree than the lost of this world. But not only do Christians suffer these afflictions that are common to all of mankind, but they face troubles that are unique to them as Christians. The prince of this world and this world system of which this prince rules, our intent on making war against the saints, making life as miserable they can. They strive continually to bring as much affliction in the Christian's life as possible. Jesus Christ only spoke the truth when he said, in the world you shall have tribulation. Because it's the prince of this world who rules it. the more a Christian sets out to live his life as he should in this world, and as he sets out to live his life differently than the world lives it, he will find that more and more he's a target of the devil and the world. As Paul told Timothy very plainly, all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. So living godly in Christ Jesus is about living differently than the world lives. Different ambitions, different desires, different ways of thinking, different ways of talking. You become a target for trouble. Some believers, as you know, have had to endure trials of cruel mockings and scourgings of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented. And on top of all that, as Peter is going to reveal in the next verse, that there is a devil who is like a roaring lion, roaming about, looking for whomever he can devour. Now, the question I want to ask you all this morning is a very simple one. In the face of all of these troubles, troubles that actually seem to come in like a flood at times, What's a Christian to do? How is he supposed to respond when afflictions are heavy, like they were for these Christians to whom Peter was writing? What's the response supposed to be? Well, one thing I can tell you is that God's people are to humble themselves under the mighty hand of God when that happens. not to kick against God, not to kick against the affliction, not to argue with God or find fault with the Lord for what he's doing, but to humble themselves under his hand. As I pointed out last week, Peter is reminding them that these afflictions that they were facing, afflictions that were causing them so much heartache, ultimately come from the hand of God. God sends them into our lives to humble us, because the fact is, we always need humbling. These fiery trials are sent by God, these heavy afflictions, to purge the sin of pride and to purge the love of self from us. You'll find that the love of self is going to get in the way to a very great degree to your loving God with all of your heart, soul, strength, and might. Self-love gets in the way of love to the Lord. And one of God's oft-used methods of producing a humble and dependent spirit in his people is by bringing them into a fiery furnace of affliction. But there's a second thing that Christians, Peter points out, must learn to do when they are facing these troubles, these afflictions, and that's where this verse comes in this morning, and that's the bigger context here. Two responses that we are to have in the afflictions. Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you. The clear inference that that's being made is that afflictions, from whatever quarter they come from, tend to produce care in our lives. The Greek word means anxiety. It refers to the feeling of worry or apprehension, fear and fretting. the agitation, the tension, the stress, the distress that is commonly felt by God's people when they find themselves in the midst of a fiery furnace. Afflictions. Perhaps you've come here today and your hands and your head and your heart are filled with these very things. You see, the thing that God's Word is plainly, very plainly showing us here, is that although he brings afflictions into our lives, that does not mean that they must be afflicted with anxiety and worry and fear and stress. Those things anxiety, worry, fear, distress, apprehension, all the—those things are afflictions in and of themselves. But they are not the kind of afflictions God wants us to hold on to. He sends afflictions. And But he does not want us to hold on to these afflictions of worry and fear and anxiety that often arise when he does send afflictions. So this is really God's antidote for anxiety, isn't it? That's what it's all about. This is God's antidote for anxiety. We humble ourselves first under his mighty hand, and then we cast our care. God's antidote for anxiety. Let me give you, in the first place, a few simple reasons why we need to use this antidote God has given. why we need to cast our care upon God. I'll tell you what that looks like in a moment, but right now I want to tell you why you really want to know what that entered is and why you must use it. As I've just pointed out, the word care means anxiety, stress, tension, fear, worry, all those things. It comes from a word that means to divide into parts. In other words, anxiety, worry has this power to divide the mind, to draw it into many different directions, and therefore to cause tremendous distraction. distraction—that's first—taking our minds, our eyes off of where they need to be, it causes this distraction in our souls, brings about, when that happens, distress, and if that goes on, there is this dread that overcomes our lives. And we live in fear. And we certainly are anything but happy and joyful and peaceful. The end result of the anxiety, if we don't apply the antidote, argues very strongly why we need to apply the antidote. We need to make use of God's antidote for anxiety because of the sin that's involved in not doing it. the Spirit of God moved Peter to write these words. Yes, the Apostle, it's his epistle, but we know that the real author behind them is the Holy Ghost, and this is the direction of the Holy Spirit to us and what we are to do with these afflictions of care and anxiety and worry and dread. But this same precept came from the lips of Christ. You find on numerous occasions during his earthly ministry, he warned his disciples against this very thing. Matthew 6, verse 25, Therefore I say unto you, take no thought, and the thought there is no anxious, anxious thought, no care-filled thought, for your life is have one anxious moment about your life. What ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on." And they would be hauled before the judges to stand trial for their faith in Christ. He said, take no thought, how or what ye shall speak, for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. Don't get nervous when they bring you before the earthly judges, who hate you, and could well be your sentence of death. Don't worry. That's what he's saying. No anxious thought about what you're going to say. I'll give it to you when the time comes. Of course, you know what Paul told the Philippian church, be careful for nothing, be anxious for nothing. No thing. Now, we need to see this matter of carrying, bearing our anxiety, our cares, our worries for what they really are in the light of Scripture. It's disobedience to God. God has said, do this. Don't do that, but do this. And if we don't do what he tells us to do, then we know what we're doing. We're disobeying the Lord. You see, as long as we have an attitude, a mindset that these afflictions are just inescapable, they are, I just can't help myself, but they're not really sin that needs to be repented of. that needs to be forsaken. We will excuse our disobedience. We will give it some other name. Oh, that's just how I am. That's just my nature. Listen, folks, it's everybody's nature to worry. Lost or saved, it's everybody's nature to worry, to become anxious. But God's talking to his people. Be careful for nothing. Have no anxious thought. what's the big deal about it? And you know your Bibles well enough to know that the Lord has gone to great lengths to deal with these very afflictions that he wants us to cast upon him. Whether it's the Old or New Testament, there's continual references to God looking to bring the calm and the peace and the joy to the hearts of his people, meaning he doesn't want them to go on in their anxiety and their fear and their distress. Why? Perhaps our first thought will be, because he wants us happy. And it's true, he does want us happy. He saved us that we might be a people who enjoy Him forever. Always remember that God, what He puts first is His own glory. It's always His own name. Always Himself. You see, the very essence of this anxious care is imagining that we are wiser than God. that we would not put ourselves in that place. We would not bring that particular predicament into our lives if we were God. If we were God, we would love to such a degree that we would not knowingly bring the children into a furnace of fire. We attempt to think on that which, whether we realize it or not, we think that he has forgotten. or we labor to take upon ourselves that burden, which our behavior, our response—we act like God is either—he's not able to come and help us, or he's not willing to do it. You know, beating at the heart of all those kinds of responses, and that's what you have to see it for what it is. That's why we're worrying. That's why we're so afraid. That's why the apprehension. Do you see how that is an affront to God? It's attempting to re-plan what His providence has already planned? The fact is, we don't know better than God. We never will know better than God. And the sad fact of the matter is, is that refusing to make use of this antidote to cast our care upon Him, those are actual acts of sin. The Lord has said, do this. No, Lord, I'm going to worry about this. I'm going to carry it. I'm going to fret. I'm going to allow my heart to be filled with tension and fear. And the Word of God says plainly that fear doesn't come from God. The spirit of fear is not from the Lord. I just want us to see it for what it really is, and not give it a pass by saying it's just a weakness of our humanness, as opposed to a sin that should be grieved over and repented of. We end up, at the end of the day, listening to our own counsel and not the counsel of God. Our unbelief, the sin in itself, our unbelief, which is really the mother of worry, makes us doubt God. And when we doubt God, we are doubting that He loves us. Think of how our fretting and the mistrust of God that flows from it grieves the Spirit and quenches his work, his influences, so that our prayers are hindered and our faith grows weaker, and we become overrun with fears and worry, and we think to ourselves, I just can't help myself. Not true. Not true for a moment. There's an antidote. There's a remedy. It's right here. As long as we buy into the lie that we can't overcome the worry, the apprehension, the fear, we won't. The second reason you and I must make regular use of this Antidote for anxiety, and I say regular use because there's going to come throughout our entire lives these afflictions and these troubles and fiery trials and furnaces. And every time it comes back to the same thing, the natural fleshy response is to become anxious and to worry, to become afraid. And it's what we do right then and there with our fear, our worry, these afflictions that makes the difference whether or not we are overcome by them or we overcome. So, I would suggest to you that if we need to make use of this antidote God has given to us, because if we don't, we will be miserable. And tell me, who wants to live a miserable life? These cares, the Holy Spirit is mentioning, steal away any joy we would have in the Lord. But we make ourselves miserable. Don't blame it on the afflictions. We make ourselves miserable Because we won't give up these worries. We won't cast off these anxieties. We won't throw them, the troubling thoughts, to God. We choose to carry them. When God says, cast them away. And that leaves us miserable creatures. Be sure that you don't blame God for your misery. It's the Lord who sends the trial. It's the Lord who sends the trouble. But you are the one who decides how you're going to respond to them. We're not puppets on a string. We're not robots, where God pushes one button and another button and another button. Our wills have been freed from the bondage of sin. Prior to that happening, we were in bondage to sin, and we could not do any spiritual good whatsoever, but that's all changed when we were born again. We have a will that has been recreated by the Spirit of God, and we make decisions every day regarding the quality of our spiritual walk in this world, and this is one of them. I've, in my lifetime, in my ministry, I have come across many a believer who's facing manifold temptations, like these, not the same kind, but still heavy afflictions, whether they were financial reversals, tremendous family problems, great physical issues, and yet, When you see them and get to know them, they are living as if they hadn't a care in the world. They have joy in spite of the furnace. They have what Paul describes is the peace that exceeds our understanding, can't explain it. they have an attitude, a viewpoint, an outlook upon life and all that happens in their lives that declares loudly and very clearly that they have cast all their cares upon God. It can be done. Joy and anxiety just don't walk hand in hand. You can have sorrow and joy at the same time, but you cannot have joy and anxious care at the same time. They are not compatible. The third reason why you want to make use of the antidote, carrying these burdens, as you can understand, is going to make you very weak. That's the idea of the text. Casting your cares, and these cares are the picture of they are so heavily weighing upon your mind and upon your heart that they're just going to flat wear you out. In the Old Testament, you know, counterpart is cast thy burden upon the Lord and he shall sustain thee. When you carry around heavy loads, it leaves you very weak. You're spending all of your energy just trying to cope with the cares that you weren't supposed to be carrying in the first place. It just drains you. It drains you emotionally, it drains you mentally, it drains you spiritually. And every department, it will drain you physically. It will wear you out. Worry always works weakness. You see, You know right well that it's the joy of the Lord that's your strength. But if you're miserable, what happens to your strength? When that joy is gone, your power is gone. You won't have strength to pray. You won't have any strength for the work of God. Caring about your own cares, these burdens will leave you run down, worn out, even apathetic about the Lord's work. Physically and spiritually. It requires strength, spiritual strength to rejoice in the face of trouble. It requires spiritual strength to be strong in faith. It requires that strength to fight the battles. And you will need spiritual strength to go out from those doors this incoming week and just live in this world as a Christian ought to live. But if you try to do that and keep these burdens of care and anxiety on your back, then you're going to find that very hard going. When the last thing you need is something that's going to make you weak. But that's exactly what carrying the burdens do. And I can assure you I am not talking from theory, but from experience. Take the antidote, because if you don't, you'll find that these cares will hinder the work of God's Word in your life. You won't have much of an appetite for the Word. It just has this way of killing it. You talk about spiritual anorexia? No appetite, because all you're feeding upon are the worries and the fears and the anxieties. I mean no spiritual appetite. Remember the parable of the sower? Some of the seed, Rod's word, fell on thorny ground, and not long after that, the seed sprang up, and it was choked by the thorns, and it yielded no fruit. Christ said that the thorns were the cares of this world. It's the same word here. the anxieties of this world. Choke the word and keep it from being effective in the life. How is the word— I mean, how— when the choke, because you've got so many burdens and worries and fears, how are you really going to be able to listen with your heart? Because you're listening continually to the shoutings of the cares and the problems and the troubles. you're really going to hear the message from the preacher, the message in the sermon, the message in the message? How will you hear that, really? How will it find a lodging place in your own soul, and you'll be changed by it? It kills it. Just kills it. Those are a few reasons why We need to make use of this antidote, which brings me now to the antidote itself, and this is the sole remedy for our anxiety. The sole remedy for our anxiety. There's only one way, only one way that we're going to be able to overcome, instead of being overcome by anxiety, and that is simply by casting those cares upon Christ. And I say simply, deliberately. simply casting our cares upon Christ. What does that mean? The word cast is, it's a great picture word. It's a very energetic word. It means that it requires effort to do this. Deliberate effort has to be made. It paints our anxieties as this big weight upon our back, and the only way to get rid of them off our back is to lay hold of them and throw them upon the Lord. with that imagery before you, right? You've got these anxious cares, the tension, the apprehensions, the fears forming this big, heavy burden on your back, and you're to lay hold of them and to throw them upon God. With that imagery in your mind, what are we to use to cast our cares upon God? Well, let's keep with the imagery. We're to use our hands. Well, how does that work, preacher? Well, number one, you take the hand of prayer to cast your care upon the Lord. I can't stress that one enough. I quoted just a little bit of Philippians 4. You know it by heart, I am sure. Be careful, full of care for nothing. But, everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep or guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." You see, our hearts and minds need to be guarded, protected from the cares, the fears, the worries that would come and attack them. And there's only one thing he says, right here, to the hand of prayer, surely that's what the psalmist meant in Psalm 62 verse 8. Trust in Him at all times, ye people. Pour out your heart before Him. God is a refuge for us. When God says, Pour out your heart before Him, He means that you are to empty your heart of all of everything that is distressing it. Empty it out. That's the meaning of the Hebrew. Empty it out. Not half of it. Empty it all out. That's casting your care upon him, and that is done. Pour out your hearts before him. That is done in the place of prayer. I thought about Hannah, 1 Samuel chapter 1. She was so full of anxiety and distress and dread, because her room was barren. And then, added to that, there was the continual taunting of Penina, the other wife of Elkanah, day in and day out, just tormenting her. What did she do? And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the Lord and wept sore. Chana, that's her name in Hebrew. Chana, the word means grace. She was a woman of grace and she showed that grace of God in her heart. Yes, there was this tension, apprehension, this dread, this fear that she would die childless. How did she overcome? She prayed. She wept sore. She emptied her heart out. Well, as a matter of fact, Eli, you know, saw her praying there at the temple. Her lips were moving, but there was no voice. He heard nothing, and he assumed that she was drunk, and accused her of it. What are you doing drunk here? Listen. No, my Lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul unto the Lord. I tell you, if there was more praying among God's people, there would be less worrying. If we were found pouring out our hearts to the Lord more often than pouring out our hearts to men, we would find that the cares that weigh us down would be lifted. Before David wrote, ye people, pour out your heart before God, he wrote this. My soul, wait thou only upon God, for my expectation is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation. He is my defense. I shall not be moved. The Lord alone can lift this burden. It'd be foolish to expect anyone else to do it. You can share your anxieties with your spouse or with your pastor or with your best friend, but they can't do one thing about it. They can't lift one finger to take those fears away, to alleviate those worries. They can make all kinds of promises to you. They can remind you of all kinds of verses of Scripture. But the Lord's the only one who can lift the burden. You can talk to yourself all day long about what is causing your anxiety and say, yes, yes, yes, it's sin, all these things are right, it's good, I believe all that, yeah, yeah, but if you just talk to yourself about it, that burden of care is going to stay there. You're just going to go over it in your mind again and again and again. There's only one way. This is God's remedy. tell the Lord all about it. Use the hand of prayer to cast it upon him. That's exactly what Hezekiah did when Sennacherib came with his mighty army, threatened to wipe out the city of Jerusalem. What did that king do? He took Sennacherib's letter, and he spread it before the Lord, and he prayed. He said, Lord, we're afraid. I'm afraid. Listen to what he's saying. He poured out his heart. I'll tell you why so many of us worry about so many things. It's because we don't cast them upon God in prayer. That's the bottom line. We don't do it. We fret. We weep. we get ourselves, and even perhaps others, all worked up because we are so full of anxiety and anxious care, but we don't really take the whole matter to the Lord in earnest prayer. We don't. Because if we did, if we did that, he would lift the burden. That's what the text is saying. God never sends you on an errand to his throne of grace. without accomplishing what He sent you there for. A praying Christian and a worrying Christian is a contradiction in terms. Now, there is a certain way in which we are to use the hand of prayer to cast our care upon the Lord. We have to deal with everything in our praying. That little word, all, is worth circling in my mind, casting all your care upon Him. There's nothing too small, and there's nothing too great. If it's troubling you, if it's causing the shadow of worry to come across your soul, and disturb your peace and kill your joy than you are to tell the Lord all about it. That's the biblical response. Don't think for a moment that some of those niggling things that have a way of just upsetting you are too little to bring to God. You see, folks, if you get the scriptures, clear understanding of that simple truth, everything is little to God. Everything. In comparison to God, the nations are a drop in the bucket. If God is happy enough to consider the world—and he does consider the world—I don't believe for one moment he'll have a moment's problem considering you or me and the little things in our lives. The tiniest of things. After all, Jesus said, even the very hairs of your head are numbered. What's more insignificant than that? Who would bother with hair, the number of the Almighty? Oftentimes, we make mountains out of things which are really molehills because we haven't added God to the equation. It's us viewing our situation, it seems looming so large until you go to God and realize this situation which is so big to me It's so small in His eyes. There's nothing too big for Him, nothing too hard for Him. Don't hold anything back. Don't try to cover up or excuse anything that's worrying you. Tell Him. We also need to use the hand of prayer as part of our regular communion with God. I mean by that, that God is not a 9-1-1 feature in your life. That when all of a sudden trouble comes, well now, now I'm going to be earnest in prayer. We don't treat the Lord as if He's only contacted when there's an emergency or one you need your cares to be dealt with. You're really going to have—you and I will have a hard time believing about God what we need to believe if that is our handling of our cares with the hand of prayer. But it's not just the hand of prayer. We have two hands, and the other hand is to be used, and that's the hand of faith. to cast our cares upon the Lord. Remember, this word is a very energetic word, and it requires effort, and we're going to have to use this hand of faith to lay hold of these burdens if we're going to find the Lord lifting them. I've got to cast them upon God, and that means really three things that are required to take the hand of faith. and to throw the cares upon the Lord. I must be persuaded in the first place that God has the power to control the very thing that's causing me the anxiety. I must be persuaded, I must be convinced that God has the power to control the very thing that is causing me the anxiety. If I do not believe that He has the power to control it, I will not find rest, I will not find peace, I will not find calmness of heart. Because I don't think there's anyone who can do anything about my situation. I don't believe there's anyone who can do anything about my fears and my worries and my dreads, and they can't lift them! You see, this casting our care upon God, lying at the very foundation, Of all that is this conviction that God is the sovereign of the universe, that he is omnipotent, he is the one who is uncontrolled, is uncontrollable, whose kingdom rules over all. Even those little niggling things that disturb my peace. He can do whatever he pleases. I have to believe that. I must also be persuaded that God will use His sovereign power in the best possible way. It won't do you or me any good to simply believe that God is omnipotent, that he has all power to deal with the things that are causing us the anxiety. We must believe that God is great, yes, but we must also believe that God is good, and that God is gracious, and that when and how he uses his power to deal with my afflictions of pride, or dread, or worry, or whatever the case might be, then he's going to go about it in the best possible way. Because unless you believe that, you're going to keep on worrying and be afraid and be full of dread. He unites His omnipotence with His wisdom brought together. So He hasn't made a mistake in bringing that affliction to your life. It didn't catch him off guard when that problem arose in the home or at work or in the family. He's all wise. How am I going to cast my care upon him if I don't believe he's going to deal with it in the best possible way? How will I trust him with it? Clearly, I must be persuaded that God is my friend, and will use that power in the best possible way for me. It's one thing to believe that God is omnipotent, that he will always unite his power with his wisdom and with his goodness, But it's another thing to believe in your soul that he will do all of that for you, because he is your friend. Which brings me to my third and final point. That's the special reason for casting our cares upon God and applying this antidote. Peter says, because he careth for you. Different word for care here. It speaks of a deep interest in someone. Here you and I have been, we've been trying to take care of our cares. Trying to deal with them. Trying to deal with things that you and I don't have any power to deal with. And all along, the Lord has simply been waiting for you to come to Him and throw all of those cares to Him. When you believe, and I mean when you really believe from your heart that God cares for you, and that He will always care He will also believe that your anxiety is absolutely needless. Why do I need to worry about this when God cares for me? It's so unnecessary. It's so useless. It's futile. to carry cares that God says He will carry. Because He cares for you, He will never forget you. Doesn't matter who else forgets about you. Doesn't matter Whoever it is that doesn't know about your situation, doesn't know about what you're going through, and they may have forgotten you long, long ago, the Lord has never and will never forget you because He cares for you. You don't forget someone you care for. You just don't do it. He's not going to forsake you and leave you to deal with the problems yourself, because He cares for you. It doesn't matter, child of God, if you have so often tried to carry the cares yourself, you've so often been foolish and exercised your whole thoughts and feelings—a waste of time in worrying about this thing or the other thing. It doesn't make any difference. He's not going to forsake you because of your folly. He's not going to forsake you because of your failure to trust him. He's going to keep on caring for you. If God would forsake his child because his child acted foolishly and defiantly and rebelliously, God would have forsaken me a long, long time ago. But he has said it in 1001 ways in scripture. He cares for me and will never stop caring. so He will never forsake me. God will never, ever fail to lift the burden of care from off you, if you take the cares to Him. This is the remedy. God says, take the antidote. Take the antidote. May the Lord give us all the grace, one day at a time, to cast our cares upon him. Casting our cares in prayer and faith. May God write his word on our hearts for his name's sake. Let's bow before the Lord in prayer. Let's all pray. Gracious Father, we confess with our lips that we've been loved with everlasting love, but with our actions we act as if that love is not everlasting. He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? We have no greater display of Thy care for us as Thy children than Calvary. We thank Thee that Thou hast a remedy for our many sins, and Thou hast a remedy for our many cares. Jesus Christ's name, we pray for the grace to pour out our hearts before Thee. We pray for the grace to believe that Thou art who Thou dost claim to be in Thy Word, and that we have no need to be anxious to afflict ourselves with worry and trouble and fear and anxiety in the midst of the afflictions thou dost send into our lives. We know, Lord, it's thy clearly revealed will that we don't go about carrying these afflictions of anxieties. We simply ask in Jesus' name for the grace We desire to cast them back upon thee, all for thy glory. In Christ's name we pray, amen and amen.