Casting Anxieties, Trusting in the Lord's Care

Questions of the Day: 

1. How has Jesus shown His love to you this week? 
2. What are you wrestling with that you need to cast on Him and trust Him with the outcome?

Anxiety can cripple me at any given moment with fear about the future. Concern about relationships. Feeling responsible for other people's reactions rather than walking in the peace of the Lord. These are just a few of the examples where anxiety takes over. 

But I've realized many times that my anxiety stems from my pride and my need for control. However, I'm learning that Jesus wants me to not only cast my anxiety on Him, but trust His character - which has already been revealed in Scripture! I pray this episode encourages you and deepens your walk with Jesus. 

Scriptures mentioned:

• 1 Peter 5:6-7
• Matthew 6:25-34
• Lamentations 3:21-23
• Colossians 2:6-7

You can find me on Instagram / Threads

Join the newsletter!

Questions? Comments? Email me at: carrie@ps8116.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:07

Hey everyone! Welcome to episode six of Honey from the Rock. I am glad you're here, and I am actually recording this the night before I am set to usually release episodes. I try to record them a little bit earlier. The reason I'm saying that is because I'm actually going to reference an Instagram post that I made earlier today and wanted to share a little bit about what Jesus has been teaching me and what he's been showing me about anxiety. So um, and I usually don't record this late, but we've had family in town and we'll continue to have family in town this week, which will be great. And then also I've been helping my mom paint and do some home improvement projects. So it's been a little bit crazy busy, but crazy busy in a good way. So except for I'm sore from painting, and I actually really hate painting, but I also like to see the results of painting, so it's kind of a catch, a catch 22. But anybody else out there hate painting? I would love to know. I hating painting unite, like I watch all these DIYers on Instagram, and everything they do is just so beautiful, and I know it's taken them years to learn how to do their craft, and they've you know messed a lot of things up, but now they're at this point where they're these beautiful influencers and they share all these things, and I watch them do it, and I, you know, in my mind, like it's like watching the Olympics. Like, oh, I could do that, I could do that, and then I go to actually do it, and I'm like, no, no, I cannot, I cannot actually do that. So, but the paint looks good. I mean, not to scare anybody into thinking that I've done a horrible job helping helping my mom, um, but you'll have to ask her. Anyway, um, what I want to talk about today very briefly is, and I mentioned it, I can't remember if I mentioned it last week or if I mentioned it in the episode before, but um, I wanted to talk a little bit about anxiety and anxiety from the place of what does scripture really say about anxiety? Um, and not using scripture or Jesus as a band-aid to say, well, we all just better suck it up and stop worrying. But what does it really look like to have the Holy Spirit minister to us in the midst of anxiety, which is actually what happened to me yesterday. And then the Lord had to remind me about it this morning because as I mentioned, I posted on Instagram uh today, and I literally posted a graphic that said, I cannot handle one more thing. And those were the words that literally came out of my mouth last night when my cat, Stella, decided that she was going to climb down into my mother's air vent and not come out for a solid 45 minutes, sending me into a bit of a panic spiral. I'm not kidding. Like it just that, you know, I love my cat. My cat is beautiful, she is adorable, she loves to cuddle with me. And in fact, as I record this episode, she's no longer in the air vent and the cold air returned. No, she is comfortably stretched out next to me, laying there like she doesn't pay any rent and has no care in this life, which she doesn't, she really doesn't. So, but last night it was just one more thing on top of what has this this year has just been the worst. And I'm going to be really honest, that's not actually hyperbole or exaggeration. It it has been the worst, it has been so difficult. There has been so much grief. I have lost two family members this year. My dad passed away in April, and my sister, my middle sister, passed away six weeks after him. And then in the midst of that, other things have happened, and there's just been a lot of transition, and there's been a lot of things up in the air, and and just a lot of grief and a lot of loss. And yeah, I decided to start a podcast in the middle of all of it, which probably sounds weird to some people, but I again, like I said on episode one, it is something that I know that Jesus has absolutely led me to do. But as I sit here tonight and I look at I look at this little furry life that God created laying next to me, so cute. And I think that 24 hours ago, I was ready to just absolutely lose my mind. I I laugh a little bit. I was not laughing last night. You can ask my mother. I will be really honest with you. I said some cuss words. I mean, it was not my best moment. I was super frustrated, but it was the cap on a day and really a season of just of just, like I said, loss, but just also just feels like things perpetually going wrong and weird things happening. Like, and you might ask, why did my cat climb into the cold air return? How did she get in there? Well, we had pulled the grate off to paint it and had it propped up, covering the hole, but what did she do? She's a cat. She's not made of bones. She's no, she's made of she's made of like liquid, liquid slime or something. You know how cats are. They're just able to like crush, they go boneless and they just worm themselves into weird spaces, which is exactly what she did. Thank you, Lord Jesus, that she is food motivated and a solid tapping for five minutes on a can of wet food got her scrawny little butt out of there. But I really I was like, I cannot take one more thing. And and so earlier in the day, I had been sitting with the Lord and I had been talking with my mom just about how I was processing this season that we've that we've walked through her and my brother and I, and and just on and off, I all of the sudden it just waves, waves of grief will hit me. And but they will hit me in weird ways. And one of the ways that grief has really actually manifested in me is anxiety. I start to feel just just the pounding in my chest and the tightening, and I get so anxious and worried about different things, and and it's like I can't think about a lot of things. The brain fog in grief is real, um, but then my brain tends to like hyperfixate on certain things and and and just really ruminate on them, and I and then I just start to get worried, and then I start to panic because I feel worried, and the Lord said, doesn't worry, you know. I mean it just becomes this cycle in my brain. But where I was with the Lord yesterday was in 1 Peter 5, and I think I brought this this verse up last week or the week before, so forgive me for repeating, but I just in praying about what to do today, and this is something significant that the Lord did for me in just the last 24 hours, and I and I just really wanted to share to share it with you, knowing that our experiences won't be the same. But the God who loves us and who has died for us and who calls us his own, uh, the the Lord who wants us to know him and and absolutely shows us himself in a variety of different ways, including through helping us deal with grief and anxiety and loss heat, he will minister to us how he chooses to. But I wanted to encourage you today because I know that there are so many things in this world that are causing anxiety, causing worry, people not knowing uh where the next meal is going to come from, people experiencing homelessness, people not being able to find jobs for months on end, and and just the worries mount up and the anxieties mount up, and they are real, and the Lord knows that they're real. And like I said a few minutes ago, I don't want to be like, oh, let's stick a bandaid on it. Jesus says not to worry, so we're going to be fine. But what I experienced yesterday in them in the midst of expressing some real frustration to my mom about where I find myself is I know the Holy Spirit led me to 1 Peter 5, where Peter talks about humbling ourselves under the mighty hand of God so that he may exalt us in in the proper time. And then he says in verse 7, having cast all your anxiety on him because he cares about you. And I did some research on that verse. You know, I've I've talked to you a lot of times about Bible Hub. Again, not an advertisement, just the website I love the most, um, about you know, digging into word studies and what does it mean and what does it say? And what I love is that there is such intentionality in the scriptures, there's intentionality in the words that are used to describe things to us, and that when we really dig into the word, I find it very helpful to really dig into what I'm reading so that I can understand it better. And when Peter uses the word care, that the Lord cares about us, what that word means is to care about or to be concerned with, especially paying attention and giving thought to, taking an intense interest in, which is amazing. And obviously, we see that the Lord has taken an intense interest in us. Obviously, he loves us, he has died for us, and and again, the topical lexicon says that this word in in the Greek for cares traces a line from human doubts about Christ's concern to the climactic assurance that God truly cares. Its occurrences challenge apathy, expose hypocrisy, and console the faithful, weaving a rich tapestry of pastoral and theological encouragement throughout the New Testament canon. And I just I loved the intentionality. Jesus truly cares about us, he truly loves us. And what hit me yesterday as I was as I was studying this verse and asking the Lord to help me is that there's two actions that that Peter calls us to in these two verses. The first is to humble ourselves before the Lord. And often I find that when I have gotten caught up in anxiety, when I have let my mind get into distress, when there's things that peck at me and gnaw at me and just cycle in my brain, that it's it usually happens because I've put myself in a position where I think I need to solve what's going to happen, or I think I need to have the answer about a problem. I need to be the solution finder, or sometimes honestly getting stuck in a rut where I feel responsible for other people's reactions and for other people's issues, which is not true. And that's probably a whole other podcast episode. But I was noticing as I was, as I was just working through some things yesterday, that I really had, I had put myself in a place where I was so stressed about about a few things because I really felt like it was on me to figure it out. And and not only did I need to figure it out, but I had to figure out the solution to this in such a way that also, you know, basically made me think that I had to decide how other people were going to react, you know, cause and effect, every action has its equal opposite reaction, like it's it's all of those kinds of things. And as I was just sitting before the Lord and crying out to him, I had to confess to him that that's just pride. I don't know what's going to happen. I can't control outcomes. But the the only person I can control is myself. And the only thing I can do is be obedient to the Lord and submit myself to him. And so when I realized that, I I confessed it to the Lord and and it was and really owned it, really said, you know what, Lord, I I do this consistently. I live in a place where I feel like I have to manage things. And in my managing of things, because I'm so anxious about them, you know, I I I begin to put all of the responsibility on me to fix everything or to have the right answer for anything, or um, I need I need to figure this out so that I don't fail and fall on my face in front of people. I mean, it comes in a million different ways, right? And it comes in a million different ways for all of us. And yet when I take it to the Lord and I honestly say to him, you know what, Lord, I am only responsible for me and I'm gonna humble myself before you. Lord, take this pride from me that thinks that I have to figure everything out and that I have to know what's gonna happen, and that I, you know, it's like what Jesus says in Matthew 6, how can I change one color, one strand of my hair, the color of my hair, right? I mean, I can dye my hair, but it eventually grows back the natural color that Jesus gave me originally, right? What who by worrying can change the color of their hair, right? You know, again, and he tells us to look at the lilies of the field, to look at the birds, you know, he talks about the sparrows in one place. And we have really, I think sometimes we read those things and we think they're really cutesy little sayings that just make us feel better when they're really admonitions from Jesus. Look at how the God of the universe holds this entire world together. If he hiccuped, it would all fall apart. And yet he holds it all together. The father, the father God of Scripture who who through his son spoke everything into creation and everything into being and made humans out of dust and gave us the breath of life by breathing his spirit into our lungs. Who are we to think that he will not care for us? And and again, I know how easy it is to say it when things are going well, but I also know the truth of it when everything is falling apart, when everything is in shambles around me. I have had to say, I know that Jesus will care for me, and he has every single time. And so I had to humble myself before him and confess my own pride, that a lot of the anxiety I was feeling yesterday was coming from my own pride. And then, and he and then, you know, Peter goes on to say that the Lord will, he will raise you, right? He will exalt you at the proper time. And then he says, having cast all your anxiety on him because he cares about you. And that's from the NASB. And the word anxiety literally talks about your mind being pulled in two directions in this particular instance in in 1 Peter 5. It is literally having your mind pulled pulled apart. And I know many of us know that that's what anxiety can feel like a lot of times. And and again, meditating on this scripture and having the Lord lead me through it as I studied it, did it take all of my anxiety away? No, it didn't. Did it lessen it significantly? It actually did. The Lord met me in the study of this verse, he showed himself to me in a very beautiful, quiet way. He comforted me because I just I was actually driving to McDonald's to get my mom and to get my mom and I diet coach. And um, and I was crying. I was crying out to the Lord and I was wrestling through these things, and I just kept going to him saying, Lord, I don't know what to do about this, I don't know how to feel about this, I am struggling with this particular issue in my life, Lord. I am wrestling. I don't know where you are in this, Lord, and I need your help. I need you to show me yourself. I need, I need your leading and your wisdom, Lord. I need you, Holy Spirit, to help me. And what I realized when I got back and I was sitting down and reading this verse out of 1 Peter again was that is literally casting my care upon him. That is going to him and saying, I don't know what to do, Lord. I need you to help me. Now the key is to cast our anxieties, our cares on him, and and to entrust them to him and not take them back. And if we do take them back, to cast them on him again and keep fighting in that way to say, Lord, I believe you are who you say you are, that you are willing to, you have taken on all of my sin. You love me enough to help me with my cares, Lord. You say that our Father is good and he will give us an egg. He won't give us a serpent, he wants to give us good things. The Father gives us the Holy Spirit, He He has given us you, Lord Jesus. He's given us your gospel, Lord. Like it, I mean, all of the things that the Lord, the good things that the Lord has given us. And I find so often when I'm dealing with anxiety that that that it wants to crowd out the goodness of the Lord. It it puts me in a place again where where I become my own provider rather than the Lord being my provider. And and again, please hear me when I say this. It's this is not always easy. It isn't, because there are things that are difficult and devastating, things that the Lord doesn't necessarily show us right away, things about our future, things about what he's going to do that are hidden from us because he has chosen not to reveal them at a particular time. And we have to trust him. We have to make the decision to trust him. And that is not a one-time decision, that is an everyday decision. It is hand in hand with the command to pick up our cross and follow him. To pick up our cross, what he's appointed and follow him means we trust him. We trust him with our life. We trust him with our future. We trust him with doctors' appointments and unknown diagnosis. And we trust him with when we lose friends or relationships blow up in our face. So we trust him when people wound us, or again, when we wound other people, and when we're sharp with our tongue, and we have to go back and we have to own it and confess it and repent and apologize. And when we are just struggling, all of these things, the Lord is big enough to handle, and he desires for us to cast our anxieties on him because he does care for us, he loves us. And so I I wanted to read a quick quote from Spurgeon because I posted the uh one quote from Spurgeon on my um on my Instagram post, but I um there's another quote that I really, really loved by Spurgeon, and I thought it was very, very thought-provoking. So Spurgeon says, Thy burden or what thy God lays upon thee, lay it thou upon the Lord. His wisdom casts it on you. It is thy wisdom to cast it on him. He casts thy lot for thee. Cast thy lot on him. He gives thee thy portion of suffering, accept it with cheerful resignation. That seems like an oxymoron, doesn't it? Cheerful resignation, and then take it back to him by thine assured confidence. He shall sustain thee. Thy bread shall be given thee, thy waters be sure. Abundant nourishment shall fit thee to bear all thy labors and trials, as thy days shall as thy days, so shall thy strength be. He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved. He may move like the boughs of a tree in the tempest, but he, Jesus, shall never be moved like a tree torn up by the roots. He stands firm, who stands in God. Many would destroy the saints, but God has not suffered it and never will. Like pillars, the godly stand immovable to the glory of the great architect. And I love that so that so much because the picture that it paints and the the King James language is different, difficult to read, so forgive my stumbling. But just the thought that, you know, the Lord, the Lord allows suffering in our life. We know scripture tells us that in this life we are appointed to suffering and affliction. These things happen. Jesus uses it to shape our character, to shape our soul, to produce fruit in us, to conform us to his image. The whole purpose of all of these things that buffet us is so that we would know the Lord more deeply and that our root systems, right? If we're going to be planted like oaks of righteousness along the shore, along the river, then that system has to go deep. And trees only grow deep roots in the midst of storms. I think that that's true. If I'm remembering that correctly, if there are any arborists who listen to the podcast, please let me know. But but the storms and the trials that are sent to us by the Lord are they are appointed. There are certain things that Jesus does not do, but that he uses. But in the midst of it all, the point that I want I want to make is that as Spurgeon says here, with whatever is appointed to us to walk through, though the Lord may have appointed it, maybe he didn't, but we're still walking through it, we can cast it back on him. And he wants us to cast it back on him. He wants us to be able to run to him with every care, every fear, every doubt, every worry, every trial, all of it to cast it on him so that we continue to hold steadfast and sure in that Lord. And though there are times you have been silent, and there have been times I have many, many times I have not known what you were doing. And these difficult times have shaped me and broken things in me and exposed things in me. Lord, through it all, you have proven yourself faithful. Your character never changes. Your mercies are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. I will remember the works of my God. I will not forget how Jesus pulled me out of Egypt. I will not forget the miraculous things he has done in my life to deliver me from the snare of the fowler, from the pestilence that walks in noonday and the terror that sneaks around at night. I know that I abide under the shadow of the Almighty and Lord Jesus, I will keep believing it and standing in you and on you, and I will not be moved by every fiery dart that comes at me to try and extinguish my faith. I won't do it. I won't do it. And there are days, my friends, where I am absolutely rotten at this. I stink at it, and I get all bound up in all sorts of junk in my mind and in my heart. And there are other days where I know that the Holy Spirit is rising me up and helping me stand firm. And on the days when I'm terrible at doing it, I'm crying out to the Lord, asking him to strengthen me. And again, this is not to say like there's just, you know, the Lord's always moving on me, and there's a miracle happens every time. No. But the Lord's character is sure, and he desires to comfort us because he cares for us. And that's what happened to me yesterday. In that morning session where I was sitting with the Lord and just quiet with him. I had cast things on him, I had talked with him about it, and I was sitting and I was just reading this verse again and again. And my friends, I will tell you the burden didn't lift. The burden didn't lift, but comfort came from the Lord. And there was a definite, a definite knowing that the Lord had heard my cries and that he was with me in them. And then this stupid cat thing happened last night, and it set me on edge. It felt like it was gonna push me over the edge, and I cried myself to sleep last night. Oh, I was so mad. I was mad at this cat. I was just so angry about what had happened. Like I said, it just felt like one more thing, trying to snatch my sanity from me. And yet, there was the Lord this morning as I woke up reminding me what I had studied yesterday, reminding me how he had so faithfully come through for me yesterday, and that hadn't changed. His mercies were new tomorrow this morning. They will be new tomorrow morning, they were new yesterday morning, but I need to grab onto his mercies that are available for today. That's it. Tomorrow has enough evil for itself today. Walk in today. Lord, your mercy is enough for today. Your mercy and your grace are enough to help me cover my anxiety. Lord, they're enough to help me trust you and believe that you are exactly who you say you are, Lord. And so I want to encourage you with this, friends. And I want to ask you these questions. How has Jesus showed you his love this week? I want you to think about it. And I want to think about it, meditate on it in the midst of all the things that try to capture our attention, try to make us, try to divert our attention from the Lord, make us question all sorts of things. Let's go back to what is actually true. How has Jesus shown us that he loves us today? This week, even. And what are you wrestling with that you need to cast on him and trust him with the outcome? Those are two questions I want you to think about. I want to think about, I want to meditate on. And I've shared, I I've shared, you know, how the Lord showed me that He loved me. There's just that that deep, immovable sense of comfort yesterday morning was was so amazing and and so needed. I was grateful, grateful to the Lord for it. And then just the things that I've been wrestling, anxiety about my future. You know, there's there's a lot of changes going on in my life. I don't know what's next, but Jesus does. And I need to trust him. Again, I go back to that Corey Tenboom quote. It is the quote for my life right now: never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God. And so, friends, I pray that as you are facing whatever you are facing, that you will consistently turn back to the Lord, turn back to his character, remember who he is, remember how he loves you, think about how he has specifically shown up for you this week, and then think about where you are facing anxiety or worry or where you're struggling. What do you need to cast on the Lord? Because he is strong enough, he is strong enough to carry it. And so, like I said, I love to leave our time together with a blessing. And today I want to read Colossians 2, 6 through 7, and this is what I am praying over us, this is what I am asking the Lord to absolutely just pour, pour into us that we would remember this and that. This would be the walk of our life, Lord Jesus, that we would honor you, Father, Holy Spirit, that we would follow you. So Colossians 2, 6 through 7. Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, having been firmly rooted, and now being built up in him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. I pray, friends, that as you wrestle with Jesus and as you seek him, that you will do so overflowing with gratitude for the ways that he has shown up for you, the ways that he has ministered to you, the opportunities he has given you to minister him to others. And I pray as we go through the rest of this week that we would know that the Lord cares for us and his shoulders, his heart, his person is big enough for every anxiety and care to be cast upon him. Amen.