Suffering Part 1

I'm going to take a few posts to look at one section of Scripture that has really been important to me.  Every time I read Scripture, I find something new, so I don't know for sure yet what path this will take.  Let me first say that anything I say here aside from quotes from Scripture are purely me giving you my thoughts.  I am not God and I am not writing new Scripture.  With that in mind, please do your own digging.  Your own praying.  Your own studying.  That's what a relationship with God is supposed to be about anyway.

Now, disclaimer out of the way, let me begin by sharing with you the verses that I plan to talk about tonight.  They are quoted from the New King James Version.

"Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you."  I Peter 5:6-7

So let's start out with "therefore."  You may well have heard the statement before: "If there is a therefore there, you need to ask what the therefore is there for."  Having had that drilled into my head so many times I can't even remember where I first heard it (so I can't, unfortunately, give proper credit to anyone for quoting them on it), I almost can't look at this section without instantly wondering what brought about this sentence.  Since I've read I Peter several times, I know what precedes this little tidbit, but if you haven't read it or haven't read it in a while, I'll do my best to give you a quick synopsis.  The book as a whole discusses suffering for faith in Jesus Christ.  It's really an encouragement to recognize suffering as an opportunity to grow in faith.  Chapter 5 is the last chapter, and the verses leading up to this little segment are talking about the importance of the willing and humble service of the elders leading the church, the importance of submission on the part of young people to their elders, and the fact that God resists the proud.  So the therefore here is telling us that in light of what we now know about suffering and the role of elders/younger people and the value God places on humility, we need to follow the coming instructions.

Next... Humble.  Ah what a word.  To be humble is to have a proper view of yourself.  That doesn't mean thinking you are better than you are.  It also doesn't mean thinking you are worse than you are.  It really means you don't think of yourself at all.  You think of others.  But most importantly you think of God.  Having a proper view of myself has little to do with me.  It has everything to do with being in awe of who God is, respecting Him for who He is, living in light of who He is.  And as a result of that, I have a better focus on the people around me.  I don't compare them to myself.  I don't try to fit them into my cultural mold.  I accept and acknowledge them for who they are.  I see that the souls of men are eternal and I care enough about them to care about their eternal destiny far above any consideration of what they wear, what they eat, how they talk, and where they are from.  Those things don't matter.  What matters is where they are going.  To be truly humble, I must first recognize who God is and then I must act on that in such a way as to bring Him glory in my every interaction with others.

"That He may exalt you."  When I am truly humble, I do not seek to exalt myself.  I don't care if I receive any glory ever.  All the glory I care about is God's glory.  And when that is my attitude, He is able to exalt me.  It's Him, not me.  It's always been all about Him.  It has never had anything to do with me.  And the sooner I get that through my head, the more likely I am to actually do something that can be exalted instead of living for myself.  But notice that there is more to it than just that He may exalt you...

"In due time."  Not a moment too soon and not a second too late.  We are only to be exalted in God's timing.  And the second we start wondering why we haven't been exalted yet, we fall back out of humility.  We have forsaken our focus on God and turned our attention back to ourselves.  What good does that do anyone?

Then comes verse 7.  It's a very famous verse, one we often use to comfort someone who is struggling.  I've heard it so many ways that I'm just going to paraphrase it here as a conglomerate of the various versions in which I have heard it... Cast all your anxiety on Him for He cares for you.  I've heard it as a stand alone so many times.  I think I've studied it as a stand alone.  But it wasn't written in a vacuum.  There's more going on here than just casting all my care upon Him.  We won't get into whether it should be part of the sentence or not.  I'm not a Greek scholar, and when I think about translating such things I get a headache.  But, even if it is it's own sentence, the surrounding material is important.  The thought entails humility first.

This isn't talking about just spitting my worries at God in passing and then going on about my day pretending those anxieties never existed.  Casting my care upon Him requires that I humble myself enough to admit that I cannot do this on my own.  It says, "God, I am too small for this, but I know that you are bigger than this."  It recognizes that God's Spirit working in me is going to give me the strength I need to survive, even when it doesn't feel good.  To me, this implies time.  Not like time on a clock time but time as an indicator of taking time out and doing something in the presence of.  It's being with God and being reminded of who He is, taking Him in and being encouraged in just that.

Then there's the fact that it's "casting."  I'm super excited to go fishing tomorrow with my dad, so I have fishing on the brain.  We've been spending a lot of time talking about our plans, getting my gear ready, looking for and buying just the right items, talking things out some more, and practicing to remind my rusty self what I'm doing.  Casting is no flimsy thing.  It does take practice, and it is a good picture of what we need to do with our anxiety.  If you don't get the right angle on your swing, the right release on your string, and the right power in the movement, things go haywire.  I don't know how many times I have ended up with my bait plunking to the water at my feet because I didn't do something right.  Or having to dig through the weeds to get my hook unstuck because I didn't pay attention to my aim.  But man.  When you get everything right, the sound of that line going out, the arc of the lure flying through the air.  Ah.  Pure poetry.  And it gets some good distance on it, and even when I reel with all my might, it takes a while to bring that line back in even without a fish fighting me.  That's what we need to be doing with our anxiety.  We need to be practicing getting it out away from us.  It's not easy at first.  It doesn't come naturally.  But as we practice, we find that sweet spot.  This is one time where it would be a good idea to cut the line though rather than try to reel it back in.

And lastly we have the why behind even considering casting our care on Him.  When I cast my line out while fishing, I do it with the intention of bringing it back in so I can hopefully eat a tasty fish supper.  When I cast my anxiety on God though I do it because He cares for me.  I know that I can send my anxiety His way and He will grab hold of it and do something with it.  His care for me resulted in His sending His Son to die on the cross and rise again so that when I put my faith in Him, I could be assured of spending eternity with Him.  If He would do something like that for me, I can certainly trust Him with the woes of daily life that at times can feel like they are crushing me.  He has already overcome sin and death and hell.  What's a few troubles (even life and death ones) compared to that?

I know I have a hard time giving things over to God.  If I am honest with myself about why, it's a matter of not trusting that He can and will take care of it.  I'm not being humble in those moments.  Those moments are the ones where I need to remember who God is and cut myself out of the picture.  When I do that, it goes much better.

So I would encourage you to remember to think about who God is before you try to cast your anxieties on Him.  They go a lot farther a lot faster when that is your aim than when you are focused on yourself or on the anxieties themselves.