Casting Cares part 4
Your mind is like a goat, it'll eat anything. And that can be a problem, because what you magnify is what will manifest in your life. If you're mindful of all of the "stuff" going on around you--if you mind is full of it--then you'll miss out on the REAL stuff. Look at 2 Corinthians 4:18, "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." There's an appearance realm full of surface stuff. External stuff. But we don't look at these things. We look a little deeper. We don't judge according to appearance. We judge righteous judgment. We don't get caught up in the storm, we speak a Word and command the storm to be still. And I'm not saying we try to "fix" the storm. So much time and energy is wasted with petty, pointless fighting. We try to make things better and end up making them worse. Or, like I said, we can speak a Word. We can cast our cares on the Lord because He cares for us. Not by whining and crying... not by lifting our problems up to Him... but by lifting HIM up in the midst of our problems. You know the old saying: Don't tell God how big the storm is, tell the storm how big God is! Casting your cares doesn't mean speaking about all the "stuff" and thereby giving it power. Casting your cares means trusting God to TAKE CARE of you. And it's easy to trust Him to do so when you understand that He always has and always will. I think we get mixed up when we think of God as, like, a genie in a bottle. We expect Him to do what WE want. When the fact of the matter is... God does what HE wants. Luckily for us, what He wants to do is love is, protect us, take care of us, lead us and guide us and teach us. He wants to do what any loving Father wants to do. But every time HIS plan doesn't fit OUR plan we fall to pieces. "Why would God let this happen to me?" Because all things work together for good. Because it's part of the bigger plan. And, listen, I'm not saying God MAKES "bad" things happen. I don't think He uses things like sickness to "perfect us." But I AM saying that God can use EVERYTHING that happens. He doesn't make the same distinction between "good" and "evil" that we do. Because both good and evil are on the same tree. The tree of death. And God is only interested in life. Remember when Cain brought an offering from the ground? From what he could produce? God didn't want it. It was only when Able brought a LAMB that God was satisfied. So instead of trying to please God with what we can do--which honestly isn't very much at all--and instead of coming to Him with our hands out like beggars trying to get scraps... instead of focusing on the problem that we can see... we ought to walk by faith, and not by sight. We ought to trust Him. Cast our cares on Him and don't even worry about them. Do our best and forget the rest. The things that are NOT seen--the inner man, the hidden man of the heart, the REAL you--are eternal. Those are the REAL things. Love is the real. And it's easy to get distracted from that, but with just a little bit of repentance (changing our minds) we can keep our affection on things above, NOT on the things of the earth!