"Casting all your cares" - a form of worship

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Permalink Reply by Amanda on November 7, 2014 at 5:12pm

I've recently been studying and seeking God' wisdom for how to worship God in the way that pleases God, too. What I'm understanding is that we should always be giving God our worship, throughout the moments of each and every day. Of course, our worship is often directed towards and given to other things, instead, especially when we get distracted, and the cares of this world often are very distracting. I don't see why casting our cares upon God wouldn't be an act of worship. Good topic, Charles.

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Permalink Reply by Charles Burwell on November 15, 2014 at 9:31am

Amanda Thank you for your comments. I especially agree with the part about " What I am understanding is that we should always be giving God our worship, throughout the moments of each and every day." Like in the first psalm where it speaks of "In His law does he meditate both day and night." Although we must, of course, turn our minds to the practical things in our daily lives we never really need to put aside a grateful heart of worship in all we do. After all living our daily lives in a way that is pleasing to God is one of the most powerful forms of worship we can offer.

 

God bless you , my friend

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Permalink Reply by Amanda on November 15, 2014 at 5:51pm

Thanks, Charles. It isn't to say I do this every moment. I fail in many ways.

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Permalink Reply by Seek on November 11, 2014 at 6:23am

I'm thinking that whenever we offer these thoughts we should also offer some practical application.

What I mean is that one can cast a care to have it keep coming back or keep weighing heavy no matter how often they keep giving it to God, praying on it, reading Scripture that deals with it. So what's the practical application to casting and keeping it cast? Does casting it mean one will never again have any concern over it or any other care? These are often questions in the back of our minds that seem to get preyed upon by condemnation when one is doing all they can and yet are still plagued with these remaining concerns that don't leave.

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Permalink Reply by Charles Burwell on November 15, 2014 at 9:19am

Seek

You certainly ask very good questions.

 

"Does casting it mean one will never again have any concern over it or any other care?" 

 

In my opinion, absolutely not! Especially if the problem concerns a person very close to us. I think that a possible 'practical application' is to examine our motive for casting the care and the examining of reasons why we feel that we cannot trust the Lord to handle it. I don't say this to criticize because God has presented me with these very questions during a real crisis that I recently went through.

 

The idea of continually 'casting the cares on the Lord ' is to keep examing our reasons for why we want to hang onto the concern to the point where it brings us down. God has shown me ,many times, how He is very willing and able to deal with anything I come up against. And yet I allowed myself to be pulled down to the point where I was just ready to give up.

 

In this 'examining process' I have had to reexamine my committment to God, go back to through the scriptures and reassess my view of who and/or what my opinion of God really is.  When I began anew to research exactly who God is and what He is like I was forced to conclude that maybe I wasn't as convinced as I thought I was concerning the attributes of who God truly is.

 

I was reminded the He is the One who literally spoke the world into existance , buried Pharoh's army in the Red Sea, pulled down the walls of Jericho, took Elisha up to heaven in a fiery chariot , humbled  the mighty king Nebuchadnezzer ,healing the lepers, raised Lazarus from the dead, calmed the raging sea of Galilee ,rose from the dead Himself ,  was tempted in all points as we are ye without sin, sent us the Holy Spirit and (probably the most difficult thing) convinced this black hearted know- it- all sinner than he was in need of a Savior instead of letting him spiral down the path of self-destruction that he was on.

 

I had to then just kneel in shame that I felt that I had a 'better answer' than He had to my situation. Isn't that, in fact, what we are doing when we 'take back' our cares after claiming to turn them over to Him? He will always answer our prayers, it's just that we may not agree with His way of handling them or His timing in handling them.

 

I had to be reminded of the scripture in Isaiah where He said that His ways are not our ways nor are His thoughts our thoughts, for as high as the heavens are above the earth so are His ways above our ways and His thoughts above ours. That's not an exact quote but I'm sure that you are famiiar with the passage.

 

I have had problems that had several excellent, at least I thought they were, solutions for when I brought them to God. He was neither interested or impressed with any of them and solved them in the most incredible way that I literally would never have imagined.

 

Oddly enough I have gotten to where I am likeing the way He solves them because in doing it His way He lets me know , beyond a shadow of doubt, that it was truly His intervention in and creation of the perfect solution. He wants us, and rightyfully so, to realize that our only real part in the solution to our situation is to obey whatever He says and trust Him to deal with it in the very best way possible.

 

Is it easy to do? In my opinion, ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!!!! But when we do the joy and peace that we experience through it absolutely a thing that 'passes al understanding. By doing it His way He is letting us know that there are solutions He has that are so far above and beyond our ability to understand or even imagine in the first place

that we are able to understand that truly 'with God all things are possible'.

 

And with this 'revelation'we are able grow in our faith and become less reluctant to just 'cast our cares' on Him and leave them there. It is, and I know from a lot of personal experience, a difficult process but the rewards so far outweigh the difficulty as to render the difficulties almost meaningless .

 

After all, all we really have to offer the Lord is our faith in Him. And as Peter tells us in the first chapter of I peter in about the 7th or 8th verse "that the trying of our faith , which more precious than gold, may be found in praise , honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ". Again that may not be exact as I don't have a copy of the scriptures with me but it is close enough to make the point.

 

So if this is our only real gift to present to Him then I believe that our faith and the (hopefully anyhow) resulting obedience are are greatest and most precious act of worship to the God Who is most wot=rthy of all of our worship.

 

Anyhow, those are just my longwinded opinions but they are precious things that the Lord has given me through the mess He allowed me to go through.

 

God bless you, my friend

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Seek on November 15, 2014 at 9:32am

I have to wonder about David though. From so much of the Psalms, we can tell he had cares that he kept bringing up, asking often to be delivered from his enemies. And yet he was a man after God's heart. During his long wait on God's timing though, he often drenched his couch with tears. So I wonder if casting our cares means praying for God to work in the situation or completely forgetting them...which is truly an impossibility. We don't have the capacity to just forget things we want forgotten.

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Permalink Reply by Charles Burwell on November 15, 2014 at 9:49am

Seek

I agree that it is probably impossible to forget our cares. In fact I don't believe that God wants us to 'forget our cares' because how could we then glorify God when He answers our cares. He wants us , in my opinion anyhow, to live in the confidence that He can and will answer our prayers in a way that is best for us. In the 8th chapter of Romans, about the 17th or 28th verse, It speaks of the Spirit interceeding for us by praying 'according to the will of God.

 

God simply wants us to live in the peace and confidence that He is going to work everything out to our good. We just need to learn that His idea of 'good' may be different than ours and accept His version.

 

As far as David is concerned I believe that much of David's problem, as is the case of many of us, is not being able to always have the confidence in answered prayer during the time when we are not exactly walking in the ways God would have us to walk in. We can have much more confidence when we are assurred that we are walking in fellowship with the Lord.

 

David had a lot of problems , as we all do at times, with walking in agrreement with the Lord. That is why it really pays to , as Paul says when discussing communion, to examine ourselves frequently to allow God to get us back on the right path, if we have gotten off of it.

 

God bless

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Permalink Reply by Seek on November 15, 2014 at 11:34am

Hmm I'm not sure I agree on that assessment of David. When he was being pursued by Saul, there's no indication he was out of alignment with God. But he was living in caves, not the most comfortable of places, seeing the injustice being done, separated from his good friend Jonathan, watching someone he looked up to turning further from God...he hurt. But he always came back to praising God.

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