FBC Daily Devotional – Dec. 4, 2020

from your labors, your efforts, whatever those efforts have been. Some of you some of you homeschool your children.

I hope they're doing well and you're enjoying that time with all of its challenges and its blessings and all the rest of that.

I hope it's been a profitable week for you and as we look forward to the weekend, I hope you're looking forward to the

Lord's Day. Our plan this week is, as last week, having in -person attendance allowed, permitted, but not really recommended, as you well know, because of the

COVID thing going on. But nevertheless, at 1030 Sunday morning we'll have having a worship service.

It will be live -streamed. It can be caught on Facebook Live, YouTube, the church website, so forth.

And I'm going to be focusing on a cross -centered Christmas and this this week and particularly the the heartache of Christmas.

You usually don't think of Christmas as having heartaches, but indeed it does. And many of you know full well what the heartache of Christmas might look like.

But anyway, we'll be looking at that from the perspective of the cross on on this coming

Lord's Day at 1030. Well, I was reading recently in 1

Peter and came across verses 5, chapter 5, in verses 6 and 7. And these are a couple of familiar verses and especially verse 7.

Verse 7 says, casting all your care upon him for he cares for you. It's a great deal of comfort and encouragement in that, isn't there?

To know that your Heavenly Father cares for you and he cares for you as the perfect father would care for his child whom he loves.

He cares for you and because of that care, Peter exhorts us to cast all of our anxieties upon him.

And I'm sure you've heard that exhortation many times, you know, to take things to the

Lord in prayer, take it to the Lord in prayer, cast your anxieties upon the Lord. But what struck me when

I came across this the other day was the connection between verse 6 and verse 7.

Verse 6 says this, humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties upon him because he cares for you.

It's all one sentence. So the casting all your anxieties upon him because he cares for you is a follow -through, it's a continuation of the thought of the first part of the sentence.

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God. I want you to see the connection,

I want to see for myself, the connection between humbling ourselves before God and casting our anxieties upon him.

And think about it from the opposite of that. When we think about humility, the opposite of that is pride, right?

So here's the thing that I guess Peter's getting at. If I have a heart filled with anxieties and I just hang on to those anxieties and I just mull over those things that are causing me to be anxious, fretful, full of care, that's actually a form of pride.

Because what is it saying? Isn't it saying that I have some measure of control in this matter?

That this thing that I am so anxious about, that somehow by being anxious and mulling over it and fretting over it, that that is somehow going to be helpful in solving my anxiety and curing my anxiety?

Isn't that a form of expression of pride? Think of pride maybe not so much as I'm so great, but as being self -focused, self -centered.

And so if I'm just, something is causing me a great deal of anxiety and I'm just fretting over it, and there are plenty of things in this life that can cause us to feel this way.

And you may be feeling this way right now because of the COVID crisis or because of something going on in your home, your family, your own personal health and well -being.

And these are things that can provoke anxiety.

But if I hang on to that and I mull over it, I'm just so self -absorbed that all

I can do is think about my problem or my concern or the thing that's making me anxious, I'm being proud.

And what Peter's exhorting us to do is to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, under the one who can actually do something about that anxiety.

Humble myself, turn my attention to him and cast my anxiety upon him because he cares for me.

What an interesting perspective that the more I fret, the more

I'm filled with anxiety, the more proud I am.

But as I bow before my heavenly father and I take those anxieties and I cast them upon him, confident that he cares for me, confident that he can actually do something about it because he's the one with the mighty hand.

What a powerful display of humility. So let me encourage you, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, cast your cares upon him, all your anxieties because he cares for you.

Our Father and our God help us to do just that. There's so much in this world that can fill us with anxiety and yet you encourage us to bring these anxieties to you and to leave them with you, to cast them upon you because after all, you care for us.

Help us, O Lord, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Well, may the

Lord give you a good rest of your Friday and a wonderful weekend. I hope you have an opportunity on the

Lord's Day to meet with God's people, to worship and serve him, and may you have a good day in doing so.