Why We Have Cares (Due Time vs. Our Timetable)

"Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: 7Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you." (1 Peter 5:6-7)

Why do we have a hard time casting our cares on God?

First, we do not see God as having a mighty hand. We see the troubles before us, and like the Israelites who spied out the Promised Land, we look at ourselves or we look at our problems. We do not take into account God's power, God's ability to move in our lives, in our affairs, to help us overcome all things through His love for us!

"Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us." (Romans 8:37)

God has a might hand, and His mighty Hand is committed to saving us!

"10To him that smote Egypt in their firstborn: for his mercy endureth for ever:

"11And brought out Israel from among them: for his mercy endureth for ever:

"12With a strong hand, and with a stretched out arm: for his mercy endureth for ever." (Psalm 136: 10-12)

The second problem ...

We may think that God is strong, that He can do all things.

But will He? Does He care about me?

YES!

"Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?" (Matthew 6:26)

Matthew, the tax collector who would become one of the key Gospel writers, shares this revelation twice in his account:

"29Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. 30But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows." (Matthew 10:29-31)

He cares for us! "For He cares for you," Peter writes to the church in his First Epistle.

How do we know that He cares for us?

He sent His only Son to die for us, and that we might live through Him!

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)

and

"In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. (1 John 4:9)

In fact, we are as dear to God the Father as His own Son, because our new identity is found in Christ Jesus!

"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world." (1 John 4:17)

What else frustrates our ability to cast our cares on Him?

We see things not going the way we had hoped, or it seems that we are stuck.

But God does care, He is might enough to step into our hardships, but most importantly He has perfected timing in place. God is not just interested in helping us go from glory to glory, but He wants all men to be saved! He wants people to know Him and His love, and He works through us to show Himself to others!

It's very difficult to move in other people's circumstances if we have not been through similar hardships. Remember that Jesus suffered as we do, but without sin!

"For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." (Hebrews 4:15)

While we have our own timetable, we have our own way of looking at things, and we expect God to move everything into place as we see fit--God has a perfect time and place for seeing us through every challenge, every crisis. In the original Greek, the phrase "due time" is one work "kairos." A perfect time, a God-moment, an event in due season.

God will indee exalt us, not just getting us out of trouble, but bringing us to a higher plane, a better place, to greater glory!

We will have cares, we will struggle to be humble, to the degree that we do not believe that:

1. God is mighty -- He can help us.
2. He cares about us -- He wants to help us
3. He has a perfect time -- His timing is not deliberately delayed to frustrate us, but to exalt us from our hardships and cares at just the right time!

We Frustrate God's Grace When We Worry

"Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.

6Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: 7Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you." (1 Peter 5:5-7)

Pastor Joseph Prince often shares a vision which he received from Daddy God about fear and worry. He talks about how God has pipes full of His grace, His favor over everyone. Every time we worry, the pipes get constricted and nothing flows out.

When we let go, when we stop worrying, the God's grace flows in our lives.

To back up this vision, he referenced a passage in the prophet Zechariah:

"Then answered I, and said unto him, What are these two olive trees upon the right side of the candlestick and upon the left side thereof? 12And I answered again, and said unto him, What be these two olive branches which through the two golden pipes empty the golden oil out of themselves?" (Zechariah 4:11-12)

I still found this illustration difficult to follow, and not very helpful.

Then I looked at the passage above, the blessed exhortation from the Apostle Peter.

He tells us that we need to submit to others, and that the Lord resists, He opposes the proud. And what makes someone proud? They esteem their abilities higher than they ough to. They think they can handle something, anything, when in fact they cannot take care of a problem or resolve a situation.

If we are honest with ourselves, there is nothing in our lives which we can handle on our own. We do not live by our own efforts to begin with, but rather by Christ in us, who is our hope of glory (Colossians 1:27)

If we are worrying, it's that we think we can handle something, and our worrying is an act from our own flesh, a way of saying: "See! I am being responsible. I am in charge!"

I have faced a very unique challenge before me these last few days. I kept thinking that I had to do something. I had to make a motion, make some kind of effort, exhaust every possibility, every demand.

I went through every motion, and I took it upon myself to do something, anything.

The strange outcome which followed, however, was really interesting. The very people whom I had to work with, from whom I had to get answers, informed me that "I still had time".

Incredible. The same well-wishing individuals had been telling me this in weeks prior. This time, that time, I realized what was going on.

Now, why had I been panicking? I really believed that the challenges I was facing were up to me to deal with. They are not.

I have needed a much larger vision of the truth, that indeed my Daddy God does care about me. For the last decade, I had not believed that My Daddy God cared about me. This sense that I was on my own, that I had to care for myself that I was in charge of myself, my actions, my steps, my everything just consumed me.

I had no peace.

It's simply not enough to tell people "Don't worry." People like me need to know that someone cares about them. 

Well, Peter answers that question:

"Casting your cares on Him, because He cares for you."

God does not worry about us. He cares for us, with loving regard and affection, like a mother hen her chicks. In fact, Jesus wailed over Jerusalem precisely because they refused His loving care!

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" (Matthew 23:37)

Today, I thank you Lord Jesus for the hardships which have come my way.

I thank you that you allowed situations to occur in which there was nothing that I could do, but I realized that You indeed can and are doing so much for me--and doing so from behind the scenes!

As long as I worried, I found myself making it harder for good to come my way. I was trying my best in my flesh, and that repulses God. That is an offensive to Him! Think about it! God so loved us, that He sent His Only Son to die for us, to live for us!

If we still walk around full of cares, we are basically saying to God: "Your love for me is not good enough."

Wow! That's pretty arrogant, isn't it?!

This revelation also reveals to me why the worry that others cast on me is so infuriating! It's arrogant!

Thank you, Precious Savior, for caring for me. You carry my cares, and upon You I can cast all cares! Thank you!

Vengeance Is His -- Let Him Repay

"To me belongeth vengeance and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste." (Deuteronomy32: 35)

For a long time, I really didn't believe this promise.

I didn't think that God was going to intervene in my life, that he was going to go after the bad people in my life, or those who had harmed me.

Yet this is a promise so sure, that Paul the Apostle references it in Romans:

"Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men.

"If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.

"Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." (Romans 12:17-19)

For the last two years, I have meditated on this aspect of my growth in grace.

I really believed that God was not intervening in my life and taking care of "bad people" in my life, or at least those who had done great wrong.

Today, I recognize that He has always been in the job, and He is taking care of my enemies.

There's a key word in Deuteronomy which I have overlooked in the past: "Their foot shall slide in due time."

They will slip, they will fall, they will be no more, but not on my timetable. It's on God's timetable.

He does not wish any evil to the wicked, but rather that they repent. There but for the grace of God would many of us had gone without Jesus and His grace and mercy in our lives.

But there's more at stake than others. God loves His children, those who believe in Him and trust in the redemptive Work of His Son. He wants full vindication to enter into our lives and not disrupt us.

He also does not want our peace and prosperity to come from vengeance. It's not enough for bad things to happen to bad people. It's one thing for someone to pay a price for stealing my cow. But I refer God's law of restoration, in which He gives us double for all our troubles:

"For your shame ye shall have double; and for confusion they shall rejoice in their portion: therefore in their land they shall possess the double: everlasting joy shall be unto them." (Isaiah 61:7)

I would rather receive double for me losses.

I would rather rejoice in the greater good that I receive than in seeing those who stole from me get punished.

I prefer everlasting joy than seeing bad people get "Theirs"

When I let go, when I let off from demanding retribution, when I got tired of getting angry and started realizing that He is on the job, that my Daddy God is taking care of me, I no longer had anything to worry about/.

Vengeance is God's--He will repay. If we just sit back and open our eyes, allowing God's Word to minister to us, we will discover that God is actively rewarding us and punishing our enemies!