Lessons from 1 Peter 5

I've been thinking about anxiety and 1 Peter 5.1-7 over the last few weeks! 1 Peter 5 is a great text to get to grips with and has that key verse: "casting your anxieties onto him, because he cares for you!" - does that remind you of a song? Having tossed the passage over and over in my mind, I've come to see 3 simple lessons on anxiety which I thought I'd share on the blog. For the sake of simplicity, you can think of each lesson as subsumed under a verb - or action! - (1) bow, (2) throw and (3) know.

I might note quickly, as a wise man pointed out to me, that sometime a lack of peace over unrepented sin could sometimes be mistaken for anxiety. In this case, no matter how much you fight that lack of peace, it won't go away and the required response is to stop what you're doing and repent. 

BOW

The first lesson I learn from 1 Peter 5.1-7 is the reason Peter wants his church to cast their anxieties onto God. There are obviously logical reasons to want to get rid of anxiety - no-one wants to be anxious. However, the reason Peter gives in vv.5-6 is deeper than that. Peter (and therefore God) doesn't just want a church rid of anxieties, he wants a humble church and recognizes that getting rid of anxieties is a step towards this.

Humility is an action of the heart when we lower ourselves before God and before others and consider them to be more significant than ourselves (Phil 2.3) - hence the action "bow". If this is so, and humility involves considering other more significant, then anxiety will make that process difficult since, by definition, anxiety is focussing inwards on your problems, not outwards on others!

So how do we humble ourselves? Simple answer really: look to Jesus. Check out Philippians 2.5-9:

Have this mind amongst yourselves, which is also in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be taken advantage of, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross.

Wow! That's how you become humble - you look at the most outrageous, ridiculous display of humility ever heard of!

THROW

Action two is throw! Notice that 1 Peter 5.7 says "casting your anxieties", not "dropping" or "rolling". The idea here is that we need to get violent against anxiety, just like we would towards any other sin (yes anxiety is a sin). Simply put, rather than being bowl players with anxiety who roll their ball slowly and gently, we need to be shot-put players who display tremendous amounts of energy in casting a big lump of metal as far as they can possibly manage.

How does that actually work in practice though? In part, Philippians 4.6 can help us here. Paul, a man who by all stretches of the imagination should be allowed to be anxious (read a bit about his life), writes "do not be anxious about anything". In other words, take radical action. Decide: "I am NOT going to let this care or thing over which I have no control dominate my mind". Paul writes that instead of worrying, why not pray and give thanks to God and then God's peace will cover over our hearts! Why don't you make it a reflex, next time you are anxious, to pray and praise instead of worrying - it will work!

KNOW

Our third action, "know" refers to this: How do we know that when we cast our anxieties onto God, he will actually deal with it and not simply throw it back? The answer? He cares for you (1 Peter 5.7). The one who put the stars in their place and sustains them, cares for you! Can you get any more mind-bending than that?

We need to know God! It will be an antidote to worrying which no attack of the enemy, nor cares of this life can defeat! So my question to us is this: are we growing in your knowledge of God? If not, how can we expect to cast our anxieties with confidence and attain the aim of maturity and humility? Here are a few quick ways we can grow in our knowledge of God:

-Pray!

-Be filled with the Spirit!

-Become familiar with God's word!

-Obey God's commands!
-Serve others sacrificially!

-Preach the Gospel to yourself!

As we grow in the knowledge of God, anxieties will take their rightful place (which is not our minds or hearts) and joy and peace will grow in the midst of the deepest challenges of life! Can I urge you? Get to know God!