He Careth For YOU!

Preliminary

I invite to 1 Peter 5 this morning

Thanks for songs and testimonies

1 Peter 5 just reading verse 7

READ: 1 Peter 5:7 “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.”

Introduction:

Can I say something this morning that you have probably heard over and over but I think can never be said too much...

GOD CARES ABOUT YOU!!!

He knows who you are

He knows where you are

He knows where you have come from

He knows what you are facing

He knows and He cares.

My wife and I have recently been listening to an audiobook titled God in the ICU by Doctor David Walker. He is a south African anesthesiologist who shares several of his experiences where God showed himself as the one who cares.

It is not necessarily for the faint of heart or squeamish, but there are some amazing stories in there.

One of my favorites has to do with Dr. Walker himself.

He writes that things were good, he was living his dream. He became a doctor, he was married to a beautiful wife, and they had a beautiful blonde daughter.

He was working in a diamond mining town when he received word that his brother Dave had been in a car accident. It was bad and he wasn’t expected to survive the night.

He went back to work after burying his brother and would as often happens have just waves of intense sorrow.

The problem was that after that Dave who at that time was a nominal believer experienced the feelings of grief be replaced with cold anger against God.

Before he thought that God was personally involved in our lives and cared. Now it felt like God was distant - he wasn’t sure whether God was personal or some kind of “FOrce for good.”

He could have stopped the accident - but He didn’t. It was as though instead of God having the whole world in His hands he was just looking at it from afar.

To compound matters his brother's wife had a baby a few months after the funeral.

Again Dr. Walker was hist afresh with grief and his feelings about God being only a distant and impersonal being became more realized.

Then he received a phone call that his sister-in-law had collapsed.

They rushed over to where she lived, and there she lay on the floor - deceased.

Dr. Walker and his wife adopted the baby and yet he writes, “

..And yet through it all, there was a kind of despair at God. He really did seem distant and uncaring.

It appeared that we had to cope on our own in this imperfect world of apparently random pain and joy.

Not too long after this - Joy his late sister-in-law’s mother came down with cancer. An X-ray revealed there was nothing that could be done she would die within a few months.

All of these incidents happened within the space of two years.

Dr. Walker said, “I could not fight God. If He really cared I needed Him to come through in this situation.”

He didn’t know how to pray but there was a little Anglican Church he would pass on his way to work. They held a little service every morning at 6:00 a.m. and so he would stop before going to work attempting to make contact with GOd.

He would feel a sense of peace but he didn’t want comfort he wanted to see Joy healed.

Joy didn’t make it and again Dr. Walker felt that “God is watching us from a distance”

He had an incident with a patient who lived a wild life. They nearly lost him and they spent hours operating and working on him. Thinking that he would have a change of lifestyle after such a near-death experience he later found out the man was living the same if not worse than before.

This shook Dr. Walker - nothing made sense anymore - so he began his search for a God who is involved.

He would occasionally go to church with his wife and after one particularly moving church service he shared his disappointment with God

They counseled him and prayed with him some more.

Not long after that, he says, “I awoke very early one morning bathed in the love of Jesus and with His presence filling the room with a kind of all-pervading peace. I knew without a doubt that He is personal and present with us, interested in what we are doing, and waiting for us to include Him

This morning if you are sitting here feeling as though God is only some distant force - I want to remeind you that God is a personal God who loves you and cares for you.

See there are two different Greek words translated “care” in this verse

We are exhorted to “cast” or “throw” all of our care upon Him.

the Greek word “care” here means things like:

anxiety

worry

distraction

fear

Sometimes we are like those who leave their dirty laundry on the bathroom floor after a shower -

We just let it sit there and take up space and you have to walk around it or step on them and its just messy

Peter tells us that those who are in Christ have a God with a big enough basket to hold all of those dirty clothes.

But they don’t magically disappear from the floor - you have to take them and throw or cast them into the dirty clothes basket.

But then Peter reminds us of why we can and should do that with our cares:

“for He careth for you” He cares for you - that word “care” means something different -

This “care” and it is in the present active indicative - meaning that God cares and never stops caring -

But it refers to:

Interest in someone

Concern for someone

To have someone on the mind

I want you to know this morning that God cares -

even if it feels that he is distant and impersonal

He is working things so that you might see Him

You might know Him

You might know that HE CARES FOR YOU!!!

I try to tell people I care - but my care can only go so far. I can tell people I think and pray for them

I can tell people that I care for them and I want only good things for them

But that is about as far as I can go

But our God CARES and is able to WORK AND HELP AND SUSTAIN.

The Psalmist faced a similar situation and feeling

Psalm 142:4 “I looked on my right hand, and beheld, But there was no man that would know me: Refuge failed me; No man cared for my soul.”

Charles F. Weigle was an itinerant evangelist and songwriter. One day he returned home after preaching an evangelistic meeting and found a note from his wife. It simply read, “I’m leaving Charlie. I don’t want to live the life you are living. I want to go the other way – to the bright lights.” And to add insult to injury, she had taken their only daughter with her. That night Charlie Weigle wandered the streets alone, finally winding up at the end of the pier at Biscayne Bay, where he contemplated suicide. However, despite all that had happened to him, he vowed to live his life for Jesus.

Sometime later he would write:

Verse 1: “I would love to tell you what I think of Jesus,

Since I found in Him a friend so strong and true;

I would tell you how He changed my life completely,

He did something that no other friend could do.”

(Refrain) “No one ever cared for me like Jesus,

There’s no other friend so kind as He;

No one else could take the sin and darkness from me,

O how much He cared for me.”

Verse 2: “All my life was full of sin when Jesus found me,

All my heart was full of misery and woe;

Jesus placed His strong and loving arms about me,

And He led me in the way I ought to go.”

Verse 3: “Ev’ry day He comes to me with new assurance,

More and more I understand His words of love;

But I’ll never know just why He came to save me,

Till some day I see His blessed face above.”

I want you to know if you feel like the Psalmist - No one cares

I want to remind you that JESUS CARES

We can cast - throw - those fears worries anxieties and concerns on the one who cares has concern for us and is able to help us.

Here is how I want us to close out the service this morning

I want us to stand and sing the first verse of “Does Jesus Care” (p. 148 in Sing His Praise)

and when we get to the chorus I want you to find a person or two or three and remind them that Jesus Cares - Oh Yes He Cares