I will never forget the evening I came home from work to find my young wife very sick. Just weeks before, the happy expectation to soon welcome our first child had been dashed. Our unborn child had not developed correctly and caused my wife to contract a rare but aggressive form of cancer. Hoping that the first medical procedure would restore my wife’s health, I found out that evening that the problem was far greater. She had lost a lot of blood, was too weak to even walk, and my First Responder training had taught me that the large loss of blood volume could quickly cause her complete collapse and death. There was no time to call the ambulance. I carried her in my arms to our own car and sped toward the hospital, which was about 35 miles away! We stopped at a smaller hospital on the way for her to receive an IV drip and to be transferred to an ambulance who would take her the rest of the way. Following the ambulance in my own car my thoughts were racing. Would my wife make it alive to the hospital, would she survive the emergency surgery, what would the surgery mean for our hope to have kids?
I hope to never go through a situation like that ever again, but I do not want to forget the lessons I learned in this crisis. To continue to function in the midst of this life-changing crisis, God graciously taught me to
“cast all my anxiety on him.”
This command is followed by the promise:
“because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7)
Many times before I had prayed for God to “get me out of a situation,” but now he was clearly instructing me to throw down my cares, anxieties, and concerns, in other words to let go of them, to lay them at his feet and leave them there! As a self-sufficient and independent person, letting go and trusting was not easy for me, but his argument, that my most powerful maker would care for me convinced me to do just that. Whenever anxious thoughts would begin to cloud my mind, I simply laid them at his feet in prayer, expressing that he could care much better for my wife than I ever could myself. What I found was that he calmed and sustained us in the midst of this storm and others following. After five years, several additional medical procedures and challenges later, my wife was given a clean bill of health, although we would be unable to have our own children.
He indeed cares for us–but to experience his care, we have to let go, to throw down what concerns us. This is not using God as a crutch, as a certain pro-wrestler turned Minnesota governor once touted on national television, it is being humble, submitting ourselves to the mighty hand of our Creator God, the only real super-power who can do something about our situation.
Are you going through a tough and challenging time today? I invite you to go to him, throw your burdens at his feet and watch him truly care for you!
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