Do you ever struggle with anxious thoughts? Anxiety is an everyday battle for many Christians. How should we respond to cares that cause our muscles to tense up and our minds to race? What promises can we hold to when wracked with worry for yet another sleepless night?
In the 1862 sermon, titled “A Cure for Care”, the Spurgeon describes the “disease” of anxious cares, then heralds the remedy and the Lord’s gracious invitation to cast our cares on Him.
Spurgeon reminds us that sometimes, finding release from anxiety begins with repenting of wrong thinking: “[T]he very essence of anxious care is the imagining that we are wiser than God, and the thrusting of ourselves into his place[.]” As we surrender our efforts to control our circumstances and humbly submit our lives to the sovereignty of God, we are cultivating a space where the peace of God can flow like a river in our hearts.
Our Father in heaven bids us to cast our burdens on Him. “With broad shoulders, with omnipotence as his strength, he says ‘My child, roll thy burden upon thy God.’” How gracious the invitation of the King!
When the world looks at you, do they see someone who is feverishly trying to “keep it together” in their own strength? Or do they see someone who, in their weakness, is leaning on the Almighty God, standing on promises solid as a rock?
Excerpt:
Away then with dark suspicions and anxieties! Is it care about past sin? “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s dear Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” Is it present temptation? “There hath no temptation happened to you but such as is common to men: but God who is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” Is it future peril? O leave thou that with him, for neither “things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” If you begin to think always of yourself, you must be miserable. Why, it is Christ that makes you what you are before the eyes of God; look then to Jesus in order to find out what you are in God’s esteem. Soul, I say again look at Christ, and not at yourself.
Read the rest of the sermon here.