God’s Prescription for Every Victory We Need – Part 1
If you’re like me, there are times that all of the cares of the world start pressing in… and sometimes, (if you’re like me), you start to lose your focus… or you at least shift your focus from Jesus to the mess. (Hello, Peter – yeah, those waves are pretty big! -Matthew 14:30)
“The seed cast in the weeds represents the ones who hear the kingdom news but are overwhelmed with worries about all the things they have to do and all the things they want to get. The stress strangles what they heard, and nothing comes of it.” Mark 4:18-19 MSG
Lately, I’ve found myself there… or maybe I should say Papa’s found me there. “Papa! I’m drowning in all of these problems! I thought You said You’d help me?!”
I had a dream this last week. It was a really strange dream. I believe God often gives us dreams to reveal spiritual truths. In this dream I was initialling a kind of checklist. There were 5 items and I’d put my initials next to 3. It was about the areas I was agreeing to be unfaithful to my husband in. WHAT?! I adore my husband! I don’t want to be unfaithful! I couldn’t get back to sleep after this. I shared my dream with a friend who studies dream interpretation. We discussed what the issue probably was. My heart did not want to be unfaithful but I was being unfaithful. I took it to the Lord in prayer that morning during my tryst with Him. I asked and immediately He revealed 3 areas I was being unfaithful to Him: my time, my focus (hi again, Peter), and my cares/problems. Peter gets me. You know what I love about that guy? It seems like he shared the best advice later in the areas where it was revealed he initially needed to overcome:
Ok, Papa, how do I fix this? Holy Spirit replies – “Camp out on Psalm 108 for a while and dig deep.”
So, dear reader, let’s begin a series today based on Psalm 108. We will discover it’s rich with beautiful truths which will lead us into victory!
The very first verse begins: “My heart is steadfast, O God…” (ESV)
The English word “heart” is the Hebrew word leb (“labe”). The heart represents the inner man, his mind, will, thoughts, emotions, conscience, attention, concern, and basically the control center from which life’s issues spring.1
Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life. Proverbs 4:23
(NKJV)
“Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.” 1 Peter 5:7 NLT
What’s especially interesting is leb also includes our attention and concern. As we know, what we focus on grows, and our focus will be the direction we go. When we are focused on our cares/problems, our attention and our concerns are not on Jesus, and like Peter, we start sinking.
Papa had revealed to me that I was being unfaithful about my cares/problems/concerns. How can we be unfaithful about those? By not taking them to Him. We aren’t supposed to carry them. We aren’t supposed to fix them or worry about them or focus on them…
He revealed to me that before I do anything else each morning, I am to write out my cares/problems/concerns, even before I get into His Word or before worship. How can He give me the answers to those cares and concerns unless I do so? So – I now write out my cares, whatever they are – from concerns about family members to ministry needs to finances to all of the tasks that I need to get done each day, and I give them to Him, and trust that He’s going to take care of the things that I have no power over, and that He will provide me with the help, wisdom, strength, grace that I need in the areas where He takes my hand and we do the work together.
I’d like to encourage you to give this a try. Write out a list of your cares/problems/concerns first thing each morning in a prayer to Papa God and trust Him to take care of the things you can’t, and to help you in every area you need His guidance in. I can promise you this – He is faithful and He is able to work out the details much better than you or I could ever hope to.
Because He loves us,
Caprice 🕊️
