PSALM 37:5 – Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act.
THEME OF THE DAY. COMMIT, CAST, AND LEAVE IT THERE. There is a verse in the New Testament offering a nice complement to today’s scripture. It is familiar and found in the Apostle Peter’s first letter – casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you (1 Peter 5:7).
In both verses, a common action on our part occurs. In the Psalm, we are to “commit our way to the Lord”. In the Peter reference, it is “cast all your anxieties on him.” And implied in both is another personal action – leave our anxieties and ways with the Lord, not bringing them back upon ourselves. When we cast or commit something to the Lord, it isn’t like fishing. We don’t reel it back upon ourselves. Yet, experiences prove we are very good at giving the Lord all our cares, anxieties, worries, and decisions in life but quickly find ourselves retrieving them in our hearts and minds. The evidence we have done so are the many sleepless nights fretting over what we gave the Lord; the many hours of having our minds obsessed with a situation we cast upon Him, and the mind-boggling extent we go in attempting to change or control circumstances or people that we turned over to the Lord to handle. So, since all of us find ourselves at times in our lives “fishing” with the Lord – casting things upon Him only to reel them back upon our incapable-to-handle selves, what may we do to stop this joy-robbing trend? From today’s verse here are some applications, not new ones, but needed ones.
First, refuse to let feelings overrule faith – “trust in Him.” Sounds simple, right? It is. Sound easy, right? It isn’t, yet that is exactly what the Lord desires and commands of us. The core issue in the Christian life is trust, an abandonment of ourselves and situations to the Lord. Fight for this. Refuse to let feelings blanket faith. This requires warfare in the mind that seeks to obey the Apostle Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians – We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete (2 Corinthians 10:5-6). And the only way to “take every thought captive” is to have a mind saturated with scripture that defeats worry, fretting, and anxiety. This will lead us to the next application to not take upon ourselves what we gave to the Lord.
Lean on His promises – “He will act.” What a promise! God is active in our lives – always. He is working out His purposes in and through us. He promised to do so. And in the context of today’s scripture, He is telling us, “Give whatever you are struggling with, whatever decision you need to make, whatever is happening in your life to Me, trust Me, and cast yourself upon My unfailing promises. I will act.” But there is a condition. He promises to act according to His timeline, not ours. Our responsibility is to cast our cares upon Him, commit our ways to Him, and then trust His promises to be fulfilled when He sees fit and how He sees fit.
Commit, cast, and leave it alone. That is what the Lord would have us do. May we do as He commanded knowing He will strengthen us as we obey Him.
PRAYER: “Lord, help me to not only cast my burdens upon You, but to continually keep them there.”
QUOTE: “What we commit to the Lord must stay with the Lord. To bring it back is anxiety-led unbelief.”