Morning & Evening Daily Devotional Reading– May 26

by Charles H. Spurgeon, Revised and Edited by William C. Neff

“Throw your burden upon the Lord, and He will sustain you.”

—Psalm 55:22

It is right and good to care for people and even for certain things, but if that care becomes excessive and self-focused it has in it the very nature of sin. The command to earnestly avoid anxiety is repeated by our Savior again and again, and it is reiterated by the Apostles.

The very essence of anxious care is the imagining that we are wiser than God, thrusting ourselves into His place of authority and provision. We attempt to think that He will forget what we need and desire. We strain to carry the burden ourselves as if He were unable or unwilling to take it for us. This presumption of having to “take over” is all sinful.

Even more than this, anxious care often leads to further acts of sin. If you can not calmly leave your concerns in God’s hand, but insist on carrying the burden, then you will very likely to be tempted to use wrong means to help yourself. This sin leads us to turn away from God as our Counselor, resorting instead to human wisdom. This is exactly what the prophets called, “going to the ‘broken cistern’” instead of “to the “fountain” —a common sin among the people of Israel.

Lacking confidence in God, then, leads us to wander far from Him; but if, through simple faith in His promise, we cast upon Him each burden as it comes, it will keep us close to Him and strengthen us against much temptation.

“[The Lord] will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is fixed on Him.” [M&E]