You may want to click on our article in which we deal with worry and anxiety as they apply to everyday stuff: our cares about food, shelter, health, job, etc. The sources of anxiety go beyond even these concerns; particularly when considered in David’s declarations in Psalm 55. Peter is quoting it from this psalm in 1Peter chapter 5.

In Psalm 55, David is in turmoil. You might say that Psalm 55 is the anguished cry of a man whose life has been so deeply hurt. David has been hurt by a person he dearly loved.  And because of the way that person was living, and the way that person reacted, David bears this great burden of anxiety.

He wrestles his way through the Psalm spilling out his pain. At the end of the psalm God speaks and says this word, "CAST YOUR BURDEN (YOUR ANXIETY) UPON THE LORD." You see, it is not just any anxiety David was speaking about. He was speaking specifically of the anxiety PEOPLE cause us. And not just people, but those that are especially close to us. It seems the closer they are, the more anxiety they can cause us, at least that is what it feels like.

This anxiety can be about our loved ones. This can be about our dear friends. This is about the people that we really care about. Somehow we bear anxiety, over them, that just about drowns us.  David raises this anguished cry and I have heard this anguished cry from hearts of many believers because of other people.

Now, I want us to look at this. PEOPLE ANXIETY is the anxiety caused by those we love. Why is it we have so much anxiety about our loved ones, the people that really matter to us? Hear me carefully, we have this kind of anxiety because, we feel (and I use this word very carefully) A RESPONSIBILITY. This is not a whim that passes through our head. We feel a responsibility upon our shoulders to MEND THE BROKEN HEARTS OF OUR LOVED ONES.

We feel a responsibility to get down into their hurts and mend them. We feel it is incumbent upon us. We feel responsible for our wives.  Wives feel responsible for their husbands. Somehow, if the husband is hurting, she feels it is her responsibility to mend it. We feel responsible for our children. They don’t have to be five years old, I am talking about our 35 year old children. We feel responsible. We don’t feel they are capable of raising their children and so we have to look after the grandchildren, too. We feel responsible to be there to make sure they are not hurting, to make sure that they have some of the gems of wisdom that we come up with for them to live their lives by. We feel responsible, responsible for their happiness and success in life.

There is this awful sense of responsibility that causes us forever to be hovering over our loved ones. We have it in our heads that we are responsible to have the solution to all their problems. We feel that it has been placed on our shoulders to find their happiness. They are not able to help themselves, poor creatures. They are incompetent. We are the ones that hold the key that will turn the lock to bring them through the doors of happiness. We have to bring harmony to their lives. We have to fuss over them and make everything better. It is as if we are running into their lives and saying, "Now, now, everything is going to be all right. Daddy will make it right." Can you relate?

Of course, we have people in our circle of loved ones who are destroying their lives. They are wasting their lives and they break our hearts. They bring out something else. I will use an even stronger word. They bring out a COMPULSION in us. We feel compelled to invade their lives. We feel it would be legitimate for us to be the "pirates" that board their ship and take over. We feel it is upon our shoulders to commandeer their lives, to make some sense out of their craziness. We say, "If ever you get to the consequences of those decisions, it’s over. It’s curtains." We have to step in and STOP your consequencing. We can’t let this come to its final conclusion.

Look at your children. If they carry on the way they are carrying on, with the lack of motivation they have, they will never get the grades to become the doctor that you plan for them to be. Unless they get it together in their head, they will never be the attorney that you and your wife decided that they should be while they were still in the womb. You have it all worked out and your children are not co-operating. Do you follow this?

Then, of course, when they are gone from the nest, you still have to call them every day, don’t you? You just need to make sure they are still alive and you have to make sure that they have not been divorced over night. And then you hear your daughter pour out on your shoulder everything that is wrong with her husband. Then it is your responsibility. You have to solve the problem. You have to "heal" the marriage.

Then your son says he would be able to achieve a kind of happiness if he had a thousand dollars. So you give him the money because it is your responsibility, you know. If you don’t, he will be unhappy. And wouldn’t that be terrible? You have to hover. You have to fret and worry to make sure everything is right.

You know your children don’t know how to raise those precious grandchildren. You know that the grandchildren will probably die of the flu, if you don’t intervene. So you worry and fret just to make sure the grandchildren stay alive.

You worry over your husband. He is not spiritual enough. He is not going on with God fast enough, not like you. So you worry and you fret. You get all those little books and you happen to leave them laying around where he might read them.

If you are a Bible Class leader or in any kind of ministry, you feel this compelling responsibility to make your "flock" into sheep that love God. You feel they don’t love God enough and it is your responsibility to put a hunger for God in their hearts. As you are teaching them and they are looking at the ceiling or dozing, you feel it is your responsibility, you have to make them into spiritual people.

That is anxiety. It is like those dolphins that get caught in the tuna nets. Have you heard of that?  You have gotten caught in other people’s nets. You may be one of those people who may need to realize that you have forgotten what emotions are yours and what emotions are theirs. You are feeling their feelings. You have gotten so tangled up in their nets that you don’t know whether you are sad or they are sad and you are sad with their sadness. That is tangled.

Many parents have forgotten which life they are living, if they are living their life or their children’s lives. They are all tangled up in each other’s nets. It is anxiety. You can’t sleep properly. You can’t think properly. It is anxiety.

The tragedy is that many of these scenarios that I describe (which incidentally, are true) are not strong enough. Some of the "nets" in which we find ourselves entangled are a lot stronger than what I have described. The tragedy is WE THINK THAT IS LOVE. We think when we get tangled up in our children’s lives, we think we are "loving" them. When we won’t let them become adults, we think we are "loving" them. We call that concern.

When we get tangled up in other people’s spiritual lives, trying to make them what we think they ought to be, we think we are loving them. Let me say this: ANXIETY IS NOT AN ATTRIBUTE OF LOVE ! ! ! Where you find anxiety and worry, you do not find love. Anxiety is an attribute of MANIPULATION, not love. (We will put this on hold for just a moment.)

What is ANXIETY? Well, you might call it, "industrial strength worry." It is more than just a little problem in the head. Anxiety is when that person fills our mind, when it basically closes our ability to think rationally.  This person has taken over so that whatever we try to concentrate on, within five minutes, we realize they have sneaked in and we are thinking about them again. They are like a shadow of the mind. We have lost the ability to concentrate on what we want. They have taken over. Our mind, in terms of logical and rational thinking, has been paralyzed, hijacked by this other person.

The word for it is actually an old English word: OBSESSED. In old English, the word "obsessed" means to have a "haunted mind," to have ghosts in your mind. Well, that’s it. When other people fill our mind and we cannot get our mind on anything else, we are haunted by that other person. That is people anxiety.

It is something like what we said in the previous lesson, it is a merry-go-round, except this is the "sad-go-round." Around and around it goes, going nowhere with no conclusion. You think the same problems over and over again. "What are we going to do about ....?" "There must be an answer to ...?" Around and around. How many times have you asked the questions and how many times have you come up with the same non-answer to see if this time around it might have become an answer? You feel like screaming.

Anxiety always brings with it the ability to create a movie. We create a video in the back of our head, the very worst scenario. One lady said, "If I take my hands off my daughter, my daughter will end up sleeping under a bridge." But there was no reason to believe that. If you put your daughter into the hands of God, are you afraid she will end up sleeping under a bridge? That is what I mean. We have the ability to project ourselves to an exaggerated "end of the road" scene.

Your boy doesn’t look as if he is going to make it to be an attorney, so you see him on skid row. Your daughter is not turning out quite as you expected, so you have pictures of her in your head being a "bag lady." This is a Disney World of Apocalypse Now. We have the ability to create those scenarios. Unless we do something. Unless we come up with the final solution. Unless .... - the end is going to come.

An anxiety brings with it a certain kind of FEAR. Now, of course, anxiety is birthed in fear. It is fear taken to its extreme. With it comes another fear. Fear births fear. When you are in this state of anxiety, there comes the fear of your own helplessness. I become afraid of my helplessness because, you see, there is nothing that I can do. I can’t motivate the kids. I can’t make them want to do anything. That is frightening! I feel so utterly helpless.

You look at your mate and realize you cannot save them. You look at the alcoholic or the drug addict in your home and you realize you cannot get inside their head and turn a switch that will make them different. That is frightening. It is an awful sense of helplessness.

Until I understood this, I would have that kind of panic attack over my clients that I counseled, until I realized that I have no power to communicate the spirit of what I am saying.  All I can do is announce the "GOOD NEWS" to you. I can’t make you want it. I can’t make you do it. I can’t make you spiritual. To know that in yourself, you are absolutely helpless is frightening if your head is where we have been describing. You can look around on the circle of your loved ones and you can do absolutely nothing. Here you are on the merry-go-round and you must do something. But the more you go around, the more you realize that you can do nothing. Anxiety is now moving to new heights.

And then a strange thing happens. Another friend of anxiety appears, WRATH.  You get mad at the person. I mean, you love them, don’t you? "Stupid! Why do you have to have a problem like that, anyway? Why didn’t you listen to me in the first place? Why don’t you take my advice now? Why don’t you listen?" I’m mad because I feel helpless. And I am afraid of being helpless. So the only way I know to handle it is to romp on the person. Right? We love them, but we yell and scream at them. We hope if we yell and scream they will finally hear us.

Or, if you are the other kind, you implode. The other word is ANGER.  Anger, in the Greek, is imploding . It is going inside. Wrath explodes. Anger implodes. You get all quiet. You don’t talk. You grunt ... for six weeks. You are hoping, if you stay like this long enough, the object of your concern will say, "Is anything wrong?" And then you can tell them that it is .... .

Anxiety brings on fear and fear brings on wrath or anger. And then we go spiraling down into GUILT. Because then I feel there is something wrong with me. I am not enough. I am not enough of a father. If only I could be a "real" husband. I have heard a wife say of an abusive husband, "If only I could love him enough." There is something wrong with me. They would not have the problem, they wouldn’t be like this, if I were enough. If I had only been enough of a parent, if I had only been enough of a wife, it would have all been different. It was my fault. And that all ends up somewhere in DEPRESSION. That is people anxiety.

Some will make light of it afterwards. They say they were being silly acting that way about that. They don’t take it seriously, saying, "How could I have done that. How silly of me." Or, others will say, "Well, it is the way I am." I have heard people say, "Well, I am a worrier" as if it has something to do with where you were born or your nationality or something. "I’m a worrier." That is the end of the discussion. You have to take me as I am. It is like having diabetes. "I’m a worrier." That is a very popular trend in America. We have taken all the things that God says to stop doing and we have turned them into diseases. Of course, what can you do then. If you have diabetes, I don’t say, "Repent." I can only say, "There, there, I am sorry for you."

There are others who wear their anxiety with pride. "This is my cross to bear. I mean someone’s got to worry." This is my badge of love, my badge of concern.

The fact is that the Bible takes an entirely different point of view. The Bible certainly doesn’t laugh at anxiety. And the Bible certainly doesn’t say that it is the way you are. And the Bible certainly doesn’t say that it is your cross to bear. Actually the Bible says that worry and anxiety is usurping the place of God. It is trying to manipulate the life of another person and even God won’t do that. He brings you to a place that you willingly respond to Him. "... it is God that works in you to will and to do ...." He never ever manipulates you. I don’t even like to use the word "control" because, really, it is not that. He doesn’t control and manipulate like a puppeteer. He brings us out to be full persons who freely choose. "He makes us willing in the day of His power." I don’t know how He does it, but He never manipulates. He never pulls strings on us.

But WE try to play God in a way that God Himself would never do it. Worry and anxiety is when we write the script for someone else’s life. We have it all written. Let’s face it, most of us parents have pre-written the script for our children’s lives. I don’t mean we have literally written it out. You might not have really thought much about it until now, but you know it is true.

If it isn’t clearly written in your head, there is a pretty clear concept there of the way things are going to be. You have already decided the kind of guy your daughter is going marry. So when all the hopefuls parade through your living room, they are being measured up against a script that you have written. And you become the director of the script and you are about to hire the actors, if you see what I mean. Right?

We do it with many lives. You know how your husband is going to be saved, the same way Mary Smith’s husband was saved. We have it all worked out. We write the script. We become the director and the producer. We hire the actors. We know it is not going to work without God, so we take our script to God and we PRAY it to Him. We tell Him what He has got to do in our loved one’s life. Which is NOT prayer. That is only carrying anxiety into the Holy of Holies. It is not prayer.

It isn’t too long until you have carried your FEAR up there, too. Then comes your GUILT and you feel you have let God down. You feel that God could have done something in their lives if you had been better. So now you are not only guilty about them, you are guilty before God. You are a failure. We call that being spiritual. The whole thing is anxiety and fear. It has nothing to do with love. It has nothing to do with faith. It has nothing to do with spirituality. It is ALL anxiety, dressed up in different coats.

Don’t misunderstand me, we are responsible for our children. We are responsible to discipline them a lot more than the average American does. We are responsible to watch over them. We are responsible to bear one another’s burdens. We are responsible to give a reason for the hope that is within us to everyone who would ask.  We are responsible for each other. We are each other’s "keeper."

But when I am your "keeper" and when I am responsible to bear your burdens, I do so as a FELLOW CREATURE, not as a pretend God. When I bear your burdens I do so knowing that unless God has them, we are going nowhere. And I would never write your script. When you come to me asking advice, I will give you the advice you are asking for if I can give it. But I don’t go beyond that to start writing out your life story. I will walk beside you as YOU discover the life God has for YOU. I will pray with you and I will enable you to my ability as you walk that unique path that is yours. But I do so as a creature, very definitely as a creature, not as someone who thinks they can manipulate your life into what I think is best for you.

I believe that is why the verse in 1Peter begins with "Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand." You will never be able to "cast your anxieties on God" until you have humbled yourself and taken your place as a creature.

Whenever we try to control and manipulate another person, whenever we try to bring about our goals for another person’s life, we end up destroying them ... and ourselves.

The foundational or the logical reason behind our casting our anxieties upon the Lord is that "HE CARES FOR YOU." The Greek word here means "tender, affectionate care." It is the kind of care a mother has for her child. It says, "cast all your anxieties upon Him for He TENDERLY, AFFECTIONATELY WATCHES OVER YOU AND CARES FOR YOU AS A MOTHER DOES HER CHILD."

You will never cast your anxieties upon the Lord until you are CONFIDENT of His love for you. Do you know why? Because until we are confident of His love for us, we have a sneaking suspicion that we love our loved ones more than He does. Any parent will have to agree with me that we are tempted to think like that, if we are honest. This is especially true of mothers. We have the feeling that "this is my baby and even God couldn’t love my baby like I do. Even God doesn’t have the wisdom to put together the plan that I can put together for my baby."

The picture I have in my mind is that here is my loved one and here is God, and I stand in the middle. And you see, in that equation I am the love factor. I am the one loving this person. Therefore, because I love them, I have to represent them to a God, and I am not sure where He stands. I am going to lobby God on their behalf. I am going to get Him to see it my way for them. I am the lover here. I mean, she won’t listen to me. God won’t listen to me. I feel like Elijah. "I, only I am left."

Listen to your prayers. Sometimes they are so lonely because you are "battling it out" with God. You are telling God your fears, that you are helpless in this case and you feel helpless before Him, because you feel you are the only one that loves around here. (Check out our PRAYER CLOSET.)

Religion doesn’t help. Religion tells you that God will hear you on behalf of your loved one if you bribe Him well enough. You have to become a real lobbyist now. You have to take God out and wine and dine Him to make sure He does it your way. Promise Him something. Mortgage your future. Tell Him you will spend the rest of your life in a malarial swamp in Africa, as long as He will save your husband. That should impress Him. That should impress Him really well.

Television doesn’t help either. If you pray and nothing happens, the television evangelist tells you to pay for a miracle. "Send me an offering and God will save your loved one." You have heard that. You know Martin Luther started the Reformation on something like that.

This idea that you have to bribe God, you have to convince Him that your loved one is worth some of His attention, is not the gospel. In the early days of England, in 1611 when the King James Bible was translated, the word "GOSPEL" was used by the peasant boys and plow boys. It meant, in common peasant English, "THE GOOD, GLAD MERRY NEWS THAT MAKES A MAN VERILY LEAP FOR JOY." That was the definition of "gospel" out of the dictionary of that day. This is the "goodest" news you will ever hear - GOD LOVES YOU. Incredible! He loves you unconditionally, uncausedly. He loves you because of Who He is, not because of who you are. THIS IS THE GREATEST REASON TO GIVE YOUR ANXIETIES TO HIM. He cares for you. He has tender affection for you. He is on your side. You don’t have to twist His arm. He loves your loved ones better than you could in ten lifetimes.

You will at that point, for the first time in your life, really have loved that person. You have never loved anyone until you have released them to God ... and also to their own decisions and freedom.

Jesus lived like this. Jesus was anxiety free. In many respects, Jesus was like a little child. Just to illustrate the point, I have called Him the "eternal Peter Pan." The word we translate "father" is in the Hebrew "abba." Abba means "daddy." In Brooklyn you can frequently see little children crawling up in their father’s lap and cry, "Abba, Abba." It is like "daddy." It is the kind of talk you graduate from after awhile. Jesus called God His Abba. A grown man saying, "Abba, Abba." So in the most holy sense, Jesus is the always young, the eternal child. He lived childlike.

Jesus said, "Be anxious for nothing." "Take no thought." That is "child" talk. Children live like that. Jesus said we do, too. He used a little child to say that unless you "become" like that you will miss heaven. Maybe Jesus is the One in the prophecy of Isaiah that says a little child shall lead them. Maybe Jesus is the One Isaiah was talking about. The King of our Kingdom is a little child. Becoming a child is required to be in that Kingdom.

I look at Jesus to see how He does this, to live casting potential people anxiety to Father. He had a lot of that, especially surrounded with that bunch. Peter was perhaps the worst. Peter was perhaps the closest to him. So on that last night, humanly speaking, Jesus’ worst night, Jesus knows what is going to happen. He knew Peter would deny Him.

We know what Jesus did, but what would you have done? Here’s Peter. You talk about a loved one, Peter has been closer to Jesus than just about anybody. Whenever they go anywhere, it is always Peter, James, and John. These three seemed to be special. Jesus has great plans for Peter. He has already told him that He will give him the keys to the Kingdom.

Now Peter is going to deny Him. You talk about a motive for anxiety, wow! If I had been in Jesus’ shoes, outside of Divine revelation, I, no doubt, would have said, "Oh, Peter, not tonight. Please! Of all nights, not tonight. I don’t need this. It is going to be a bad enough tonight without you acting up."

How would you have handled Peter? We who hover and smother and suffocate others, writing their lives with no consequences in them, just happiness, happy, happy, happy. I think I would have said, "Peter, you look tired. Why don’t you make it an early night tonight. I won’t be needing you." Anything to keep from having to bear what is about to happen with Peter.

You see, humanly speaking, I know this is going to blow Peter apart. He will really screw up and there will be a terrible consequence of pain and grief from which he may never recover. Embarrassment to us, pain ... we don’t need this. I have to give suggestions and alternatives. I must shove him toward the alternative.

How would you have prayed? "Oh God, don’t let Peter open his mouth. Please God, not tonight! Don’t let him embarrass me more than he has already. God, you know he is a good man at heart. He doesn’t mean half of what he says. Oh please God, let him go home to bed tonight, please! God, see my script, will you? Please do it my way."

You see, we are the phony shepherds. We want to shepherd everybody into the "happy land." But when the REAL Shepherd shows up, what does He do? It is incredible. When the real Shepherd shows up, He does not protect us from the consequences. That is incredible! He lets us walk right into it. He didn’t even try to stop Peter.

He looked right at Peter and said, "You will deny Me three times tonight." I mean, He didn’t even soften the blow. He just said it like it was. "This is the kind of person you are, Peter. This is the consequence of the way you think. This is inevitable. This is the consequences of the way you look at life. It is going to happen."

The way Jesus looked at it was that those consequences will lead the person to repentance. They will see what they are really like. I don’t want them to see what they are like. I want them to be happy, so I will protect them. I will try to push them away from consequencing.  Jesus doesn’t. Those consequences that will bring pain to you, will lead you to repentance and restoration and to whole personhood. You will become a man through this.

He says, "That’s the way it is Peter and I am not going to stop you." But it is not cold or callous. He goes on to say, "But I have prayed for you." That is, I am going to walk beside you. I am not going to protect you from your consequences, but I will walk beside you. I will pray for you. Peter, this is going to mean pain for you, but it is going to mean pain for Me, too."

Half of our "loving others" is to stop them from making us feel pain. Selfish. Jesus said, "We are all going to suffer in this." We ALL suffer when we walk through these things. I want to stop you from walking through them for MY sake, let alone yours, but Jesus didn’t. He said, "I am going to walk with you through this and even though this is the worst night of My life, you are going to have all My prayers for you." And He gave hope. He said, "And when you are through this, you will turn around and you will be able to strengthen your brothers."

And when it was all over a few days later, what does Jesus say? "I told you so!" No, He doesn’t even bring it up. It is over. All He does is now begin to educate Peter into the kind of life that lies ahead. That is how Jesus handled it.

There was a certain lady who had a son. He was wild, a drug dealer and user. She would pray earnestly for him in church. "Don’t let the police find him tonight, God. I know what he has on him. Don’t let the police find him tonight." She stood between her boy and God. She was basically saying, "Don’t let him consequence. Don’t let him hurt. Don’t let any trouble come. We don’t need it in our family."

Her pastor would tell her, "You are anxiety-ing to God. You aren’t praying." Then one day she saw it. She told her pastor, "I have released him. He is in God’s hands." When the boy came home late one night, she called him into her room and said, "I just want to serve you notice. You have been released to God. I will never again pray for your protection. I have taken you and put you into God’s hands and told Him that He has my permission to do what ever needs to be done with you, to bring you into His purposes."

The kid went white as a sheet. The next day he came bursting into the pastor’s office and yelled, "What did you do to my mother?" Three weeks later he came to Jesus. You see, the best thing that could happen to that boy was for his mother to step out of the way so he could consequence what he was doing.

By the way, this is not a suggestion. It is a command. It is a command to CAST OUR ANXIETIES UPON THE LORD. Cast them upon the Lord, not upon the pastor. Many times we think that if we dump it all upon the pastor or some other spiritual person, that is it. No. That only means that you have it still and he’s got it with you now. The only person who can cast the burden upon the Lord is you. Others can pray for you and with you, but only you can cast your burden upon the Lord.

It does say for you to cast your burden upon the Lord. It doesn’t say that in some glorious meeting, in some mysterious way, God will waft through the meeting and carry your anxieties out the door. Then you just go home and say, "Oh, they are gone." No! Some meetings are so wonderful that you may forget your anxieties, but stick around, you will remember. THE ONLY WAY YOU GET RID OF THEM IS BY CASTING THEM UPON THE LORD. Giving them, throwing them into Father’s lap.

Think about it. This is a terrifying command, to relinquish a person into the hands of God and let go, saying, "They are in God’s hands." What a thought. To walk away. To leave them in God’s hands. To sleep all night. That’s irresponsible. They are counting on me to worry for them. How am I going to face them in the morning looking rested and peaceful?

One of the biggest problems you have with saying "good-bye" to fear and worry is that it feels illegal. I am supposed to be worried. With what is going on in his life and her life, I am not supposed to be able to sleep. That is why the Scripture says that after you have cast your cares upon God, the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. This goes beyond the normal. The world says you ought to worry if you really care. "If you care enough, you will worry," the world says.

That is why it feels awkward, to begin with. It feels illegal. But that is what this is all about. When you feel that you have thrown them to the wolves, you’ve said you don’t worry about them any more, that you have put them in God’s hands, then they come sneaking up to get your attention and you must say, "No. I have put you in God’s hands."

You see, when you worry you are not loving them.  It is only when you have rested from worry are you loving them. You are loving them so much that you have released them to God.

What if nothing happens? Well, you don’t have such a good track record with them, do you? I mean, it isn’t as if a lot has been happening. If nothing happens, well, it is about the same as it is now, except they are in better hands and you are getting on with life.

By the way, doing this, putting them in God’s hands, is not the ultimate manipulation. It isn’t saying, "Well, I am going to get my way. I am going to put you in God’s hands. That will teach you." No. When I say, "Put them in God’s hands," I mean put them in God’s hands.

Remember, I said that God does not manipulate anybody. Remember, I said that He allows them to consequence. Remember, I said that when we do this, we feel the pain of watching them have pain as they face the logical conclusion of their decisions. This is not the ultimate manipulation. THIS IS LOVE THAT RELEASES and then walks with pain and prays for the person as you watch them. Stop thinking that if you tried a little harder you could change them or save them. No. It is not true.

When you do this you will discover yourself walking in the peace of God. There is a peace that will exude from you. You will be walking in the Spirit, in fact, you will be so attuned to the Spirit that you will be able to hear Him if there is anything for you to do. Before, you were in such a "tornado" of emotion that you couldn’t hear the voice of God.

Look, sometimes the people we release become confused because they are so used to us being there. As for your daughter who is forever telling you what a creep she married, you had better tell her to tell the Person she should have been telling all along. She has made you a God substitute because you made yourself a God substitute. We say that we are going to be there for our children. We are going to pay all their bills. We are going to make them happy. We are going to bail them out when they are in trouble.

No. No. Not anymore. They are turned over to God, now. Sometimes they will painfully face the results of their irresponsible decisions and other times they will discover the unspeakable joy that you have kept from them by you listening to their problems instead of turning them to the only One Who can really listen. Do you see what I mean?

This is a whole new life style. This is not just, "Yeah, I will give them to God." What happens, little dolphin, is that you get out of the tuna nets.  You have released them, but you get out the nets by releasing them. So really this is the beginning of a whole new you. Because you will begin to find out YOUR emotions. You will find out when YOU are sad, because YOU are sad, not because they have dumped their sadness upon you. You will discover YOUR life, instead of living it through them. It will take time, but you will finally become a person, as you watch them become a person.

As we put the responsibility where it belongs, you are responsible for your life and they are responsible for their life. When they begin to get meshed with you, you are responsible to put them in Father’s lap. And when everybody is responding the proper way, we all begin to grow up. We become spiritually and mentally and emotionally whole.

So, release them. Get out of the nets. Begin to grow-up in Jesus Christ. Cast, throw, all your anxieties, all your people anxieties on Him. And you do it because He affectionately, tenderly LOVES YOU. Stop making it your life to live for your loved one and understand once and for all that