Hope Beyond Dissatisfaction: A Formula That Brings Relief, Part 3

When your life feels empty, God will fill God with you. And today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll teaches from 1 Peter, Chapter 5, as we conclude a message he introduced last time. In the event that you missed any portion of his study, we'll begin with a helpful review. The first piece of counsel for those who wish to find satisfying success in life is to submit yourself to those who are wise instead of flaunting your own authority.

And what will you have when you do that? James says you will have a greater grace. And that is certainly what the successful need. A greater measure of grace. Now, back to 1 Peter 5. Second in his series of three commands has to do with attitude. First, we are told to submit yourself to those who are wise. This statement says, humble yourself under God's mighty hand. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God.

Let me stop there before I go to the last part of the verse. No attitude is more important to those who wish to be truly successful than a humility before the mighty hand of God. I did a little study in this passage and in the Old Testament and I found this. In the Old Testament, God's hand symbolizes two things.

Most often, these two things. First, his discipline and second, his deliverance. When you read of God's hand in the Hebrew Scriptures, you read of God's hand in disciplining his own and you read of his hand in delivering his own.

Let me show you examples of both. Turn back to Exodus 3 verse 19. This is God speaking to Moses and the bush is still burning. There's this argument between Moses and God as to whether Moses will go and be involved in the deliverance.

3.19. But I know, says God, that the king of Egypt, that's Pharaoh, will not permit you to go. Our Bibles read, except under compulsion. If you carry a new American Standard Bible, you will notice the marginal reference.

I know that the king of Egypt will not permit you to go except by a strong hand. On your way to tracing this, look at Psalm 32. And you know right away when I mention that Psalm, it is a reference to David while he was in the pits trying to live through his days of hypocrisy.

As he kept the secret of Bathsheba in his life, the ugly secret of his immorality. Psalm 32 verse 4. Talk about the disciplining hand of God. For day and night, thy hand was heavy upon me.

My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. He's describing a nagging, gnawing conscience of guilt, like a hot summer night. That's God's hand. That's his mighty hand. Attitude we're talking about when God disciplines his hand touches me and I respond.

I respond. Second and the better part of the picture is his hand of deliverance. Go back to Deuteronomy 9 26.

We'll just look at one reference here. Deuteronomy 9 26. So I fell down before the Lord, says verse 25, the 40 days and nights, which I did because the Lord had said, I would destroy you. And I prayed to the Lord and I said, Oh Lord God, do not destroy thy people, even by an inheritance whom thou has redeemed through thy greatness, whom thou has brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand, a hand of deliverance, a hand of deliverance. Now back to first Peter chapter five, the apostle Peter is talking, he is writing about ancient Israel, but he is implying here about all times. He's talking to people in his day and by application in our day.

Now here's the point. When we truly humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, get it now, we willingly accept his disciplines and we gratefully acknowledge his deliverances. If I were speaking to people in prison, I would say under God's mighty hand, you willingly accept the disciplines that he brings you. And as time passes and the prison fellowship ministry brings a cool breeze of relief, you gratefully acknowledge his deliverance.

His deliverance from those awful days and nights of loneliness and shattering disappointment and humiliation. In other words, we don't manipulate events or people. We don't hurry things along. We let God set the pace and we humble ourselves under his hand. It's a steadying hand.

It's a firm hand. Now we're ready for the beneficial result. Chapter five of first Peter verse six. Humbled yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God.

Why? Here's the purpose clause. In order that he may exalt you at the proper time. What does it mean to humble yourself under the mighty hand of God as a budding songwriter? Well, what did David do? Go back to first Samuel chapter 16. And you'll read of a young man, not yet 20, who kept his father's sheep and was also sort of a homegrown musician. Didn't pursue the glory. Somebody had known about David's music and said to Saul, who needed music, he's a skillful player and the Lord is with him.

Those are combinations that fit. If you want to be able to handle the success that will come with good music, the Lord must be with you. So you humbled yourself under the mighty hand of God and let them find you.

David did. God swept him into that dark tent. Coleridge writes a great piece on the dark tent of Saul's depression. It's wonderful. Anyway, it's dark.

It's depressing. And in comes David with his soothing, therapeutic lyrics and music. And Saul's heart is lightened. Saul kept him there. In fact, it says he would not let him go back. And by and by, David killed the giant.

And the story is familiar from then on. In 1 Peter 5, when you humbled yourself under the mighty hand of God, God will exalt you. You don't have to promote yourself if you've got the stuff.

They'll find you. God will use you. I don't care what the world system says. I don't care if I'm the only voice saying it. I'm not.

But even if I were, I would say it with all the volume I've got. Let God do the promoting. Let God do the exalting.

You stay under his hand. Now, I don't know why I'm getting mad at you. I'm not. I'm just feeling passionate about this. Now, submit yourself to those who are wise. Second, humble yourself under God's mighty hand.

You already see the third one. It has to do with anxiety. Because as soon as you get swept up into this and all kinds of things begin to happen to you, anxiety will accompany. There will always be something wrong. Life is difficult. Trouble happens. I saw that on pickup the other day.

It didn't read quite like that, but it's the same idea. Chapter 5 verse 7, casting all your anxiety upon him because he cares for you. Here's the third piece of counsel. Get it straight. Throw yourself on the mercy and care of God. That's it. Throw yourself on the mercy and the care of God.

See, the word casting, literally it says to throw upon, to heave it over, we might say. When those anxieties that always accompany growth and true success emerge, and they will every time. Sometime the anxiety will come in the form of people. Sometime it will come in the form of the media. Sometime it will come in the form of things.

A thousand other things I could mention. Heave those things back on the Lord. Throw them back on the one who gave them. Psalm 55 22. Remember the verse? Cast thy burden upon the Lord and he shall sustain thee. He will never suffer the righteous to be moved.

You know what the Hebrew picture is of Psalm 55 22? It's taking a pack and letting it fall from off your back. If you've ever carried a pack in mountain climbing or in the military, you know there is nothing quite like the wonderful news from the leader. Well, let's stop here for a while. I've never seen anyone say, no, I'd rather just hold on to my pack.

Everybody said, oh, wonderful. And you peel it off your shoulders and you hear, thump, thump, thump, thump, all these packs as they hit the ground. That's the word picture here. Roll your pack, cast your pack, release your burden. Reminds me of John Bunyan's picture of Christian when he came to the place of the sepulcher and the cross.

The burden fell from off his back. But this is directed to us. It's a deliberate command. Now, you want a simple formula for relief.

Watch closely. You just wrote it down. If you took notes, submission plus humility minus worry equals relief. It's a simple formula for relief. You can live with success if you carry out that formula. Submission to those who are wise plus humility under God's mighty hand minus the worries equal relief. Now, I wish it were as simple as just hearing a talk and everybody walks away saying, that's it. I'm changed. It's going to happen.

It won't work like that. So let me suggest that there are three needs in all of our lives to make those things happen, to affect the changes I've talked about. First of all, we need direction. We need direction so we can know to whom we should submit.

We need direction so we can know to whom we should submit. You don't submit to everybody. Start doing that. You try to please everybody.

And that's instant failure. So we need God to direct us to those to whom we should submit. Who are the people I should follow? Who are the folks I should watch? Who are the works I should read? Who's written the songs I should sing?

Who's given me the model I should emulate? I need direction from God. So I begin to pray for that.

Lord, direct me to the right ones to whom I should submit. Second, we need discipline, a great need in all of our lives. What's the discipline? To restrain our hellish pride. It'll keep rearing its head. If you're not careful, the more successful you get, the stronger will be the temptation to rely on the flesh. We need discipline to restrain our own hellish pride. It'll come in and tell us how to promote ourselves, how to manipulate other people. It'll tell us how to intimidate. We need the discipline to keep ourselves from being our own deliverer.

The discipline to stay under the hand to quiet us while God is disciplining us. We need discipline to restrain our own pride. Third, we need discernment so we can spot the first beginnings of anxiety. We need discernment.

Or we'll quickly throw it all in when the anxieties grow out of proportion. We need to spot that's the beginning of an anxiety. You ever do this? This occurs to me. Ever have something that begins to kind of nag you?

You can't put your finger on it, sort of fuzzy, sort of a slimy ooze. It's just growing out there and it's kind of nagging you. You can't quite put your finger on the thing that's kind of getting you down. That is the beginning of a heavy anxiety, an anxiety attack. It takes discernment to spot it and to identify it and to go to its root and to deal with it. When you observe it and you see what it is and you've identified it, that's the time to cast it on God, to roll that pack on Him.

I can't handle it. Now, finally, you find yourself caught in a success syndrome. You've been reading too many of the magazines from the secular world, getting tempted to do it their way, still convinced their formula might work, perhaps not fully convinced that this is the best plan. Listen to the words out of literature. I'm committing them to memory, not because I believe everything is written, but because I think this statement is worth remembering and passing on. Henry David Thoreau wrote, If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. Thoreau is deep. His thoughts are deep.

Let me repeat it. If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. You see, the beauty of that is that it says, without saying it, that God's successes are never contrived. They are never forced. They are never the working of human flesh.

They are usually unexpected and always surprising. I'd like us to bow our heads for just a few moments more. I'd like to bring us all under the mighty hand of God. Picture it. The hand of Jesus Christ has a scar.

It comes from a nail, a spike, a Roman spike that was driven through it. That hand speaks of pain. That hand is firm because it's holding you and this entire world under firm control. That hand is not going to be lifted from your life until you submit. It isn't a playful hand. This isn't a moment of frivolity. It casts a shadow across your life in the shape of a cross.

It's open. It is permanently over your life. Tell me, do you know the Lord Jesus personally and intimately? If you do not, then under that mighty hand of God, your submission is the submission of your soul. You give your heart to Jesus Christ.

Nothing in your hand you bring. Simply to His cross you cling. It's a statement of faith, an act of faith.

God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him should never perish but have everlasting life. Believe now. Submit now. And child of God, before I pray here, let the wrestling cease. Set aside your will. Won't you just set it aside? Give it up. Stop the fight. Humble yourself under His mighty hand. Accept His discipline. Acknowledge His deliverance.

Go with Him. I am so grateful, Father, for the truth of Your Word. Old and New Testament, the teachings of Jesus, the writings of Peter, the statements of Moses, the profound songs of the psalmist, all of it blending together in a harmony, a symphony of theological and practical significance. In this point of time, You have us under Your hand. In our more lucid moments, we want to be there.

In times of carnality and wildness, we want to run. Thank You for holding us, for forgiving us, for accepting us. In this moment in time, we give You the full right to discipline, to direct, to deliver in Your way and in Your time. Humbly, we pray, we submit in Jesus' name.

Amen. Visit us online at insightworld.org. When you're ready to dig deeper into 1 Peter on your own time, you might want to peruse the resources for our current teaching series. For instance, Chuck wrote a Bible commentary that covers 1 Peter. In fact, the book includes his commentary on James, 1 Peter, and 2 Peter. It's called Swindoll's Living Insights New Testament Commentary. In one volume, you can gain access to Chuck's interpretation of these books, representing decades of personal study and preaching. To purchase a copy of Chuck's commentary on James, 1 and 2 Peter, give us a call.

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Wow. It's your donation that allows us to reach grateful listeners like this one. So please give us a call. If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888, or you can give a donation online at insight.org. I'm Bill Meyer. Join us next time when Chuck Swindoll talks about standing nose to nose with the adversary. That's coming up on Insight for Living. Thank you.