All Your Anxiety

“Songs My Father Sang”

All Your Anxiety

What do you do with worry? Confront it? Cover it up? Complain about it?

Or we can do what the Bible instructs us to do:

Psalmist David: “Cast your burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain you” (Ps. 55:22).
     Psalm 37:5 “Commit your way to the LORD, Trust also in Him, and He will do it."

Apostle Peter: “Cast…all your cares [distracting anxieties] upon Him, for He cares for [a different Greek word, meaning the Lord is concerned about] you” (I Pet. 5:7). (NIV)

     “Casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.” (New American Standard)

Matthew 6:27 "And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?

Philippians 4:6-7 “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Jesus: “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)

The hymn:  All Your Anxiety

A wonderful hymn on this theme was written in 1920 by Edward Henry Joy (1871-1949), an officer and musician in the Salvation Army in England, later serving in Winnipeg, Canada.

All Your Anxiety uses the symbol of the mercy seat, which was located above the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament Tabernacle and Temple. The mercy seat was the place where God met with His people. Exodus 25:21-22, God’s instructions to Moses: “You shall put the mercy seat on top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the Testimony that I will give you. And there I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are on the ark of the Testimony, about everything which I will give you in commandment to the children of Israel.”

All Your Anxiety

Text and Music: Edward Henry Joy, 1920

Is there a heart o'er bound by sorrow?
Is there a life weighed down by care?
Come to the cross each burden bearing.
All our anxiety leave it there.


Refrain:


All your anxiety, all your care,
Bring to the mercy seat leave it there;
Never a burden He cannot bear,
Never a friend like Jesus.

No other friend so keen to help you,
No other friend so quick to hear.
No other place to leave your burden;
No other one to hear your prayer.


Come then at once; delay no longer!
Heed His entreaty kind and sweet.
You need not fear a disappointment;
You shall find peace at the mercy seat.