Casting Your Anxiety

Humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.

1 Peter 5:6-7

Responding to God’s invitation to cast our worries on him takes a good deal of humility. When people can handle things by themselves and have experienced a high degree of success, they can easily become prideful. But humbling ourselves can be very freeing to our souls.

The flip side is this: if we don’t follow the advice in today’s verses, we can become too burdened down to press on in our calling. God wants us to soar like the eagles and run without fainting, but we won’t have the spiritual or physical energy to do this if we’re carrying a fifty-pound burden of worry on our backs.

Carol came out of an abusive marriage a number of years ago and was left with no money. Fearful and anxious, she was constantly in crisis-management mode. She worried the tires were going to fall off her old car. She dreaded the first of the month, afraid she couldn’t pay her bills. When she heard sirens, she feared her teenage daughter had been in a wreck.

Finally, exhausted and at the end of her rope, Carol cried out to God and slowly realized that he wanted her to give her worries and cares to him because he loved and cared about her deeply. She began to roll her burdens onto God in prayer, and as she did, her energy was renewed. She started her own business and eventually was able to support herself and her daughter, send her daughter to college, and even help others.

You and I are given the same invitation today from the God who holds all power and authority: cast all your worries and cares upon the one who promises to care for you.

Lord, I am prone to be anxious with the unbearable weight of myself and my problems. Yet your Word says you don’t want your children to be anxious about anything but to pray about everything. Grant me deep humility and renewed dependence on you to do this day by day.

Talk to [God] in prayer of all your wants, your troubles, even of the weariness you feel in serving him. You cannot speak too freely, too trustfully to him.

François Fénelon(1651–1715), French theologian, priest, and poet