Anyone who has heard a sermon, attended a church retreat, or gone to Wednesday-night youth group has heard that we should cast our cares on Jesus. And yet, Americans were found to be the most anxious people in a recent study of fourteen countries with many of us suffering from an anxiety disorder in our lifetime.
The research backs it up: We are a nation of worriers.
Let’s be clear. I’m not a board-certified expert in anything… let alone anxiety. I’m a mom who writes encouraging words on a screen, but I worry all the time. I get anxious about the physical safety, emotional health, and future of our girls. I worry about my husband. Thinking about the world’s needs, instability, and violence gives me anxiety. And if I had to guess, you probably share in worry like this too.
When I worry, I know that I should cast my cares, but…
I mistakenly believe that if I cast my cares, I will be worry-free, so when the worry crops up again, I tell myself two lies.
1. I believe that casting my cares doesn’t work. My past experiences of disappointment, pain, and uncertainty make it hard for me to trust God for my future. But I forget a basic, Jesus-given principle: a care-free life simply isn’t possible this side of heaven. When I remember that I’ll have troubles and worries here on earth, I’m not surprised when I have them.
2. I believe that I’m the “ye of little faith” Jesus was talking about as I continue to hold the cares I allegedly cast to God. I start to beat myself up for worrying, and then I tell myself I need bigger faith. Yet, casting my cares is not about the size of my faith. Casting my cares has everything to do with who I’m casting them to, and absolutely nothing to do with the size of my faith, my works, or my behavior.
The lies I believe cover up the truth of the three goals of casting our cares.
The first goal isn’t care-elimination but care-exchange. Because our world will always have worries and causes for fear, the question isn’t when the worries will go away, the question is “Who will carry the weight of the worries: us or Jesus?”
The second goal is to build our relationship with Jesus. We get to know Jesus when we give over of our fears to Him over and over again. This process builds our trust in Him, and it gives us a reason to get to know Him better. God can and will use anything to help us know we are fully known and fully loved.
The third goal is to focus on the object of our faith, not the size of our faith. Casting our cares is about Jesus and His ability to handle and repurpose everything for good. Our God loves us completely, and our worries cannot overwhelm Him. Casting my cares has everything to do with who I’m casting them to, and absolutely nothing to do with the size of my faith, my works, or my behavior.
So how do we give over the weight of our intangible worries to someone we can’t see or touch?
The Bible says it requires patience, trust, and humility.
Casting our cares requires patience.
Achievers are wired to act as quickly as possible, yet we know that God uses our waiting. In 1 Peter 5:6–7, Peter writes that God will “lift you up in due time.” Not our timing, His. So let’s continue to cast our cares as often as we need to—hourly, daily, or weekly. Let’s remember to be patient with ourselves as we train our hearts in this new way: giving Him the worry as soon as we feel the fear.
Casting our cares requires trust.
The antidote to worry is trust. If our heart is filled with fear, it cannot be full of faith. We have to choose: do we trust God or do we trust what we see? As Lysa TerKeurst writes in Uninvited, “What we see will violate what we know unless what we know dictates what we see.” When what we see causes us to doubt God’s love, power, and sovereignty, we have to hold up our fear to what we know to be true: God is trustworthy.
Casting our cares requires humility.
1 Peter 5:6–7 says, “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.” Peter is telling us that, in order to cast our cares, we need a heart that’s willing to ask for help. The process requires us to die to ourselves and to our need to fix, solve, and understand. It’s about acknowledging that there’s One who knows and sees all… and it’s not us. Casting our cares exhorts us to cry out for help from God and others. Pride and independence are not the way of Jesus.
We don’t have to be a nation of worriers. Casting our cares is a choice. We must choose to be patient when we want to move, to trust when we want to doubt, and to be humble when we want to be self-sufficient. We simply need a steadfast heart, which is something that our sovereign, trustworthy, and humble God is more than happy to give us.
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