Casting all your anxiety on Him
1 Peter 5:6-7 Cast those worries into the hands of Jesus, then give them no more of your thought or energy. To do otherwise indicates a lack of trust and faith in God.
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“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.”
1 Peter 5:6-7 NASB1995
A respite from the prophets today! These verses come from the first epistle of Peter, chapter 5, which sums up the book with a call for followers of Christ to serve God willingly.
Peter directs this part of the epistle toward the younger members of the church after addressing the church elders. He asks them to practice humility when dealing with the elders as well as other members of the church, but to also “humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God”. What exactly does that mean?
It means submitting humbly to God’s dealings in your life, trusting Him and accepting His will — even when that may entail hardships. Many people, both in Peter’s time and now, fall to pieces when things aren’t going well. Peter follows his call to be humble with a solution — “casting all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.”
This means that rather than questioning the Lord’s judgement when things are falling apart, we need to humbly trust Him and give Him all our worries and concerns.
The choice of the word “casting” adds a lot of flavor to this verse. Peter doesn’t tell us to just “hand over” our cares and anxiety, or “lay” those apprehensions in the Lord’s lap. Instead he uses the word casting, an energetic word meaning “to throw, hurl, fling”. Peter is telling the younger members of the church to throw their anxieties away from them! Most pressures and burdens of life seem so oppressive that it takes a lot of energy and concentration to put them on Jesus.
The great preacher Charles Spurgeon, writing about these verses, noted that there are some things that you don’t want to burden God with. He said:
“All cares of covetousness, anger, pride, ambition, and wilfulness must be cast to the winds; it would be criminal to dream of casting them upon God. Do not pray about them, except that God will redeem you from them. Let your desires be kept within a narrow circle, and your anxieties will be lessened at a stroke.”1
Between Peter’s advice and Spurgeon’s commentary, Christians have powerful guidelines on how to pray when they are worried. Keep your requests focused on true needs (provision, health, forgiveness, and so on) instead of material things, be humble and realize that God will help you in His own way and time, and once you have cast those worries into the hands of Jesus, give them no more of your thought or energy. To do otherwise indicates a lack of trust and faith in God.
Heaven On Wheels Daily Prayer:
My Heavenly Father, today I cast my cares and worries on You, as I choose to humbly believe Your Word and trust that You will always come through for me. To You I give all the praise and glory in Jesus’ name, AMEN.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org.
Spurgeon, Charles Haddon "The New Park Street Pulpit" Volumes 1-6 and "The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit" Volumes 7-63 (Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications, 1990)
I know this and yet have to be reminded all the time. Thank you for the message Steve.