Casting Your Cares

It always seems like Christmas flies by. The holiday’s prep, planning and shopping is enough to create anxiety. Add that to the anxieties you’re already facing and, well if you’re like me you could be a hot mess. If there is one thing I want to do this year is not carry them into the New Year. Tomorrow, the New Year has its own worries I don’t want to carry more.

Matthew 6:34 – “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (NLT) So what do I do with today’s worries?”

1 Peter 5:7 – “casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”

This is what always has me stumped. It’s so easy to say this to someone who is struggling and facing anxiety. I know I have been guilty of this. And when someone reminds me of this verse, honestly, I am only half comforted. I always need more. I don’t consider myself a needy person per se, but I need to know why and how. That’s just how I am wired.

I worked as a Surgical Technologist for over a decade. And in my learning and training when I was being taught procedures and protocols I would always ask why, especially when it seemed like it didn’t make sense. And there was always rational behind it. If it made sense I was likely to remember why I was doing it.

So casting our cares, what does that look like? Other than praying, what else is there? For me it’s knowing why. So why? Because of Matthew 6:34, tomorrow has enough of it’s own troubles don’t go borrowing any by worrying about tomorrow. Why? Because of 1 Peter 5:7 “… because He cares for you.” God cares. He cares about the details. If He knows the number of hairs on my head, as it says in Luke 2:7, then He cares about the details and the worries in my life.

Recently, I came across this article from Desiring God by John Piper that helped me understand what casting my anxieties meant. By casting our anxieties we are humbling ourselves. Verse 5 of 1 Peter 5 says “ … you who are younger must accept the authority of the elders. And all of you, dress yourselves in humility as you relate to one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Casting our cares is something we do to humble ourselves, not something we do after we cast our cares. I encourage you to read this article, John Piper does a much better job than I do.

Piper offers more insight with Luke 19:35, – “And they brought him to Jesus: and they cast their garments upon the colt, and they set Jesus thereon.” The word “cast” means the same in 1 Peter. The way the garment was cast or tossed onto the donkey is the way we ought to cat our anxieties. Piper says to lay a specific anxiety on God, trust Him specifically, Job 42:2. Please click on the link above and read the article, there is so much more.

But here is something else that helps me. When I remember God’s sovereignty, Jeremiah 32-:17 – “O Sovereign LORD! You made the heavens and earth by your strong hand and powerful arm. Nothing is too hard for you!” When I remember He is bigger than any problem or anxiety I may have and that He knows the outcomes, He is there in the future and with me in the present and nothing takes Him by surprise. I recall times in the past when God came through for me, for His people.

For me, I want to start 2024 with casting my cares and anxieties on Him. And He knows what I am already carrying and He is already in 2024! God saved us from the biggest anxiety we could have, the debt we can never pay back and that is the debt of sin.