Cast Your Anxieties on Him

June 11, 2020

This brief, famous verse comes toward the end of a letter to suffering Christians. In the letter we see a relationship between humility and the way we deal with fear. We are told not to pridefully try to solve all our own problems, but to cast our anxieties on the Lord. 

SCRIPTURE

Click her to read from 1 Peter 5:6-7

For more help, study the passage using this tool:  Bible Study method.

REFLECTION

Out of Control

By Kelsey Bacon

"Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you."

I think sometimes it can be hard to admit our anxiety--to ourselves, to God, or to others. And I think it's because of that key word in verse 6: humble. We live in a self-centered world where we are taught that weakness is a flaw, rather than an inevitability of human nature.

I have never been a person who struggles greatly with anxiety, but I have learned to see the signs in myself. Often, if I'm anxious or stressed about something, it will manifest in my body in a physical way, like a headache or a stomachache. So, when I start to feel these things for no apparent reason, I must check myself and ask God, "why am I feeling this way?" And then search my heart and give it up to him.

In a world that largely doesn't see anxiety as a real debilitating issue (although I think that's changing for the better), and in a world where levels of depression and anxiety in kids and teens are rising year after year, now more than ever we need these words of comfort from the Bible. It takes mindfulness, effort, and humility to "cast your anxiety" on the Lord. Because we have to first be humble enough to recognize that we're feeling anxious and that it is something to be addressed, something that God doesn't want you to live in, rather than brushing it off as a non-issue. Then we have to do the heart work of discerning the source of our anxiety. 

Maybe this is easy, maybe it's difficult. Maybe it's through discerning prayer, speaking with trusted friends, counseling, or a combination of all of those (I'd bet that whatever the route is, prayer is in there somewhere). And finally, we need to have the humility to trust God with our stress, anxiety, and problems. To trust that he is in control, that he's got this. I've found that when I do feel anxious, a lot of the time it's because I don't feel in control of a situation. To humble ourselves means to lay our whole selves down before the Lord and say, "you know what's best. I will do your will, I will trust your timing, and I will relinquish my need for control."

If you think about it, we were never really in control anyway. And why would we want to be? God is far more capable than we are. And that last part of verse 6 is the key to it all: he cares for us. That's why we humble ourselves, that's why we cast our anxieties, that's why we trust him with control of our lives, of our world. Because he cares for us, and he will not lead us astray.

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