Lately this has been my go-to verse when something troubling wants to take my thoughts in a negative direction: Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you (1 Peter 5:7). Isn’t that verse short and simple? Even if you tell me you can’t memorize Scripture, I expect if you said that verse three times a day, within a week (and probably less – you may even know it now without having tried to memorize it), you would know it by heart.
From Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance that word “casting” literally means “to throw upon.” We are not to just haphazardly cast toward or gently fling our cares on the Lord, but we are to literally throw cares on Him. Have you thrown anything lately? When you do that, it is a purposeful act. For throwing to occur, you have to let go of the item you are throwing – let it go!
What are our cares? Again according to Strong’s they are our anxieties. Do we have anxieties? I expect we sure do! How many cares do we cast on Him? We cast all of them. Again Strong’s tells us how much all really is: “all, any, every, the whole.” How wonderful is that?
Then our verse tells us why we can do that – because He cares for us. That word cares means: to be of interest to, i.e. to concern. My dear sisters, God loves us enough to care for us and want us to throw our anxieties on Him. He can deal well with them. We can’t.
When you face an anxiety, you can do what 1 Peter 5:7 tells you to do – throw that anxiety (and every other one you have) on Christ. Throw it! In order to throw it, you have to let it go. While you are doing that, be grateful that God cares for you and wants you to cast your cares on Him. Don’t keep carrying them around when He gives you this beautiful directive. If the anxiety comes back, throw it out again. Do that over and over using this simple verse that is only eleven words long.
We talked last month about God’s Word and its relevance to our daily lives: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). We may take a hermeneutics (the art and science of studying God’s Word with the goal of rightly interpreting it) class at church to learn how to rightly study and divide Scripture. We could be in a doctrine or theology class. Those are great, and I encourage you to do them, if you can. But in the end, it is what I do with God’s Word, in my heart and thoughts, with the situations I face on a daily basis, that matters.
A couple of months ago we talked about this verse: “Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer (Romans 12:12).
Last month it was this one: “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).
And now: Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you (1 Peter 5:7).
Sisters, you need at least one, and better yet a few verses, that you have memorized that you can easily and quickly put into your mind when you are troubled, anxious, feeling self pity, upset, unhappy, frustrated – all of those negative thoughts and emotions you can experience. Then prayerfully, in those situations, do just that. Think that Scripture. Say it out loud, if need be. It isn’t hard, but it does take a conscious decision. The negative is in your mind by default. Scripture is there by choice.