In both the Old and New Testaments we read a very simple but, I believe, life transformational admonition that if Christians followed could bring great peace and joy to their walk with the Lord. These two verses will not only free us from the bondage of worry, we so often fall prey to, but will allow us to spend more time focusing on Jesus and advancing His kingdom. These two verses simply read:
“Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.” (Psalm 55:22)
“casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7)
My friends we were never created to spend our time worrying and stressing over the daily affairs of life as sadly, so many Christians do. When we do worry and stress we basically are spending all of our energy in fretting over our circumstances instead of relying on the One who is totally able to sustain us and see us through even during the darkest of days. In fact (Psalm 55:22) is just one of God’s wonderful promise verses. When we cast our cares on Jesus we are letting Him take care of our burdens. In fact, not only will the Lord help us work through our problems, but He will even turn them into opportunities to help others and bring glory to His name.
Just how God does this can be seen in two ways. First, when we give our problems and cares over to the Lord we are basically telling Jesus that we are choosing to enlist His aid, request His guidance, and wait on Him to bring about His perfect will in our situation. In this way we can focus not on our cares but on Jesus and His promise to see us through. And the exciting thing about Jesus is that He specializes in taking our problems and bringing blessings in return.
And the second way Jesus takes our problems and turns them into blessings can be wonderfully seen from the following insight from A. B. Simpson who said: “Have you ever learned the beautiful art of letting God take care of you and giving all your thought and strength to pray for others and for the kingdom of God? It will relieve you of a thousand cares.”1 As Christians we know we should pray for others more but one of the main reasons we often pray so little is that we spend too much of our time thinking on our own problems – leaving little time to pray for others. When we cast all our cares on Jesus an incredible thing happens – we now have much more time to pray for the problems and needs of others and spend our time and efforts on kingdom matters!
So we are left with a choice. We can either keep our cares or cast them on the Lord. And when we do the latter we not only free ourselves from being slaves to our negative thoughts and problems, but we become free to spend more time praying for others, advancing His kingdom, and ultimately bringing glory to God! Let’s not waste our energy worrying any longer. Instead, let’s cast our cares on the Savior and in turn He will make us channels of blessings to many.