Casting
What do you do with anxiety?
Verse of the Day
“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”
Today’s Devotional
I need this verse today. I am overwhelmed and I am worrying about things and carrying burdens that are not mine to carry. I spent some time with God this morning praying that I would faithfully lay my burdens before him. I need to be reminded that I am not in charge of the world. I am not even in charge of MY world.
And then I studied this verse specifically. And the word I had never really acknowledged before was “cast”. I am not a fisherman, but I know how it is done. When you are casting the lure, you do not just drop it in the water. You do not merely dangle the rod in the water. You throw the lure with some force. And you hold on to the rod. Doing this well and with efficiency takes practice. So how do I apply this to my anxieties?
Here are some notes from the commentaries: “Casting is a rather energetic word. He didn’t say, “Lay all your cares upon Him,” because we have to do it more energetically than that. The idea is, “throw it away from you.” The pressures and the burdens of your life are so heavy and difficult that it takes great concentration of effort to put them on Jesus. This work of casting can be so difficult that we need to use two hands to do it: the hand of prayer and the hand of faith. “Prayer tells God what the care is, and asks God to help, while faith believes that God can and will do it. Prayer spreads the letter of trouble and grief before the Lord, and opens ail its budget, and then faith cries, ‘I believe that God cares, and cares for me; I believe that he will bring me out of my distress, and make it promote his own glory.“
Therefore, I need to energetically, intentionally throw my worries on God. And the “rod” that I need to hold on to is my faith in the fact that God really does care. God is good, but that is not all He is. God CARES about the fact that I’m struggling. God desires my faithful act of casting the things to Him that I cannot handle. God is reminding me that it is prideful to do anything less. Thinking that I can handle my day by myself is not only unrealistic, it is delusional.
Having a God that cares for me makes everything feel better. Knowing that He has instructed me to cast my worries to Him humbles me and makes me grateful.
Cast my anxieties. Hold tight to my faith. Why? Because God cares about me. This process, when practiced continually, will help to shape the way I think. When I keep a record of the things I am casting to Him, perhaps in a journal, I then have a written record of His faithfulness, which makes it easier to cast my cares on Him again and again.
Journal Prompts
Answer only the questions that seem relevant to you today.
How can you learn and practice casting your worries/fears/anxieties/cares to God?
How does it make you feel that he wants to carry your burdens for you?
How does it feel to be reminded about how much God cares about you and the details of your life?
How can you hold on TIGHT to your faith today? What does that look like for you today?