Mission Venture Ministries

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. (1 Peter 5:6-7) 

In the midst of a list of instructions to the church, Peter warns his readers to humble themselves, be sober-minded, and resist the devil. In the same list, he commands them to cast their anxiety on God. It is clear from his letter that the church was being tested by persecution and various trials. Christians were experiencing anxiety and Peter was no stranger to this, because having followed Jesus in his earthly ministry, he was arrested and flogged several times for preaching about Christ. 

Peter stresses the fact that God cares for us and knows us perfectly since “whoever loves God is known by God” (1 Corinthians 8:3). God loves his children and is perfectly attentive; He waits to answer when we pray, to forgive when we repent and to comfort when we are in need. 

Peter’s exhortation to humble ourselves and to cast all our anxieties on the Lord is a command, not a suggestion. We are commanded to trust in the Lord and not in ourselves (Proverbs 3:5) and to be anxious for nothing (Philippians 4:6). God does not want us to be burdened by the difficulties and worries of this life. Instead, He cares for us and promises rest for all who come to Him. If you trust that God is in control and able to handle your concerns, cast all your troubles on Him, regularly giving Him your worries in prayer and living in the rest He gives in turn. 

Jesus also invited people to cast their cares on Him: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30). Jesus calls us to come to Him and cast our burdens on Him, and when we do, the promise is that we will find rest for our souls. The assurance is based on who He is. We can come to Him with any of our concerns in prayer, and, while the burden may still exist, our souls will find rest as we trust in Him to help us carry it and to sustain us through the trial. 

Everything that worries us or weighs us down is to be given to God who cares so deeply for us. These verses do not promise that God will fix or remove our concerns. Instead, the assurance is in knowing that He cares for us, which is why we can cast our cares on Him. God is trustworthy to handle our concerns in the best way. Romans 8:28 tells us that God works all things for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, therefore, we trust that God is able and willing to deal with our concerns. 

To “cast” literally means to “throw.” It comes from the same Greek word used to describe how the people threw their coats on the colt before Jesus rode it into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday (Luke 19:35). We should not hold onto our cares, instead, we should give them to our Father who cares for us and can handle our burdens. 

Remember that God cares about our well-being and wants us to be humble and strong. When we worry and do not acknowledge our profound neediness before God, we are not being humble. Thus, biblical humility is recognizing that our worth is to be found in our Maker. The command is positive; we have a loving Father who desires us to come to him with all our anxieties, disillusionment and fears. 

It may be that if we are going through some deep waters right now that God is seeking to reveal areas where we have been leaning on our own resources or trying to run our own life. It may be that we are trying to find our primary satisfaction in something other than in the Lord. The fact is real satisfaction apart from the Lord as the source of that satisfaction is an illusion that is experienced one moment, and gone the next. We are therefore to cast our whole dependence on Him, not just some areas while we seek to run the others ourselves. 

The fundamental issue is the need for us to humble ourselves, or to allow ourselves to be humbled and thus also transformed by His sovereign work into the character of His Son. God seeks to move us into greater and greater levels of dependence on Him and out of self-dependent living wherein we seek our joy and happiness and satisfaction from the details of life rather than from Him. Psalm 37:5-6 tells us: “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him and He will do this: He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun.” 

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