“Why would I think I can handle my anxiety?” Have you asked that question? In the middle of our anxious moments, we’re not that self-reflective, but when sober-minder, have you ever asked why you and I try so hard to manage our anxieties? We all try to do it, and it’s helpful to ask why we’re like this. The Bible, as always, helps us here.
Cast Because He Cares
“Casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” First Peter 5:7 is a wonderful and beloved verse because it teaches that God cares, he cares for me, and he cares in such a way that it’s right for me to cast all my anxieties onto him. He’s God, he can help, and he helps because he cares. The beloved point is that our God is not some reluctant, aloof Deity; he’s a caring nothing-is-too-hard-for-me Father.
You might have noticed, however, that the famous verse picks up mid-sentence. The NIV incorrectly begins a new sentence (“Cast all your anxieties”), but the Greek is an “ing” word (as shown in the KJV, ESV, NASB): “…casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” The complete sentence Peter wrote is “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:6-7). In brief, the sentence is an instruction, but the main instruction is not cast your anxieties; it’s “humble yourself.”
“Casting your anxieties” is a description of how to “humble yourself.”
Why Bring Pride Into Such a Beautiful Verse
But why, we may ask, should this beautiful verse about God’s care and casting our anxieties be tainted by a reference to pride and humility? “Of course we should be humble. Yes, pride is bad. But this verse is about God’s care for us in our anxieties. Why such talk about pride and humility here?”
Take heart: The command to “humble yourself” doesn’t taint the verse about God’s care; it bolster it. God cares for us, so we should cast our anxieties. But also, God cares for us, so he wants us to be humble. Both are his loving care. (We don’t like anxieties, so we understand easily that if he can take those away, that’s great care. Yet we know less that pride is terrible for us. Once we come to grips with this, we see his care leads him to both receive anxieties and to tell us to “humble ourselves.”)
But even more than only showing us God’s care, the complete sentence also helps us see why we struggle to cast our anxieties on God. Or more specifically, why we think we can handle our anxieties. We don’t cast our anxieties due to pride.
This is why Peter connects casting anxieties on God with the need to humble ourselves. Saying that pride is the reason we hold onto anxieties may sound harsh, but it’s a proper description of how we work. Why don’t we pray when we’re anxious? We usually either 1) think we’re strong enough to handle them on our own (pride); 2) believe we can find resources to handle them than prayer (also pride); 3) are so self-focused that we think God can’t help, that it’s hopeless (also a form of pride); or 4) think that we can handle it because time will make it go away (which is a variant of option one). In all these circumstances, our pride leaves us to our own thoughts, willpower, or resources. We don’t look to God. We look self-ward, disregarding the God who cares for us.
At first, being told to “humble yourself…casting your anxieties on him” is, well, humbling. It jars us that holding to anxieties is linked to our pride. But we should also start to feel that this instruction is encouraging and freeing. We do not need to try to muster up the willpower to stop being anxious. The “I can fix it” attitude is prideful. It’s a God-less (or at least a God-devaluing) formula. He intends more for us. He cares more for us than letting me live like that. We not only can cast, we should cast—for our help and his glory.
It’s Good We Can’t Handle Our Anxieties
It’s good, then, that we can’t handle our anxieties. May we remember that next time we’re anxious and try to manage our feelings on our own.
God is enticing you and me in those moments to come. He’s inviting us to cast our anxieties on him with love in his eyes (1 Peter 5:6-7). And when we do so, we acknowledge he cares and loves us, and we admit we can’t handle our anxieties ourself. We gladly humble ourselves, acknowledging we’re too weak. We admit we don’t have the wisdom, the resources, the strength. But we know him who does.
“Humble yourselves…casting you anxieties on him.” In such an act, we forsake our own resources and embrace the caring, nothing-is-too-hard-for-me Father.
