Cast your cares on the Lord
Psalms 55:22 (NIV)
and he will sustain you;
he will never let
the righteous be shaken.
This verse is very similar to a well-known New Testament passage, 1 Peter 5:7 which reads: “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you” (NLT).
Is it easy to cast our cares on him? It sounds like we should be throwing our anxieties on him like we would throw our backpack on the floor when we are done with a hike. We don’t want to carry it anymore so we throw it down and let the ground support the backpack. We never worry about whether the ground can support our backpack; we are fully confident in its strength. It carries the weight of 100-floor skyscrapers so it can carry the weight of our backpack.
Likewise, God can carry the weight of our anxieties. It is not a strain for him; he carries the weight of the whole universe, including the oversight of billions of people. We might know this in our heads, but it is hard to get our heart to fully embrace this.
You’ve probably experienced the struggle of fighting the urge to put the weight of your cares back on yourself after you have given them to God. We pick the backpack up and put it on because we are not so sure it will work out if we don’t exercise some anxiety over it! We are fighting our old self who doesn’t really believe God will help us.
So, how do we do leave our cares with God? First, we identify our unbelief and take a couple of minutes to let our heart change its mind. We need to choose to believe. Secondly, we persevere. Every time we start to put the backpack on we remind ourselves to put it down over and over again until we have developed the habit of leaving that particular care with God. It may help to keep repeating this verse from Psalm 55 or 1 Peter 5:7 throughout the day. In this way, we can train ourselves to leave this care and many others with God and experience the freedom of trusting him.
Psalm 55:27 says that God will not let the righteous be shaken. This does not mean that everything related to our particular anxiety will work out as we hoped. Certainly, there were many godly believers in the Old Testament who trusted God but still suffered. And suffering is expected under the New Covenant so that we can share in Christ’s victory. But if we keep our hearts abiding in him, in Christ, then our soul will not be shaken. Our circumstances will not shake us. If a trial comes then we trust that God will bring good out of it. If a blessing comes then we will praise him for his goodness.
All things work together for good when we love him, so we cannot lose if we cast our cares on him. He will carry our cares.
