Christian, God’s heart toward you is one of love and compassion. He loves you so much he died to save you from your sins. You are in his care, and even the trials you are facing are doing his excellent work.

You cannot cast your cares on Jesus without a biblical worldview. Often, when we are dealing with a problem that has us worried, a friend will remind us of 1 Peter 5:7, which says, “Cast all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” Though it is a great verse, we rarely know what to do with it. How do we cast our cares on Jesus? Of course, our first thought is prayer, and it is an excellent thought. As we pray, we say something like this, “Lord, life hurts right now. I need you to take care of the problems I am facing. I am casting my cares on you as your word says. Please take them from me.” This prayer is an excellent start, and I recommend it or something similar for anyone facing adversity. The problem is our expectations are often unbiblical; instead of leaving our burdens with God, all we did was give some slack to the rope that binds us to them.

As we walk away from the Throne of Grace, we think, “maybe God will take care of this,” and since the rope tying us to our burden is no longer as tight, we start to feel a little better. However, if God decides not to end our trial immediately, that rope begins to lose its slack. Before we know it, we are dragging those cares around once again. The problem is, when scripture tells us to cast our care on him, it is not telling us to bring our concerns to him so he can make them go away. Instead, it is telling us not to be anxious even while the problems exist. After all, if God removed all our problems, we would have no cares to cast on him.

The verse tells us the fundamental reason we are to give our burdens to God is that he cares for us. Since he cares for us, we must quit trying to be God and trust he knows what is best for us. Our problem is that we tend to think we know better than God how he should care for us. Therefore, we grow restless when he does not remove our adversities.

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