Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. —Philippians 4:6
Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. —1 Peter 5:7
Casting the whole of your care—all your anxieties, all your worries, all your concerns, once and for all—on Him; for He cares for you affectionately, and cares about you watchfully. —1 Peter 5:7 (AMPLIFIED)
Kenneth E. Hagin tells the following story:
One evening after a service, a woman came to me and said, "I want you to agree with me in prayer about something. The burdens of life—the cares, the worries of life—are just so heavy I can't bear them."
She began to cry. With sincerity she said, "I want you to pray God will either give me grace to bear these burdens or else take about half of them away. I can carry about half of them—I just can't carry all of them."
"Dear Sister," I replied, "we don't have to pray about that— we've already heard from heaven. God's Word is our message from heaven. His Word couldn't be more sure if an angel suddenly came down here and wrote with his finger on a granite block:
GOD'S WORD IS ETERNAL." She looked startled. I opened my Bible to First Peter 5:7 and asked her to read out loud. She read, "Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you."
Then I said, "I can't pray God would give you grace to bear your cares and worries. He doesn't want you to bear them. And I can't pray God would take away half of them, because He doesn't want you to carry even half of them. He wants you to cast all of them on Him."
"I can't do it!" she said.
I said, "Sister, God is not telling you to do something you can't do. He would be an unjust God to do that. You've been praying about this for years and have never gotten an answer. That's not the way to solve this problem. You solve this by doing what God said to do." "Yeah," she replied, "but you don't know what I've got to worry about!"
"But God does," I said. "He knows and understands. And He said to cast all your cares upon Him." It seemed to me a person would be glad to find that verse in the Bible and would be thrilled to act upon it. But she turned, walked away, and said, "I couldn't give up worrying."
Paul said in Philippians 4:6, "Be careful for nothing...." The Amplified Bible reads, "Do not fret or have any anxiety about anything ...." Too many times people want to pray and get God to do something about their anxieties. But God tells you to do something about them. He said, "Be careful for nothing." Or, "Don't you fret or have anxiety about anything."
As long as you do not take this first step—as long as you fret and have anxiety—you are nullifying the effects of your prayer. You haven't cast your burden on the Lord. You still have it. And if you have it, God doesn't.
Casting all your care on Him isn't something you do every day. It's a once-and-for-all proposition. This puts your situation in His hands. The Lord could do a lot for us, but often we don't let Him because we don't follow His rules that govern the operation of prayer. We don't do what He tells us to do. Then we wonder why things don't work out.
If you cast your burden on the Lord, He has it. You don't. You cannot go around talking about your worries anymore. A lot of people don't want to get rid of their worries. They claim they do, but they really don't. If they got rid of them, they wouldn't have any reason for people to sympathize with them. They wouldn't have anything to talk about. They would have to cease conversation entirely.
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