One of the most astounding promises in the Bible for people battling stress and walking through a season of suffering is 1 Peter 5:6-7, which says,
6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.
I’ve read those verses many times before, but it wasn’t until recently that the connection between the two verses lit up before my eyes like a white-hot neon light.
I had memorized those verses back in high school, except upon reading it again, something felt ‘off’ from what I had remembered. And then it hit me—I had originally memorized those verses in the NIV translation, which splits the passage into two different sentences as opposed to the ESV, which keeps it in tact as one coherent idea, as the author originally wrote it.†
Cast or Casting?
When the NIV divides the verses into two different sentences, the force of the message (in its English rending) is lost. Here’s the NIV reading:
6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
The NIV can make the ideas feel disjointed, or seem arbitrarily placed side-by-side. And by segmenting the passage into two different sentences, it splits thrust of the message into two ideas that don’t have to be immediately related. For instance, you can read each verse independently on its own accord and come away with some insights.
However, when the verses are strewn together as one integrated sentence (as the ESV appropriately does), the connection yields an empowering promise, especially to one who is suffering with pressing cares and weighty concerns.
The Whole Promise
The connection between the first verse (humble yourself under God while you suffer, and he will exalt you in due time) and the second verse (casting your cares on him because he cares for you) is glaringly profound.
Verse 7 says, “cast your cares on him because he cares for you” is a fan favorite. You might find it printed on a bookmark or glazed on a coffee cup at a local Christian bookstore. And it’s truly an astounding truth. But unfortunately, when we just read verse 7, “Cast your cares on him because he cares for you,” and don’t connect it with verse 6, we’re actually cutting God off mid-sentence and, therefore, missing half the impact of his promise.
And as astounding as verse 7 is—by itself—the reality is that, without verse 6, we are left powerless and unequipped on our own. Namely, what comforts you in your suffering, what infuses you power as you wait, and what provides you with the strength to even “cast your cares on him” in the first place?
I think that’s perhaps the hardest and most difficult part of all. Much of the time, our main problem is casting our cares on him. I have a hard time casting my cares on God precisely because I’m holding on to them so tightly myself. I can’t cast them on God because I don’t believe that—if I do cast them into his hands—he’s got me and my cares better than I could ever hope on my own. In essence, I don’t cast because I don’t trust. And as I keep latching onto my cares, and those cares, likewise, continue latching on to my soul and leeching me like a parasite.
That’s why verse 6 is so important to verse 7—it provides the enabling power to cast those cares on God all along.
It says, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God”—i.e., nothing is mightier, not your circumstances nor your pain—“so that at the proper time he may exalt you”—i.e., your times are in his mighty, nail-scarred hands and he will bring you through.
As a Christian, that could mean in life or in death, or in more ways than one. But it’s a promise and it’s true nevertheless. Whatever situation you’re in, he will bring you up and out, either spiritually or circumstantially or both, and you will be objectively and empirically better because of it. This means that while you’re in the heat of any battle, you can find rest—and even joy—in looking ahead and knowing that it’s accomplishing something beautiful that wouldn’t happen otherwise.
The power to cast your cares on God today is present faith in future grace. He’s holding on to you now, and he’s holding on to your future. The mighty hand that holds you through the valleys is the same hand that promises to bring you up and exalt you through it—somehow and in some way.
Therefore, you can finally cast your cares.
And with that, I believe there are two implications: keep casting and stop reeling.
Keep Casting
We need to do more than merely cast our cares on God in one act of deliberation—there’s an appeal for us to keep on casting. We shouldn’t cast them once and expect our stress to immediately sink to the bottom of the ocean on the first time. We must continually cast. In fact, the verse says, “casting your cares on him,” which is significantly in the present progressive tense. This means that when the waves of your circumstances or the waves of your pain keep bringing that same care or concern back to the shore of your mind again—you must cast again. And then cast again. And then keep on casting. And however much you need to do so, do it again.
Trust me, Christian, I know this is a daily battle, and it can be exhausting. But this is what it means to exercise your faith in future grace—in who God says he is to you, in what his promises mean to you, and in his future grace to you.
Like any muscle that undergoes exercise, the muscle of your faith is no different. It exercises with weights, with stressors, with repetitions, and it makes you stronger and stronger as a result.
So keep on trusting. Keep on casting. Future grace is one day closer than yesterday. And faith in future grace is the power you need today to cast your cares, to wait on God, to endure the suffering, and to rejoice in what will come.
Stop Reeling
But there’s one temptation that always happens after you ‘cast your cares to God;’ namely, it’s to reel it back in again. Whatever you do, do not reel that care or concern back in your own strength. Surrender it, cast it to God, and surrender again after it has already been cast.
Do not surrender it, cast it out to him—and then when ‘it’ isn’t going the way you thought it would or in the timeframe you thought it should—frantically reel it back in, taking matters into your own hands.
In this scenario, ironically, you aren’t the one doing the casting. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Your idol is the one doing the casting, and you are one who’s being baited, hooked, and dragged through the waves.
Instead, unhook yourself from your preconceived dependence and obsession with ‘it.’ Cast it to God, and more than ever, hook yourself to him. He wants to take your cares from you, and he wants to hold on to you. He wants to work something beautiful in your life. But first, you must cast it to him. And when it comes back to shore, cast it back out again—no strings attached.
And perhaps a second forewarning is that once you’ve cast your cares God, don’t then hope that he will come through for you. That’s not it, either. What do I mean? Because if you hope after you’ve cast it, then you’re simply telling God how he ought to come through for you, and then you’ll use your immediate circumstances as the measuring stick of God’s success-rate. And as such, you’ll keep reeling your cares back right when it seems like God didn’t come through for you, however you’re defining it.
The truth is, you don’t need to hope he’ll come through for you. He will come through for you. He’s promised to. To be sure, it might look differently than you might have thought. But it will always be better than you hoped. As Tim Keller says, “God would give you everything you’d ask for if you only knew everything he knew.”
Therefore, you need not hope, you need only to rest. You don’t have to keep hoping sleeplessly because you can finally rest undisturbedly.
Knowing you can trust God, you can finally start casting and stop reeling, stop hoping and start resting. You can cast your cares as far as you possibly can now because he does have everything under control right now. God’s got you. God’s got your situation. And somehow, both you and your situation will be better because of it.
But for now, just cast and rest.
_____________
† BibleHub, Interlinear Bible: https://biblehub.com/interlinear/1_peter/5.htm
Other resources: DesiringGod: Cast or Casting?: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/dont-worry-be-casting
