“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, 7 casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. 8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”
--1 Peter 5:6-8 NKJV
“casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.”
--1 Peter 5:7 NASB1995
The following bullet points contain some ideas about anxiety and sickness that I used to believe. Many sentences are used facetiously and there are also many statements that do contain a lot of truth. However, there are many non-sequiturs and lies that are also mixed throughout the following bulleted statements.
So as you read these statements, bring them before the Word of God as you trust Him to help you filter out the truth from the error. Remember, if we abide in Jesus’ words, then we are truly His disciples. Then we shall know the truth, and the truth shall make us free:
I don’t believe that casting all our anxieties upon God is for today. Casting all our cares upon God died out in the time of the apostles.
Since God already knows everything and is sovereign, there is no need for us to share with Him what is on our hearts or to ask Him to know our anxieties, or to cast all our anxieties upon Him.
There is no need to present our requests to God, since God is sovereign and has already set in stone and predetermined every single thing that will happen already, and every single thing that happens in the world must therefore be God’s will. See Philippians 4:4-8.
If we have a sickness, if we have anxiety, if our anxiety releases excess cortisol drip into our bodies, compromises our immune system, and results in a disease, then that disease is God’s perfect will for our lives.
We ought to be grateful, thank Him for the sickness, and fix our hope on Him and look forward to the day that we die and finally get to be with Him forever away from all this pain and suffering. Our sufferings are producing for us an eternal weight of glory. See 2 Corinthians 4:17; Romans 8:18ff
Anxiety is not a sin; even if it was, didn’t repentance from sin die out in the time of the apostles after the Bible was canonized (or after Jesus died on the cross)?
To tell somebody that they need to trust God, or to believe what He says, doesn’t that heap guilt on that person? (1) Isn’t that unloving, because you have no idea what they’re going through or the pain that they’ve experienced in life?
Job was perfect and blameless, an upright man who feared God and turned away from evil, as the Bible says repeatedly. Doesn’t that mean that Job never sinned and was a lot like Jesus in that regard?
After he contracted a disease which gave him painful sores from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, Job said that the thing he feared greatly came upon him. See Job 3:25-26.
Since we can infer that Job was perfect and sinless, as his friends who tried to heap guilt upon him were all wrong as worthless physicians and miserable comforters, then can’t we rest assured that Job’s fear and anxiety was not a sin rooted in unbelief?
Job’s calamity and sickness had absolutely nothing to do with his fearful mindset. If so, then wouldn’t that cause us to live with even more fear and anxiety about our own anxiety? See Romans 8:1-13. (If this sobering thought is a true reality, then we may need continued fellowship with a Savior who delievers us from all our fears!)
Job had every right to complain in the bitterness of his soul. He lost everything!
To infer that Job needed to repent of any sin, to change the way he thought, or to see God rightly does a terrible injustice to this poor man in unimaginable suffering. Such insensitivity to what one is going through has no place in the body of Christ.
I can’t get better unless I get more pity, nurturing, acceptance, and compassion from others.
Job had no personal responsibility for dealing with his fear; God understands and doesn’t mind that we have a fearful personality.
After all, I was born shy and grew up with social anxiety; it’s just who I am!
God kind of likes that attitude in His precious children and actually thinks that it’s kind-of cute! (see 2 Timothy 1:7)
In His perfect love for us, He winks at us in approval when we maintain a constant diet of bad news, fear, worry, and anxiety. God does not want us to repent of anxiety nor to remove it from our lives. Anyone who suggests otherwise has no compassion for those who are hurting and suffering so badly with anxiety.
Healing is not part of the atonement and if we have fear, anxiety, or sickness, the best we can do is go to the doctor. Praise the Lord for doctors, because the advanced knowledge of the medical community is God’s primary established method of healing for the church today.
It would be an absolutely false hope to believe the ridiculous notion that it is God’s will to heal you this side of heaven when you trust Him, repent of your sins of anxiety, stop practicing the sin of worry, be transformed by the renewal of the mind, and believe the good news of the gospel.
It’s heresy to believe that a joyful heart works good like a medicine and that a broken heart or crushed spirit dries up the bones. It’s ridiculous to believe that good news refreshes the bones, restores the immune system contained in the bone marrow, stops excess cortisol drip, and brings healing as a result. See Proverbs 17:22; 15:30.
Believing such nonsense is so offensive and insensitive to all those very godly men and women who are suffering from anxiety and sickness and who have gone to be with the Lord.
Let’s not get our hopes up with any ideas that healing is a part of the atonement and that by Jesus’ stripes we were healed. That obviously cannot be true, because how else do you explain godly men and women who believe in Jesus getting sick with disease?
A compromised immune system and the resulting sickness does not come from anxiety or any related “sin,” because Jesus took away the sin of the world. God understands and does not judge or condemn us if we are worried or anxious.
Sickness, fear, sin, excess cortisol drip, a compromised immune system, and anxiety have nothing in common. It’s okay to be anxious, and there’s nothing we can do about it [until our circumstances get better].
Questions for reflection:
After reading through that entire list, how do you feel?
As there were many half-truths and half-lies in that list, are you feeling confused? Enlightened? Yucky? Intrigued? Tormented? Peaceful? Angry? Offended?
Do you feel you now have more clarity about how anxiety and sickness operate? Or does this raise more questions than answers for you?
Does this discussion stir you to go deeper into these things with God? Do you feel more hopeful? Joyful? Expectant to receive good things from God on this ongoing journey of trust?
What stuck out to you? Did you recognize a truth that you may not have considered before?
We could be experiencing any gamut of emotions, and God is constantly wanting to root us and ground us more deeply in His love and to prune off from our lives any anxiety or sin that hinders His love from being perfected in us.
“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, 7 casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you. 8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”
--1 Peter 5:6-8 NKJV
“casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.”
--1 Peter 5:7 NASB1995
Here’s a closing prayer for further processing:
“Father,
Thank You for loving me. I love You because You first loved me. There is no fear in Your love, but Your perfect love casts out and delivers me from all my fears. For fear has torment and the expectation that punishment or something bad is going to happen to me. Wherever I am afraid, I am not seeing You rightly or living rooted and grounded in Your love. So when I am afraid, I choose to trust in You.
I thank You that when I was still a sinner who did not trust You (and whenever I do go astray), You sent Your Son, Jesus, to bring me back to You. You sent Your Word to heal my broken heart, to deliver me from all my fears, to restore my soul, and to heal me.
It is your will and desire to sanctify me completely in my spirit, soul, and body. It is your will that I get rid of all spiritual filthiness, bitterness, and everything that is not of You. Your perfect will for my life is my sanctification, that I would become holy as You are holy. You sanctify me and make me more like You as I communicate with You through Your Word day and night.
Thank You for teaching me how to cast all my anxieties upon You, for You care for me. Test me and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any unclean way in Me and lead me in Your right ways of thinking and living for Your name’s sake. As I submit to Your Son as my Leader, Master, and Savior who delivered me from all my fears, I thank You for how Your Word will make me more and more like Jesus (who is the perfect representation of Yourself).
Jesus died to defeat the devil’s work in my life, who had held me as a lifelong slave to fear. You adopted me as Your beloved son in whom You are well pleased. It pleased You to give me Your Holy Spirit so that You could live Your life through me as I trust in You and obey Your instructions. As I choose to follow You closely, listening to Your Word, hearing Your voice, and obeying Your instructions, I thank You that goodness and mercy shall surely follow me all the days of my life.
The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy, but Jesus came so that I could have life and have it to the full. The words You speak are spirit and life. I agree with Your words and love the way You think and act. As I continue to grow rooted and grounded in Your love, thank You for leading me today in all that I think, do, and say.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen (so be it!)”
For more information on entering a personal relationship with God, click “Four Spiritual Laws about Prayer.”
That a person “just needs to have more faith” could come from a spirit of accusation that makes a person worse off. However, rebuking people for their unbelief is also something that Jesus Himself did. How can one tell the difference between the critical spirit of demonic accusation and the Holy Spirit’s conviction? Conviction will come with specific instructions and truth that will make the person free as they hear about the grace of God. The accusing spirit will be vague and repeat “you didn’t have enough faith” as a loop to perpetuate anxiety, guilt, shame, and condemnation without providing the truth of the gospel. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. If somebody states, “You don’t have enough faith” without also speaking truth from the Word of God that brings faith and confidence in God’s love nature when dealing with you, then the statement could be from (or simply have been intercepted and used by) the kingdom of “the accuser of the brethren.” We must then fellowship with the Spirit of truth and of grace to hear and believe the good news of what the blood of Jesus has done for us concerning whatever we are going through.
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