Read 1 Peter 5:6-7

Peter knew what it was to be afraid of stuff. He knew that anxiety tore up a peaceful mind, a single-minded commitment to the Jesus He trusted. It’s what had led him to the fireside, watching and denying the Christ He’d been following for years. Anxiety and fear made Peter deny even knowing the One about to be crucified for his own sake. Then it led him to shame and regret, the worries of all that he should have said, all that he could have done.

I know it too. Anxiety can keep me from the life that Jesus came to give me. I don’t want that for my kids. But Peter’s letter gives me two specific ways I can pray against this for my kids. He said,

1. Humble yourselves.
2. Cast your anxieties on God.

Humility undergirds every part of this section of Peter’s letter to the Jesus-followers who had been scattered all over the known world. They were suffering because of the God they’d chosen to serve. It’s a humility that exists only among those who have entrusted themselves to the God who has worked out a way for actual, living hope. It’s humility as a verb — the choice to humble oneself because of the forever and real hope of an inheritance that includes every spiritual blessing and all the grace of God Almighty. This humility leads to the second directive.

Cast your anxieties on God.

Without humility, the ability to cast one’s cares is out of the question. If we don’t believe that God is bigger and more capable than we are to take care of the whole of our lives, then we’ll never be able to turn over our fears to Him, never be able to trust His concern for our worries and the things that we’re most afraid of letting go. 

So, I ask the God who created them to grant my kids the strength to humble themselves. Because to humble oneself is no small task. It means entrusting everything they care about, all the ways they worry, to Him, and believing these matter to Him, letting Him take care of all of their cares.

I beg Him for this strength in my kids because worries and cares can consume to the point that they start to believe they know better than God does, that they care more about these things than He could. I pray they know how deeply He cares and I wait and watch for His work in them, even as I cast this worry onto Him and trust.

In what way can you humble yourselves before God? What anxieties are you struggling with that you need to cast on God?

Bria Wasson