Chapter 3 You Don’t Have To Worry – Praying To Get Results

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)

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.”
Some people are content in the knowledge that God knows and understands their problems. But still they hold on to their cares, so they don’t get deliverance. It’s not enough that God cares and understands. We must go on and do what He said to do —cast all of our cares on Him, for He cares for us. This is the prayer of commitment, of casting or rolling our cares and burdens on Him.
Psalm 37:5 says, “Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.”
Jesus had this to say:

MATTHEW 6:25-27

25 Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

Jesus is asking which of you by worrying is going to change anything. Luke records, “Therefore, I say unto you, Take no thought for your life….” (Luke 12:22).

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.

Years ago, when I was on the bed of sickness, this was the first thing God began to deal with me about. I had to quit worrying before I could receive healing for my body. This is the reason a lot of people are not healed. Sometimes worry is what is keeping them sick. Any disappearance of the symptoms would only be temporary, because the cause of the sickness is still there.

You may think a 15-year-old boy couldn’t worry. But children are replicas of their parents, and my grandmother and mother were world-champion worriers. As a child, I knew they were always worrying. I had a heart condition, and I couldn’t go out to run and play like other children. I had to stay in with my mother and grandmother. Hearing them complain and worry, I learned to worry at a very early age.

While on the bed of sickness, I got saved, and I promised God I would never doubt anything I read in His Word. I further said, “As I read the Word and better understand it, I promise to put it into practice.”

I read the 26th verse in Matthew 6, “Take no thought for your life….” The Bible I was reading had a footnote that told me the Greek read, “Do not be anxious about tomorrow.” Another reference said, “Do not worry, do not be filled with anxiety.” I was full of anxiety, worry, and fear. Not only was I nearly dead, but also I was about to worry myself the rest of the way to my grave!

My conscience bothered me because I was not practicing the Word. As the Lord dealt with me, the words seemed to leap from the pages of the Bible. Yet I didn’t think I could live without worrying—without being anxious—so I closed my Bible. When I did, I got in darkness. I opened the Word again and tried to read, bypassing that Scripture.

Until then, everything I’d read had been all light and blessing, but now it was all dark and fuzzy to me. You’re not going to get more light (or understanding) until you walk in the light you already have. Don’t be concerned about the things you don’t understand in God’s Word; make sure you practice what you do know. The rest will take care of itself.

I read on. I even studied about the Antichrist. (That certainly was not what was bothering me.) But I felt guilty because I was not practicing the Word. Finally, I made a commitment to God.

I said, “Lord, forgive me for worrying and for being full of anxiety. Forgive me for fretting and for being discouraged.

Forgive me for having the blues and feeling sorry for myself.

Forgive me for having a ‘poor old me’ attitude. I know You’ll forgive me, because You said You would if I would confess it.

From this day on, because You’ve forgiven me, I promise I’ll never worry again. I’ll never be filled with anxiety again. I’ll never be blue again. I’ll never fret again. I’ll never be discouraged again.”

Many years have passed since I made that commitment.

Although I’ll confess I’ve been sorely tempted, just like you have, I have not worried. I haven’t been filled with anxiety at any time or become overly anxious. I haven’t had the blues in all these years! God’s Word works. I wouldn’t encourage you to do anything I wouldn’t do, or haven’t done.

When I was 21 years old, I was pastor of a church which was 23 years old. There were people in that church who had had the baptism of the Holy Spirit two years longer than I had lived.

You can understand why I would feel insufficient. The church had problems, and I knew something should be said, but I didn’t know what to say. I knew if I said anything, I would say the wrong thing.

I prayed, “Lord, there are problems here. I don’t know what to do. I feel so inadequate.” I could sense the Spirit of God reminding me of the Scripture, “Casting all your cares upon
him; for he careth for you” (1 Peter 5:7).

I said, “Lord, I know I have responsibilities as pastor, but I’m going to turn this over to You. I’m not going to worry. I’m going to preach the Word and leave everything else to You.”
My burden lifted and I went singing on my way to church.

God met us and marvelous things happened.

The ministers in our area had a fellowship meeting on the first Monday of every month. The preachers talked about their burdens, cares, responsibilities, and anxieties. Often they would ask me, “How goes the battle?” (They were all in a battle, but I didn’t have any battle. I had the victory! Men in battle haven’t won the victory yet. The battle is the Lord’s; the victory is ours.) Here were these preachers with long faces talking about their burdens, cares, and problems in their churches. One of them said to me later, “Your faith condemned us when you’d wave your hand and say, ‘Men, I don’t have a care! Things couldn’t be better!'”

Some would shake their heads and say, “The poor boy—he doesn’t have enough sense to worry.” The truth is, I had too
much sense—too much Bible sense—to worry! If I had cast my cares on the Lord, then I didn’t have them. He did. I didn’t say no cares existed. I said, “I don’t have a care.”

One pastor would say, “He’s lying. I’m his neighboring pastor, and I know him better than the rest of you. I know about the problems in his church.”

But I’d breeze by and say, “Men, I don’t have a care!” I didn’t. I had cast them on the Lord once and for all. You can, too!

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