If you’re stressed, overextended, and overwhelmed by everything you’re trying to hold together, I need you to hear this: the problem isn’t that you’re not strong enough or organized enough—it’s that you’re trying to control what God is calling you to cast. The Bible says in 1 Peter 5:7, “Cast all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” Not manage them better. Not balance them more efficiently. Cast them. And in this video, I’m going to walk you through three practical steps to actually cast your cares on God so you can stop carrying what’s weighing you down and start living free and light the way He intended. Enjoy!

When my husband and I traveled to Australia for our 10-year anniversary, we flew halfway across the world with nothing but carry-on luggage. That’s it. Just a small bag each for 10 days. And let me tell you, it was glorious. We moved through airports faster, we didn’t have to wait at baggage claim, and going through customs was a breeze. We were light, we were free, and honestly, we could go farther because we weren’t weighed down.

Now, fast forward to our 16th anniversary. We took a trip to a nearby resort—like, barely an hour away—and I packed this massive suitcase. My husband looked at me like I’d lost my mind and said, “Why do you need all of that? We’re going to be gone for like three days.” And I explained: “Babe, it’s a completely different environment. In Australia, it was hot. I only needed some light shirts, a pair of shorts, sunscreen—easy. But this trip? It’s winter. I need sweaters, I need coats, I need boots, I need layers. The environment required me to pack more.”

And here’s what hit me recently: that’s exactly what happens when we try to control our lives instead of trusting God with them. When we’re holding onto our worries, our burdens, our anxieties, our need to fix everything and manage everything and make sure everything turns out okay—we’re living in a winter environment. It requires us to pack more, carry more, do more. We’re lugging around this massive, heavy bag everywhere we go, and it’s exhausting. We can barely move. We’re slow. We’re stuck at baggage claim waiting for all our stuff to show up. And honestly? We’re not going very far.

But when we actually cast our cares on God—when we release what we were never meant to carry—it’s like packing light for a warm-weather trip. We move faster. We go farther. We’re free. And that’s what I want to talk about today—because the Bible actually commands us to cast our cares on God. Not manage them better. Not organize them more efficiently. Cast them. Throw them. Get rid of them. And if we don’t? They’ll be the thing that weighs us down and keeps us from experiencing the life God’s calling us to.

Because here’s the truth: most of us don’t even realize how much we’re carrying. We’ve been holding onto our worries, our circumstances, our need to control the outcome for so long that it feels normal. It feels like, “Well, this is just what responsible adults do. This is what good Christians do. We handle our business. We take care of things. We figure it out.” But that’s not what the Bible says. In Psalm 55:22, it says, “Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.”

Cast your burden. Not manage it. Not organize it better. Not try harder to balance it. Cast it. Throw it off of you. Now, I know some of you are thinking, “Okay, Christina, that sounds great in theory. But how do I actually do that? Because I’ve tried to ‘give it to God’ and I end up picking it right back up five minutes later.”

I get it. I’ve been there too. And that’s why I want to walk you through three practical steps to actually cast your burdens and break free from what’s been holding you back. Not so you can add three more things to your to-do list, but so you can finally experience the peace and freedom God’s been offering you all along.

3 Steps to Cast Your Cares, Trust God More, &  Live Free and Light

Packing light for any trip requires a decision before you ever leave the house. You have to look at everything on your bed, everything you think you might need, every "just in case" item you've laid out—and you have to make a choice to leave it behind. On purpose. Before the trip even starts.

That's exactly what casting your cares looks like.

It's not something that just happens to you. It's a decision you make. And the first step is one we skip over more than we realize.

Step one: Recognize that what you're carrying was never yours to carry in the first place.

Before we can cast our cares on God, we first have to recognize that we're holding onto things we were never meant to hold in the first place. And that requires getting still. Thinking honestly about what's actually going on inside of you. Asking yourself: what is triggering this stress, this anxiety, this fear? And then asking the harder question—do I actually have control over this?

Because if the answer is no, then the only thing that's going to bring you peace is giving it to God.

Now here's where it gets tricky. A lot of us—myself included—have spent years operating under this quiet belief that everything is our responsibility. Everything is on me. It's all up to me. And so we never stop to have that honest internal conversation about what is actually ours to carry and what isn't. We just pick it all up and keep moving.

But when we never make that distinction, we end up carrying weight we were never designed for.

And sometimes it's not even that we can't do something. Sometimes we are fully capable. But capable doesn't always mean called. There will be things you have the ability to do that God is still asking you to release—simply because the weight of it is pulling you away from what He actually has for you.

Here's what I love about Psalm 55:22. It says God will sustain you and you will not be moved. But flip that around for a second. When you are carrying everything? You will be moved. You'll be thrown around by your circumstances. Shaken by every fear. Frozen by every uncertainty. Controlled by whatever crisis shows up next.

But when you cast those burdens on the Lord, you become unmovable. Not because life gets easier. Not because the hard things disappear. But because you are no longer white-knuckling your way through it alone.

Psalm 55 is speaking to the burdens we're already carrying—the circumstances we're living in right now, the weight of our current season. And that in itself is enough, right? That's already a lot.

But here's the thing. Some of what's exhausting you hasn’t even happened yet.

It's the what-ifs. The worst-case scenarios. The future you're trying to manage and control before it ever arrives. And worry has a way of pulling you completely out of the present and dropping you into a future that may never even come.

That's why 1 Peter 5:7 specifically says to cast your anxieties on Him. Not just your burdens—your anxieties. The things that haven't happened. The unknowns. The uncertainty.

Which leads us to step 2: Trusting God with the future you can't see.

Step two: Trust God with the future you can't see.

1 Peter 5:6-7 says, "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you."

And here's something I don't want you to miss. In this passage, humbling yourself and casting your anxieties are not two separate things. They are the same act. When you cast your anxiety on God you are essentially saying, "God, you are in control and I am not." That is humility. Casting is an act of surrender. And surrender is always an act of trust.

Because anxiety does its best work on us in a waiting season. When we're looking toward the future and we can't see anything there yet. And it's in that space that we either let anxiety have its way with us, or we give it to God.

Now I know what some of you are thinking. "Christina, casting my anxiety on God sounds great. But I'm still stressed. I still don't know how things are going to work out. What does that actually mean practically?" And here's what I love about this verse—Peter doesn't just say stop being anxious and get over it. He gives us a why. And the why changes everything.

Cast your anxieties on Him because He cares for you.

Not because you have it all figured out. Not because the future is clear. But because the character of God doesn't change just because your circumstances are uncertain. He cares. That's the anchor.

And here's what's interesting—anxiety can actually reveal a misalignment in how we see God. Not just what we believe He can do, but who we believe He is. And we see this pattern show up more than once in Scripture.

We see it with Martha. She's frantically preparing her home while Jesus is already sitting right there in her living room. In her overwhelmed, stressed-out state she turns to Jesus and says, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?" (Luke 10:40). Her anxiety distorted her view of Him. She was so consumed by how everything was going to come together that she questioned the care of the One who was already present with her.

Then we have the disciples on the boat. A violent storm has come out of nowhere, waves are crashing, water is filling the boat, and they genuinely believe they are about to drown. And Jesus is peacefully asleep. They wake Him and cry out, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" (Mark 4:38). Same question. Different crisis. Same misalignment.

And we do the same thing. We live in such an anxious culture that we've started to believe that if someone isn't as worried as we are, they must not care. So we look at God's calmness and we think, "How are you not panicking right now? You must not see what I see. You must not care."

But here's the truth: God is not calm because He doesn't care. God is calm because He already knows. His peace is not indifference—it's a promise. It's a sign that everything is going to be okay even when you can't see how yet.

Anxiety grows when we focus on the uncertainty of our future. Peace grows when we focus on the certainty of our God. And when you truly grasp that He cares for you—not just in theory, but personally, specifically, deeply—casting your anxiety stops feeling like a leap in the dark and starts feeling like the most reasonable thing you could do.

So we've recognized the burdens we were never meant to carry. We've trusted God with the future we can't see. But here's the thing nobody talks about. You can cast your cares on God in the morning and have the world reload you by noon. Because the world is constantly handing you things to carry. And if you're not intentional about what you let in, you'll find yourself right back under the weight you just laid down. That's what step three is about.

Step three: Stop letting the world put its cares on you.

Picture this. You wake up in the morning, you open your Bible, you read your verse, maybe you get a devotional in, write in your prayer journal, maybe even study a whole chapter. You feel it. You feel encouraged, empowered, ready to take on the day.

And then you open social media.

And you see all these perfectly filtered lives and you're reminded that yours doesn't quite look like that. Then you go to work and there's this constant pressure to do more, be more, compete, perform, always be the best at all costs. You come home exhausted, you turn on the news and the world looks dark and broken. You scroll to decompress and you land right in the middle of political debates and people tearing each other apart. And then on top of all of that there are the expectations of the people around you—expectations you feel the pressure to meet even if God never called you to meet them.

And so you have this cycle where God's Word feeds you in the morning, helps you grow, encourages your soul—but the cares of this world slowly choke it out before the day is even over.

Jesus actually addresses this directly in Mark 4 in the Parable of the Sower. He describes different conditions of the heart and how they affect our ability to not just hear God's Word but actually live it out. And in verses 18 and 19 He talks about the seed sown among thorns. He says:

"They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful." (Mark 4:18-19 ESV)

This is the woman who does her Bible study. She shows up for her devotional. She even has the beautiful journal she writes in every morning. She hears the Word. But the cares of the world—the comparison, the pressure, the noise, the expectations—enter her heart and choke out what God planted. She knows the Word but the world has made her unfruitful.

And here's what I want you to see. It's not that the seed was bad. It's not that God's Word wasn't enough. It's that something else was competing for the same soil.

When we make the world our standard for living, we can know God's Word and not look like it. We can study Scripture every morning and still be consumed by anxiety, comparison, and pressure by noon—because we've allowed the world to reload us with the very cares we just laid down.

But here's what Jesus says in Matthew 6, in one of the greatest teachings on worry ever recorded. He tells us not to worry about what we'll eat, what we'll drink, what we'll wear. And then He says something that doesn't get talked about enough. He says it's the pagans—those who don't know God—who chase after these things. "For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them." (Matthew 6:32 NIV)

In other words—these are not your cares to carry. This is not your culture. You were not made to live under the weight of a world that doesn't know God—because you do.

And Paul confirms this in Philippians 3:20 when he says, "But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ." You are an ambassador here. You live in this world but you are not of it. And that means you don't have to adopt the anxiety, the comparison, the striving, and the pressure of a system that has no access to the peace you've been given.

So here's what I want to leave you with before we wrap this point up. Every single morning you have a choice. You can let the world set the tone for your day or you can let God's Word set the tone for your day. You can open your heart to what God has planted and protect it—or you can hand it over to the noise, the comparison, the pressure, and the expectations and watch it slowly get choked out.

The cares of this world are loud. They are relentless. And they will never stop competing for the soil of your heart. But Psalm 94:19 says, "When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul." Not if. When. Because God knows the cares will come. But His comfort is greater than every care the world tries to pile on you.

So guard your heart. Guard what you let in. Be intentional about what you consume and what you give your attention to. Because the fruit God wants to grow in your life—the peace, the calm, the stillness, the trust—it cannot grow in soil that is full of the world's thorns.

You already know where the world's cares go. Cast them. And protect what God is growing in you.

We've talked about three steps to casting your cares and living free. Recognize that what you're carrying was never yours to carry. Trust God with the future you can't see. And stop letting the world reload you with what you just laid down.

And if you actually walk this out? You won't be perfect at it. You'll cast your cares and pick them back up sometimes. But over time you will find yourself less thrown, less reactive, more grounded. You'll experience the peace that Philippians 4:7 describes as one that surpasses all understanding. Not because your circumstances changed but because your posture did.

But here's what I really want you to walk away with today. Casting your cares on God is not just a stress management strategy. It is a response to the gospel. Jesus didn't just die to forgive your sins—He died to carry your burdens. Isaiah 53:4 tells us He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. The cross was always about more than your eternal destination. It was about your freedom right now. Today.

So when you cast your cares on God, you are not just practicing a healthy spiritual habit. You are living out what Jesus already made possible for you. You are saying yes to the freedom He purchased. You are trusting that what He did on the cross was enough—not just for your soul, but for everything you're carrying today. You were never meant to carry it alone. And because of Jesus, you don't have to.