Therefore humble yourselves…under the mighty hand of God, that in due time He may exalt you. 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 AMP)

Because of its importance, we want to examine the "prayer" of casting your cares upon the Lord.

Through this type of prayer, you can take everything that's worrying you, tie it all up in a bundle, and give it to God. You can take your cares to His throne, leave them with Him, trusting Him to deal with them for you, and walk away from them completely carefree.

The reason we must learn this kind of prayer first is simple. If you don't know how to pray this prayer, many of your other prayers will be rendered ineffective. That's because every effective prayer you will ever pray must be based on your faith in the Word of God.

And Jesus warned us in Matthew 13:22 that the worries and cares of this world will choke out the Word you've put in your heart.

Don't Give In To Worry
Let's say, for example, that you've been praying for your child. You've based your prayer on Isaiah 54:13 that says, "All thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children."

The more you meditate on that Word, the stronger your faith becomes. You are praying effective prayers because you have an inner image of that Word coming to pass in your child's life. In your heart, you see him learning from God, serving Him and living a peaceful, godly life.

But then, let's say, your child gets into some trouble. Maybe he starts running around with the wrong kinds of kids. You have some genuine concern about the problems he's creating for Himself, so you start to worry.

Before you know it, you're walking around wringing your hands and thinking, "Oh my, if that boy doesn't straighten up, he's going to end up getting involved with drugs. He's going to end up in jail. He's going to end up throwing his whole life away."

The more you worry, the less power the Word will have on your thoughts.

Like Jesus said, those cares will come up like weeds and thorns and choke out that inner image of Isaiah 55 and replace it with an image of that child in jail. Fear will strangle your faith, and your prayers for your child will become powerless.

Not A Suggestion
When you understand that devilish progression, you'll see why Jesus so strongly admonished us not to worry. He didn't make it a suggestion. He made it a command, because when you worry, you're giving the devil the place in your life that the Word is supposed to have.

You are meditating on his power to hurt you instead of meditating on God's power to deliver you.

In Luke 21:34 NKJV, Jesus was talking to His disciples about the day of His return, and He said,

Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly.

Jesus knew that if they let worry overtake them, they could miss out on the time of their visitation and not be ready for His Second Coming.

The same is true for us. We can miss out on God's presence and power in our lives. We can miss out on the day of our deliverance. How? By being so focused on a problem Satan has presented us with that we take our eyes off God and become unaware of what He is doing.

Again in the book of Matthew, Jesus gave us this important charge:

Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
(Matt. 6:25-34 NKJV)

It's no wonder that in this passage we are told five times, "Do not worry." Not only is worry absolutely useless, it does harm to your prayer life and your physical well-being.

Satan understands this principle so he purposefully creates situations to make you worry. For him, it's an easy and effective way to neutralize your prayers. But you can defeat that strategy by learning to take those worries to God in prayer and cast them over onto Him.

Source: Secrets to Powerful Prayer
by Lynne Hammond and Patsy Cameneti
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers