Casting All Your Care by Mrs. H. E. Warner

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 19, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 15.

“Casting All Your Care”

By Mrs. H. E. Warner

“In nothing be anxious,” “Surely,” says some father or mother, “that verse is not for me. Why, there is everything in my family to cause anxiety. It is my duty to be anxious.”

Let us consider this. Parents are responsible for the work coming from their hands. They should have wisdom and firmness to do their work faithfully and in the right spirit. They are to train their children for usefulness by developing their God-given talents. If you neglect this work, which is so far-reaching in its results, because for the present it is far more agreeable for you to do so, and your children grow up morally deformed, their feet in the broad road to death, can God pronounce your work well done?

Have you thoughtfully and prayerfully considered your duty to the children you have taken the responsibility of bringing into the world? Have you thought whether these children are receiving from you an education and discipline that will lead them to honor their Creator in the days of their youth? Every time you allow them to trample on your authority, and their will to control yours, you are fostering a defect which will be carried with them into all their experience should they become religiously inclined, and will teach them to disregard and trample upon divine authority.

The question to be settled by you is, “Am I raising a family of children to strengthen the influence and swell the ranks of the powers of darkness, or am I bringing up children for Christ?”

If you have failed in this, you must first get right with God; second, go to your children, and get right with them; third, by living faith daily, bind your children upon the altar of the Lord. Then Jesus will be at hand, close by.

When you take God at His Word, you will stop fretting. Instead of being racked with anxiety all the time, you will pray, pray, PRAY; and the peace of God shall fill your soul even tho the tears are streaming down your cheeks. You will find that God is teaching you, as well as your children, a lesson.

But you say you are sure you have done your part, and yet your child is impatient of control. No doubt you have talked to that child until he is sick and tired of hearing you. You have fretted, you have cried, you have gone around with a long face, and you have prayed — O, how have you prayed! — and then gone right on fretting, and your child goes on in the same old way. Surely God made a mistake when He said, “Rejoice always,” and when He said, “In nothing be anxious.”

Now, dear father or mother, did God make a mistake in giving us those verses? Does He want you to worry? Does He want you to be gloomy or impatient? Does He want you to be a poor representative of the Christian religion? No; but He does want you to learn to trust Him. He does want you to pour out your troubles to Him. He does want you to bind your children upon the altar and leave them there. He does want you to spend more time upon your knees. He wants you to say, “For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.” Say it over and over and over again, until you do know it; and then with a prayer in your heart and a song on your lips go about your work, God will do His part if you will give Him a chance. He wants you to cast this care upon Him; and just as sure as you commit your children to Him, just so sure He will keep them; for He has promised, and He will not go back on His Word.