How to Stop Being Anxious — Murray on Casting Cares
⏱ 14 min read
You have read the verse. Cast all your care upon Him, for He careth for you. You have read it on the verse card by the bathroom mirror, on the welcome page of the new devotional, in the green letters on the bookmark a friend gave you in a hard year. You have prayed the casting. Lord, I am casting this on You. And then, by mid-morning, the care has come back into your chest in the same shape it left in, and the casting prayer has begun to feel like a small dishonest thing — a thing you say because the verse says to say it, not because the chest has actually let go of anything.
This essay is not the voice that will tell you to cast harder. The chest is honest. The anxiety is honest. The question of how to stop being anxious is not a question that responds to being shamed at, and the casting verse, applied as a willpower instruction, has been quietly hurting a lot of women for a long time. Andrew Murray — the nineteenth-century pastor whose small books on the inner life have lived on the shelves of contemplatives for over a century — does not treat casting as a one-time act of the will. He treats it as a practice — small, daily, slow, returned to as many mornings as it takes, walked in the chair with the body and the breath and the slow patient learning to hear the still small voice that is mightier than the storm that rends the rocks. The 140-day form of this slow practice has its place in the Devotionals on Anxiety, built for the woman whose chest has not been quiet in longer than she can remember. (A faith journal for the anxious Christian woman is the daily-page companion for the same slow practice, and how to know God’s will for your life walks the Murray reading on the question the anxiety most often is about.)
What follows is the older Murray cure. Not just trust God. Not cast and be done. The slower, more honest thing the saints meant — the daily practice of abiding in a love that does the holding the chest cannot do for itself, until the casting has become not a sudden act but a slow standing posture the chest has been gently taught to keep. (How to fight spiritual warfare is the sister Murray essay on the standing posture this practice grows into.)
What anxiety actually is, before we try to cast it off
Anxiety, in the older Christian tradition that Murray writes from, is not a character defect. It is the chest’s chronic response to the holding of things the chest was not built to hold alone. The list is long. The future of a child. The slow shape of a marriage. The result of a scan. The decision that has not been made. The money that has not stretched. The conversation that did not go the way you needed it to. The hundred small fears that braid together in the small hours and become one tight cord across the upper chest by morning.
The chest is not weak. The chest is overloaded. The casting verse, applied as a willpower instruction to a chest that is overloaded, does not redistribute the weight. It only adds the shame of not being able to cast — a quiet additional layer of I am not trusting God well enough, which is one more weight the chest is now also carrying.
Murray’s older work begins at a different end of the same problem. He does not start with the casting. He starts with the abiding — with the slow practice of the chest learning to dwell in a place where the holding is being done by Someone else, slowly, by communion, until the casting has become the natural outflow of the abiding rather than a separate effort. The casting, on Murray’s reading, is the fruit of the abiding. The abiding is the practice.
How to stop being anxious, in this older tradition, is therefore not the question of how to be a better caster. It is the question of how to walk a small daily practice of abiding, day after day, until the chest has been slowly persuaded that the holding is in safer hands than its own. The cooling of the anxiety follows the practice; it is not produced by an act of the will applied directly to the heat.
The first line — Murray on the heart as a resting place
Here is the first of the three passages worth keeping near the page. Murray, in Holy in Christ, names — gently, in the form of a prayer — the original design of the chest that is now anxious:
It is where Thou enterest to rest, to refresh and reveal Thyself, that Thou makest holy. O my God! may my heart be Thy resting-place. I would, in the stillness and confidence of a restful faith, rest in Thee, believing that Thou doest all in me. Let such fellowship with Thee, and Thy love, and Thy will be to me the secret of a life of holiness.
— Andrew Murray, Holy in Christ
Read what he is naming. The heart, in Murray’s image, is meant to be a resting-place — a place where God Himself enters to rest. Where Thou enterest to rest. That is the original design. The anxious heart is not designed wrong. It is occupied wrong. It has, over years of the daily small carrying, become the resting-place of the list — of the child, the marriage, the scan, the money, the conversation, the hundred small unresolved threads — and the resting-place that was meant for the indwelling of love has become the small workroom of the chronic worry.
The cure, in Murray’s reading, is not to force the worries out. The cure is to let the other guest — the One the chest was built to house — slowly take His seat again, until the workroom is, in its own time, restored to the resting-place it was meant to be.
This is what Murray names as the stillness and confidence of a restful faith. The stillness is the practice. The confidence is the slow fruit of the practice. The resting in Thee, believing that Thou doest all in me is the abiding the casting will eventually come out of.
How to stop being anxious, on Murray’s reading, begins with the slow daily return of the chest to its original purpose. Not as a job. As a small five-minute sitting, in the chair, in which the heart is allowed to be the resting-place it was made to be, and the carrying is — slowly, by communion, by the long sitting — moved into the hands that have been waiting to do the holding the whole time.
A pause for the body
Set the screen down for a breath. The anxiety lives in the body before it lives in the words. Most often it sits as a tight band across the upper chest, sometimes a shallow held breath that has not been fully released in days, sometimes a small constant clench in the diaphragm that nobody on the outside can see. Bring one hand to the place where the tightness sits. Stay there for one slow inhale and one slow exhale. Do not try to cast anything in this minute. Do not try to trust harder. Let the hand be a small acknowledgement that the body has been carrying the list with you — the chest muscles holding the held breath, the shoulders quietly up by the ears, the diaphragm bracing for the next item on the list to arrive. Let the breath drop one inch lower than it has been dropping. Let the shoulders lower by an inch. The body is allowed, in this minute, to set the list down, even before the mind has worked out how. The slow undoing of the anxiety begins here — not by an act of decision, but by the body being given a minute in which the holding is not its job alone.
The second line — Murray on the still small voice that is mightier than the storm
The second passage is from Abide in Christ, and it names — with the slow careful warmth that runs through the whole of that little book — what the anxious chest is missing when the casting prayer is failing to land:
So we shall gaze on its blessedness, until desire be inflamed, and the will with all its energies be roused to claim and possess the unspeakable blessing. Come, my brethren, and let us day by day set ourselves at His feet, and meditate on this word of His, with an eye fixed on Him alone. Let us set ourselves in quiet trust before Him, waiting to hear His holy voice — the still small voice that is mightier than the storm that rends the rocks — breathing its quickening spirit within us, as He speaks: “Abide in me.” The soul that truly hears Jesus Himself speak the word, receives with the word the power to accept and to hold the blessing He offers.
— Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ
Day by day set ourselves at His feet. Quiet trust before Him, waiting to hear His holy voice. The still small voice that is mightier than the storm that rends the rocks.
These are the three small phrases Murray gives the anxious chest. The first — day by day set ourselves at His feet — is the daily-ness of the practice. Not a single dramatic casting. A small daily sitting, in the chair, at His feet. The second — quiet trust before Him, waiting to hear — is the posture of the practice. Not the agitated trying to trust. The quiet trust. The waiting to hear. The third — the still small voice that is mightier than the storm that rends the rocks — is the truth the chest does not yet believe and is slowly being persuaded of: that the small voice that has not yet arrived in the chair is, in fact, mightier than the loud storm that the chest has been listening to for years.
The anxious chest has been listening to the storm. The storm has been loud. The anxiety has been the chest’s response to the volume. The casting verse has been an attempt to out-shout the storm by an act of the will, and the will cannot out-shout the storm, because the will is also tired.
Murray’s instruction is different. Set ourselves at His feet. Quiet trust. Wait. The still small voice, when it comes, is mightier than the storm — not because it is louder, but because it speaks from a place the storm cannot reach. The chest that has been sitting in the chair, day by day, in quiet trust before Him, waiting to hear, is the chest that eventually hears the voice. The hearing is not produced by trying harder. It is the fruit of the day by day. (How to fight spiritual warfare walks the Murray reading on the standing posture this practice grows into, and the sister practice for the louder cousin of anxiety — the chronic chest-heat — is in how to deal with anger as a Christian, Owen on the slow cooling, walking the same five-minute communion in a different key.)
This is the slow form of the practice the Devotionals on Anxiety was built to walk. Not as a script for instant calm, but as a daily small structure for the day by day set ourselves at His feet — five minutes, one scripture, one slow waiting — in which the chest has a daily room to sit in quiet trust before Him, waiting to hear, and the still small voice is given the time and the silence it needs to be heard above the storm that has been running.
The third line — Murray on the rest the chest is finally let into
The third passage is the one that names — almost gently — what becomes available to the anxious chest that has been allowed to sit in the practice long enough to be let through into something the willpower casting could not produce:
“At Thy bidding I take Thy yoke; I undertake the duty without delay; I abide in Thee.” Let each consciousness of failure only give new urgency to the command, and teach us to listen more earnestly than ever till the Spirit again give us to hear the voice of Jesus saying, with a love and authority that inspire both hope and obedience, “Child, abide in me.” That word, listened to as coming from Himself, will be an end of all doubting — a divine promise of what shall surely be granted. And with ever-increasing simplicity its meaning will be interpreted. Abiding in Jesus is nothing but the giving up of oneself to be ruled and taught and led, and so resting in the arms of Everlasting Love. Blessed rest! the fruit and the foretaste and the fellowship of God’s own rest! found of them who thus come to Jesus to abide in Him. It is the peace of God, the great calm of the eternal world, that passeth all understanding, and that keeps the heart and mind.
— Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ
Abiding in Jesus is nothing but the giving up of oneself to be ruled and taught and led, and so resting in the arms of Everlasting Love.
The anxious chest has been ruling itself. It has had to. Nobody else came in to rule the list. So the chest has been doing the ruling, teaching, leading of itself for years — making the small daily decisions, holding the worry about the child, deciding how to feel about the marriage, deciding how to feel about the diagnosis, deciding how to feel about each of the hundred unresolved threads — and the ruling is what has been costing the chest most of its peace.
The casting verse, applied as a willpower instruction, asked the chest to stop doing the ruling. It did not give the chest the alternative. Murray’s older reading does. Resting in the arms of Everlasting Love. The alternative to the chest doing all the ruling is not the chest doing none of the ruling. The alternative is the chest being held by another — ruled and taught and led — while it slowly learns to let the arms do the holding.
The peace that follows is what Murray calls the great calm of the eternal world, that passeth all understanding, and that keeps the heart and mind. It is not the peace of having no list. It is the peace of having handed the ruling of the list into different hands. The list is still real. The chest is no longer being the only one carrying it.
How to stop being anxious, on Murray’s reading, is therefore the slow daily walking of the practice — day by day set ourselves at His feet, quiet trust before Him, waiting to hear — until the chest has been brought into the arms of Everlasting Love and the casting has become not a separate prayer but the slow standing posture the abiding chest naturally keeps. The casting is the fruit. The abiding is the work. The peace is the late, true gift.
So — how does one actually stop being anxious?
You stop trying to cast in one act of the will. The will is tired. The willpower casting has been costing you years.
You sit down, daily, at His feet. Five minutes. The chair. The hand on the chest. The breath dropped one inch lower than it has been dropping. Day by day, Murray says. Not heroic days. Small daily ones.
You wait, in quiet trust, for the still small voice. You do not produce the voice. The voice comes in its own time, and the chest that has been sitting in the practice across weeks and months eventually hears it. The voice is mightier than the storm — not because it shouts louder, but because it speaks from a place the storm has never been able to reach.
You let the casting be the fruit, not the entry fee. The casting will happen, in time, as the natural outflow of the abiding. The list will be carried in different hands. The chest will, slowly, lower itself into the arms of Everlasting Love that Murray names — and the peace that comes is the great calm of the eternal world, that passeth all understanding, and that keeps the heart and mind. (For the sister practices — a faith journal for the anxious Christian woman is the daily-page companion; the bitterness reading by the same author is the slow undoing for the chest that has been carrying an old hurt as well as a present worry; how to forgive someone who hurt you is the de Sales sister reading for the unfinished business underneath some forms of anxiety.)
You forgive yourself for the years of trying to cast by willpower. The willpower way was the wrong instrument. The older way — day by day, at His feet, in quiet trust, waiting to hear — is gentler, slower, and is the cure the saints actually walked.
That is the slow Murray cure. The chest will not be unanxious tomorrow. The third week, the breath will drop a little lower than it has been dropping. The third month, the still small voice will have arrived once or twice in the chair in ways the chest will not be able to deny. The peace will come, in its own time, as the slow late fruit of the daily abiding — not as the immediate reward of the casting prayer. The cooling is real. The slowness of it is also real. Both are part of the practice.
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The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Devotionals on Anxiety.
