Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never allow the righteous to fall. (Psalms 55:22)

The Faithless often characterize every aspect of their religion as “God-centered.” They have God-centered theology, God-centered preaching, God-centered counseling. Everything that they do, they claim, is God-centered or Christ-centered. God-centeredness sounds good, but what they call God-centeredness often results in the opposite of what the Bible teaches. In reality, the Faithless are the least God-centered people among those who call themselves Christians. Some of them are the most despicable, unbelieving, and self-centered people. The truly God-centered people do not often brag about it. They simply believe and live a God-centered faith.

Many verses in the Bible are explicitly and emphatically about you. If you insist that those verses are not about you, then you are rejecting God and denying his authority. How is that God-centered? But this evil is at the root of faithless theology. If the Bible talks about you, but you insist that it is talking about God or Christ, and not about you at all, then your theology is in fact centered on a false God — you have made yourself the false God who defines the truth regardless of what the God of Scripture says. This is a main characteristic of what the Faithless claim to be God-centered theology or interpretation. Their God is not the God of the Bible, but they have made themselves God, and they have set up a religion called God-centeredness.

Here the Bible tells you to cast your cares — all your worries, all your burdens — upon God. It does not say to let God cast all his burdens upon you. It does not mention anything about God’s concerns, but only your concerns. Then, the verse says, God will sustain you. It does not say that you will sustain God or his kingdom, but he will sustain you. It is all about how he will help you. Never be ashamed to insist on God’s help and favor. God wants you to cast all your cares upon him. God wants to sustain you and help you. God wants to bless you with healing and prosperity, and with spiritual fruit and power, and to rescue you from your troubles. Peter wrote, “Cast all your cares on him, because he cares about you.” Of course we care about God, but Peter’s statement is on how God cares about you. If we distort the verse to say that it is not about us, but about God or Christ, then we are not truly God-centered, because we would ignore whatever God says to assert our own theology about him.

God-centered theology would acknowledge that God cares about me, because that is what God says about himself. He cares for me more than I can ever care for him. He wants me to know it and admit it. When I know it and admit it, this is God-centered theology, because it accepts what God says about himself, that he is a God who cares for me, that he is a God who gives me salvation, healing, prosperity, and all kinds of blessings and miracles. If I am self-centered, then I would assert my opinion about God and about true religion regardless of what God says about himself. I would say how much I must care about God, how much it would cost me to follow him, and how much suffering I must endure for him. I would say that I must endure while he might not lift a finger to relieve my suffering except to give me the grace to endure. This is false religion. It is self-worship.

On the other hand, if I am God-centered, I would think of him as the point of reference for everything. I would defer to what he says about himself in everything, first of all in matters of true faith and worship. When I do this, I would acknowledge that he cares for me, that he has made himself the answer to all my problems and the fulfillment of all my hopes and desires. And I would preach this to people. I would proclaim to everyone that God is good, that God cares, and that he heals and prospers those who come to him in faith. God solves all your problems. God fulfills all your desires. You don’t solve his problems. You don’t fulfill his desires. You are not his God. He is your God. God is self-sufficient.

The Faithless reverse this, and they make themselves God instead. They want to become God to God himself! Should God fall on his knees and worship them, and thank them for their service and sacrifice? It is as if their idea of God-centered religion is to say, “God casts all his cares upon you, because you care about him, and he cares only about himself.” This is the most self-centered and anti-Christian way of thinking, but this is the outcome of their theology. The Faithless would say, “God is not here to solve your problems and to make you happy.” But God says he is! God says he is here to solve your problems and to make you happy. So those who follow faithless theology have to solve their own problems as well as God’s problems, and they have to make themselves happy, if that is even permitted.

Cast out every trace of faithless religion from your mind. Let God set you free to believe and accept his love and care. Let God be God. Cast away your worries. Pray about everything. Don’t assume that anything is unworthy of his attention. Dare to affirm what God says about himself. Say, “God is the answer to all my problems. God will fulfill all my hopes and desires.”