Dale Carnegie’s excellent book ‘How to Stop Worrying and Start Living’ has lots of ideas here. He tells the story of Leon Shimkin, general manager of the large publishing house Simon & Schuster. After every executive meeting he’d be so worried and frustrated because their discussions went around in circles. Then after fifteen (!) years of that he decided that everyone ask four questions before every meeting: ‘ What is the problem? What is the cause of the problem? What are all possible solutions to the problem? What solution do you suggest?’ Result: ‘Much less time is now consumed? in worrying and talking about what is wrong; a lot more action now happens to make things right.’ As a church consultant I’d go further: no one should be on any church committee who is negative! Those people should do some faithful job on their own!

Another idea is to limit the amount of time we allow ourselves to worry. I heard about a guy who had so many things to worry about, he set aside one day each week in which to worry. As worries came to him, he wrote them down and put them in his worry box. Then, on Worry Wednesday he pulled out each worry and read it – and discovered that most of the things he was disturbed about had already settled themselves or had been taken care of in some other way.

LIVE FOR OTHERS.

Seek first the kingdom, and everything else will be added to you? If we get our priorities right, and live for God and others, we will have less time to worry. And the more we worry the less time and energy we’ll have for others. So worry is essentially selfish.

Get a habit of regularly helping others. Our website has a banner: ‘Help Solve Poverty’. Why not visit us and click on it once every day? Poverty takes the lives of 35,000 children every day. Only 10% of hunger is caused by war, famine or natural disasters. For 90% of the world’s hungry people food is available. Money is not. And you can also click on the Hunger site – also on our website’s frontpage. There you’ll read: ‘Every 3.6 seconds someone dies from hunger; 75% of them are children.’ When you become absorbed in solving some of those macro-problems, your little worries get into proper perspective. Isn’t it sad that most of us were more worried by our last tooth-ache than those 35,000 dying children?

The fourth century Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate who tried to suppress Christianity but met nothing but failure because of the distinctive lifestyle he found among believers. He told his officials, “We ought to be ashamed. Not a beggar is to be found among the Jews, and those godless Galileans (the Christians) feed not only their own people but ours as well.” To say the least, we have a great deal to learn from those early Christians who, in spite of real reasons to worry – about property and possessions being confiscated, worry about being tortured, worry about even sacrificing life itself – in spite of all that, they could be concerned enough about others to look after those needs rather than their own.

5. LIVE ONE DAY AT A TIME.

Jesus told us to live in day-tight compartments. Take life as it comes. People living through a tremendous crisis soon learn that they have only enough energy to face today. ‘One day at a time’ becomes their motto. Paul’s ‘Let not the sun go down on your anger’ encourages us to deal with today’s aggravations today.

Do unpleasant tasks now. Get them out of the way. Forgive other people q uickly. Have some ‘time out’ for stillness and quietness each day. Do nothing for the glory of God sometimes!

And live the serenity prayer: ‘God give me the serenity to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.’

LIVE SIMPLY. Jesus often homed in on one of the key worry-areas – our finances. We cannot serve two masters, he said, God and money (Matthew 6:24). It’s not that money in itself is evil, but if making money, enjoying the things money can buy, being preoccupied with money takes a higher priority than our relationship with God – then we’re setting ourselves up for worry. There is no greater indication of our values, loyalties or priorities than how we view the issue of money.

Sociologists reported a few years ago that at the start of the century the average American wanted 72 things and considered 18 of them important. By 1950, the want list had grown to 496 and 96 were considered necessary to happiness. Let us learn the art of living simply. Having food and clothing, Paul wrote to Timothy, let us be content (1 Timothy 6:8).

Dr. Archibald Hart, in The Anxiety Cure writes that we worry too much, are too disconnected and lonely, and are too entrapped with wanting too much. Combined, these push us to live at too fast a pace. The fact is that we were designed for Camel travel, but behave as if we are super-sonic jets. The penalty? Increased stress and anxiety.

Many high achievers are worriers. This week we have witnessed the remarkable saga of a world-class athlete fleeing to the other side of the world because of her anxieties. The more stuff you have the more likely you are to be anxious. One of the best things I did last week was to give away six boxes of books to a Bible College library.

WORK HARD AND DO SOME PLANNING

Jesus seemed to imply that worriers are lazy people. He told a story about three servants who were given trust over their master’s investments (Mat thew 25:25ff). The third servant, who hid his master’s investment in the ground because of all his worries, was judged not only a “wicked,” but also a “lazy” servant.

One of the best cures for worry is work. Worry kills lots of people; work of itself doesn’t kill anyone. And planning for the future is fine. One of Jesus’ sayings warns us about building a project before we considered how much it will eventually cost.

DEVELOP AN ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE

Paul writes to the Philippians (4:5,6): Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Count your blessings, name them one by one. During your times of trouble, dwell on good things. Think about God’s blessings – his provision and care. Next time you have a physical problem, think about the thousands of bits of your body that are working brilliantly!

CAST YOUR CARES ON GOD.

Cast all your anxiety on God, writes Peter to some persecuted believers, because he cares for you (1 Peter 5:7). God can deal with your worries better than you can!

One of the therapeutic elements in our little counseling practice happens when someone wants to get rid of some bad emotions. They write them down, we burn them up, and flush them down the toilet or throw them into the fire. Some burn-marks in one of our bathroom basins is witness to one person’s dealing with their pain this way! Doing something tangible about our worries is a good idea.

Over in the Phoenix suburb of Carefree, Arizona, a fellow by the name of Gregg Warren has become what the L.A. Times described as ‘something of a guru for America’s worrywarts.’ He’s developed a service – or maybe it’s more of a business – called “Worry Free.” If you have worries, write them on a piece of paper, burn the paper, send Warren the ashes and, for $5, he’ll toss them out of his airplane over the town of Carefree. In the first six Warren handled about 5,000 requests – and took in $25,000 in six months (which may have put a dent in some of his financial worries!) And the symbolic act of burning their worries and scattering the remains may have given temporary relief to those who sent him their $5.

One man took a paper bag, wrote ‘God’ on it, and taped it high on the back of his kitchen door. Whenever he prayed about the things he was worried about, like his job or his family, he would write them down on a piece of paper, and put it in the bag. Then he made a rule for himself. If he started worrying about a matter that he’d turned over to God, he had to climb up on a chair and fish that paper out of the bag. He said it was pretty revealing just how much time he spent sifting through those scraps of paper. You see, we can trust God to be there, to care for us, to provide for us. That’s the good news, so why worry?

So let’s pray about our worries. As someone said, ‘If our worries aren’t worth praying about, they aren’t worth worrying about.’ A friend-of-a-friend in theological college had a sign on his wall: ‘Why pray when you can worry?’ Hmmm.

What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.

CONCLUSION: Near the end of his life, Mark Twain said, ‘I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.’ Always remember that the outcome of a situation will still be the same whether you worried about it or not!

The necessities of life, the length of life, the quality of life? Jesus suggests we don’t worry about these. We have a loving God who ‘knows that you need them all’ and is with us to the end?

PRAYER. ‘Help us to do our very best this day and be content with today’s troubles so that we shall not borrow the troubles of tomorrow. Save us from the sin of worrying, lest stomach ulcers be the badge of our lack of faith.’ (Peter Marshall).