Worry Is Worthless – Part Three

Actions deserve our best effort. Worry prevents our best effort and impairs the effect.

Some persons have made worry a way of life.

Worry is like a soft bed, it is easy to get into and hard to get out of.

Once a positive or negative pattern of thought is established, and this is often done early in life, it becomes instinctive to maintain it. Sheep are a graphic of this. They tend to line up and walk single file in line. If a stick is put across their path a few inches from the ground so that the first few have to jump over it, you can remove the stick and those that follow will still jump where the one before it jumped. We get mental trends established in the same manner. We keep on worrying.

Worry can be learned from an example. The child of a parent who perpetually worries tends to develop into a person who worries.  Worry isn’t a disease but it can contribute to developing a disease or physical disorder. Like a disease it is contagious. Some medical authorities say it is more contagious than diphtheria. It can come from fears of being inferior, poverty, or poor health.

Some people worry so, they know that if it weren’t for bad luck they wouldn’t have any luck at all. They are convinced that if they found a magic lantern they would have the luck of the fellow who did find such a lantern and was promised by the genie a midas touch. Sure enough, everything he touched turned to a muffler.

Worry is like a strong acid perpetually running on a soft surface in which it cuts a channel. Unless worry is checked, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.

Worry finds its origin in painful events of the past.

Its occasion in physical weakness and need in the present.

Its opportunity in some fear of an unknown future.

Thus, the web of worry consists of three strands.

It consists of past events we long to live over.

The second stand is an uncertain future regarding which we have no confidence.

The third strand is the present which is paralyzed by absorption with our past and apprehension related to our future.

If you tend to worry, confess it to the Lord as though you would any sin. Next, ask Him to help you overcome it. Then commit yourself to working to overcome it by before leaving any point of worry superimpose a positive thought on the negative topic. Pause now and pray about it.