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But I also like the quote – “worry is like a rocking chair. It’ll give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere.”

Worry is the advanced interests. Someone said you pay on troubles that seldom come. And all that is true in spite of all the advances we have in our scientific world, many people still haven’t found peace of mind, and worry and anxiety seem to have become the plagues of modern society.

Worry and its effects

Now it’s been proved, of course, that worry does actually hurt us. If we can’t sleep, if we find that monster looming up inside, it can affect our health. In fact, an examination of 500 patients in the British hospital showed more than one third of these people had visual problems that were caused by emotional tension. Now we might say, it’s no worry, but worry actually can cause ulcers – cause us to be sick.

Well, so we’re talking about worry and anxiety, Nothing new in that. Do you know that over 3000 years ago, the writer of the Proverbs in the Bible, he had some interesting words. He said an anxious heart weighs a man down and a heart at peace gives life to the body. Another version of the Bible and I’m reading from Proverbs 12:25 and Proverbs 14:30 says a relaxed attitude lengthens a man’s life. Now again, that makes sense.

So Norman Vincent Peale a man who’s known to many people. He talks about worry, and he said that that worry is a problem for today’s society. He said worry and anxiety can actually choke out the joy of living. There’s a concern, be a difference, rather between concern or healthy worry and anxious worry. It’s normal to worry and be concerned. For example, if we lost our job or our children don’t come home at night. That’s fair enough.

But the problem is, when the worry gets beyond concern, it gets out of proportion to what has actually happened. Or we’re living in that state of anxiety all the time, so we can worry about making decisions. We’re fearful that the decision we make will be wrong or we are frightened of making wrong decisions. And we worry about the future. We can actually fear also being rejected or being alone. And these are real things.

There’s also what we call false guilt, the idea of being anxious over things. And we may want to be a perfectionist, and no one’s perfect. We can take on too many responsibilities and these things become a like a warning signal. Unfortunately, there’s no simple cure. There’s no quick fix because the causes of worry and anxiety, they’re very complex. But there are certain things that we can do and that we should do. We need, of course, to take time to recuperate.

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We can look at some of the unresolved conflicts from the past and address them. We could also take an inventory of our life and we can budget our money, budget our income so that we’re not worrying about our money and evaluate the things that are real and not real. But I like this prayer. It’s called the Serenity Prayer. This is a great idea. It says Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

And I think there’s something here about changing the things that you can. Of course, there are some things in life you can’t change. Well, that’s when you can trust God. Trust God with the circumstances of your life. And when things are not going well, we can still say well, dear God, I trust you. I choose to trust you when things are not going well. So if you do trust God, we can be confident that He will look after you and He will provide for you. So think of that prayer. Grant me the Serenity Lord to accept the things I cannot change and the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. I think that will be a great help.

Let’s Pray

Well, Lord, that is true. And we know that whatever happens to us today, we’re in your care, Amen.