DO YOU HAVE A WORRYING PROBLEM?

1. Do you tend to put off living in the present in order to worry about the future, or to yearn for some “magical rose garden over the horizon”?

2. Do you sometimes embitter the present by regretting things that happened in the past-that are over and done with?

3. Do you get up in the morning determined to “Seize the day”-to get the utmost out of these twenty-four hours?

4. Can you get more out of life by “living in day-tight compartments” ?

5. When shall you start to do this? Next week? .. Tomorrow? … Today?

Half the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before they have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision.

“So you can banish about ninety per cent of my worries by taking these four steps:

“1. Writing down precisely what you are worrying about.

“2. Writing down what you can do about it.

“3. Deciding what to do.

“4. Starting immediately to carry out that decision.”

Epictetus, the great Stoic philosopher, warned that we ought to be more concerned about removing wrong thoughts from the mind than about removing “tumours and abscesses from the body.”

A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens. Remember that worry is a sin as the Bible says. We are to be anxious for nothing but in everything through prayer and supplication put our request before God.

The more we pray the less we tend to worry. God is a happy God and not a worrying God. Let us do likewise and take the word for what it says.