"Fear and worry are interest paid in
advance on something you may never own."

Fear is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow. Worry is simply the triumph of fear over faith.

There's a story that is told about a woman who was standing on a street corner crying profusely. A man came up to her and asked why she was weeping. The lady shook her head and replied: "I was just thinking that maybe someday I would get married. We would later have a beautiful baby girl. Then one day this child and I would go for a walk along this street, come to this corner, and my darling daughter would run into the street, get hit by a car, and die."

Now that sounds like a pretty ridiculous situation—for a grown woman to be weeping her eyes out because of something that would probably never happen. Yet isn't this the way we respond when we worry? We take a situation which might never exist and build it up all out of proportion in our mind.

There is an old Swedish proverb that says, "Worry gives a small thing in a big shadow." Worry is simply the misuse of God's creative imagination, which He has placed within each of us. When fear rises in our mind, we should learn to expect the opposite in our life.

The word worry itself is derived from an Anglo-Saxon term meaning "to strangle," or "to choke off." There is no question that worry and fear in the mind does choke off the creative flow from above.

Things are seldom as they seem. "Skim milk masquerades as cream," said W. S. Gilbert. As we dwell on and worry about matters beyond our control, a negative effect begins to set in. Too much analysis always leads to paralysis. Worry is a route which leads from somewhere to nowhere. Don't let it direct our life.

In Psalm 55:22 the Bible says, "Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved."

Never respond out of fear, and never fear to respond. Action attacks fear; inaction builds fear.

Don't worry and don't fear. Instead, take your fear and worry to the Lord, Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you (1 Pet. 5:7).

Source: An Enemy Called Average by John Mason.
Excerpt permission granted by Insight Publishing