What are you worried about?

One of the sermons on Sunday was about worry, so I thought I would take some of the ideas expressed in that talk and add a sprinkling of my own thoughts and observations.
1. Worrying gets you nowhere
The Bible says, "Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?" (Matthew 6: 27)
I guess no one would argue with that. However much we may worry about a situation, the worry itself doesn't change a thing. In fact, worrying can damage your health and actually shorten your life!
2. Worry involves crossing bridges that you will probably never come to!
Once you let worry into your head, you start to imagine a dozen different scenarios, problems and difficulties and in your mind you try to find a way through each of them. It is a real waste of effort, because the vast majority of the things we worry about will never happen.
3. Worry chases away peace.
Our brains can only think about one thing at a time, so we can't be thinking peaceful thoughts at the same time as thinking about our worries.  When my children were little, they occasionally suffered from scary thoughts when they were in bed at night. I found that the best way to help them was to get them to tell the scary thoughts to go away and then to think about something nice that had happened instead. When they were thinking about the nice memories, they couldn't be thinking about their fears. Although I used it on my children, I have also found it works for me!
4. Time passes, even in the most difficult times.
No matter how difficult the circumstances ahead, we will one day be on the other side looking back on them. Our experience tells us that we will survive, somehow, and that worrying won't make any difference to that fact.
5. Worry is usually about things in the past (that we can't change) or things in the future (that haven't happened yet.) The Bible says,"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." God will give us the strength we need for today.
6. Worry is when we think it's all down to us.
We often bear the weight of other people's expectations or our own feelings of responsibility. No one is indispensable and God does not want us to feel overburdened. "“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." Matthew 11:28
7. God will help us and change our perspective, if we look upward instead of inward.