Worry: The Silent Killer

By James R Gray and Katy Neely

While not listed as the official cause of demise on most death certificates, worry continues to be a major negative influence on overall health and, in fact, is a significant contributing factor to early death for many people. In "Worry: The Silent Killer," James Rudy Gray presents practical insights, Scriptural principles, biblical stories and sol

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Baptist Courier
• Release date: Jul 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781940645124

Book preview

Worry

The Silent Killer

By James R. Gray

B.A., M.A., Th.M., D.Min.

Foreword by Dr. Fred H. Wolfe

Published by CourierPublishing

Greenville, S.C.

Worry: The Silent Killer

This Edition ©Copyright 2013 by James R. Gray

Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible,

The Lockman Foundation, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972,

1973, 1975, 1977.

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated

to my wife, Anne,

committed Christian, loving mother,

caring grandmother

and devoted helpmate.

Foreword

A book with a sound biblical approach to the serious problem of worry is greatly needed. Dr. James Rudy Gray has given us that kind of book. In reading Dr. Gray’s book about worry, it is obvious he is dealing with a pressing and serious problem in a sound, biblical manner. It is refreshing to hear what God’s Word has to say about worry and how, by applying the Word of God to our lives, worry can be overcome.

This book is a practical biblical guide to dealing with the matter of worry. I recommend it to you, not only to be read but to be heeded as you apply the principles of the Word of God to your life. As you read this book, you will understand that you do not have to be the victim of worry, but by the power of God and through the principles of His Word you can be the victor over worry. You know many people who are battling worry. I recommend to you that you share this book with them as a source of overcoming this silent killer in their life.

It is with great joy that I recommend the book Worry: The Silent Killer for my dear pastor friend, Rudy Gray. Read it carefully, read it prayerfully and overcome the worry in your own life.

— Dr. Fred H. Wolfe

Table of Contents

Chapter One

The Prognosis: Jesus’ View of Worry

Chapter Two

The Plan: Paul’s Remedy for Worry

Chapter Three

The Pitfall: David’s Warning About Worry

Chapter Four

The Picture: Martha’s Experience in Worry

Chapter Five

The Privilege: Peter’s Counsel Toward Worry

Chapter Six

The Potential: Mark’s Defeat of Worry

Chapter Seven

The Prescription: Jeremiah’s Antidote for Worry

Conclusion

Introduction

Worry is the silent killer. While it is not as loud as an explosion nor as physically destructive as cancer, it is just as deadly. For many people, worry is a terminal disease. There is no measurable way to determine how devastating this paralyzing force is to the human body. However, it is so potent that it has become a significant contributing factor in the decline, and even death, of countless numbers of individuals.

Christian psychiatrist Grace Ketterman observed that when it comes to worry and anxiety, It is rare to find one without the other. Worry comes from an Anglo-Saxon root word, wyrgan, which means to struggle or injure. Anxiety comes from a Latin word, angere, and means to choke or give pain.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual cites several different anxiety disorders, including panic disorder, various phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety disorder not otherwise specified. There are others, but these exemplify how technical and clinical the diagnostic criteria for anxiety can be. Another anxiety disorder in the DSM is generalized disorder, which describes people who worry about nearly everything.

What is the difference in worry and anxiety? The differences are subtle. Worry can be viewed as a way of thinking, while anxiety can be seen as a feeling. However, people may also have anxious thoughts. Christian counselor Norm Wright says, Worry is thinking turned into poisoned thoughts.

There is a type of anxiety — endogenous anxiety (meaning from within the brain) — that is typically described as biological and treated with medication. Worry is usually seen as cognitive. How we think is vitally important in how we live. As a general rule, feelings follow thoughts. If you want to change your feelings, you first change your thoughts.

Stress has a direct correlation to both worry and anxiety. In our contemporary society, people can develop what Christian psychologist Archibald Hart calls hurry disease. He has written extensively on stress and the negative effect it has on our health. Anxiety, worry and stress all sense or imagine some type of threat. Fear is involved. As Hart has suggested, Worry magnifies actual threats and creates imagined ones — both of which trigger the stress response. All stress reduces the brain’s ‘happy messengers’ like gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA). This neurotransmitter, the most important calming one in the brain, helps us to be tranquil, happy, and to cope.

Some people who are worried or anxious are often treated with medication. While this is sometimes necessary, especially when there is a physical condition causing the symptoms of anxiety, it is not always the best course of action. Medication can be helpful, but it is not the ultimate cure. Hart says, In the long term, curing your anxiety is a matter of changing your susceptibility to stress. The simple truth is that when we lower stress, we reduce our anxious feelings — and when we worry, we increase those anxious feelings.

Psychiatrist William Glasser, recognized for his reality therapy approach, does not embrace what he calls brain drugs. Tranquilizers like Valium, Xanax, etc., work because the brain naturally produces tranquilizers. When these natural tranquilizers are low in our brains, we feel more anxious. When we have normal levels, we feel calmer. Glasser, who believes many problems like depression, anxiety, etc., are a result of unhappiness, says, Your brain under the influence of the drug is no longer normal and less able to be flexible enough for you to make the choices you need to make to be happy. Hart also admits that artificial tranquilizers displace your natural benzodiazepines (benzos) and tell your brain to shut down the production of natural benzos. So, after awhile, you can’t stop taking the artificial tranquilizers because the natural ones aren’t there. In fact, tranquilizers, especially in high dosages, can affect a person’s ability to think clearly.

Ketterman prescribes medication conservatively. She writes, I use as little medication as possible for my patients. When I do prescribe, you may be certain that I have very logical reasons for doing so. I want my patients to learn as much as possible, to develop insight, understanding, self-discipline, and other personal skills that will win over worry, anxiety and depression for a lifetime.

She believes that most people who suffer from worry and anxiety have had an unfavorable balance in the approval and disapproval by parents during the person’s childhood. What is the cure for worry? It fundamentally is faith. However, it is not simply faith in faith, but faith in God and His Word. Encouragement helps to neutralize worry. Proverbs 12:25 says, Anxiety (worry) in the heart of a man weighs it down, but a good word makes it glad.

Worry is curable. But it can also be a silent killer. A classic story illustrates the point. Death was walking toward a city when a man stopped him and said, What are you going to do today? Death replied, I am going to kill ten thousand people. The man exclaimed, That’s horrible! Death, unmoved, responded, That is the way it is. That is what I do. At the end of the day, the man met Death again as he was leaving the city. Wearily, he said, I thought you were going to kill ten thousand people, but there were seventy thousand killed today. Death said, I only killed ten thousand. Worry and fear killed the others.

Millions of people are perhaps unknowingly using the poison of worry to commit slow but sure death. The potential for worry lies with every job or calling. The circumstances of life do not force or require us to worry. They simply provide us with the opportunity.

While it may be argued that the modern diagnosis of anxiety is more physiological than psychological, it cannot be denied that the two are inseparably linked. Neither can it be debated that worry, as presented in Scripture, is wrong, hurtful and sinful. There is a better way to live, but it begins with how we think. We can think better by knowing the truth.

It may be that our personal survival in this stressful world depends, to a large degree, on how well we learn to neutralize worry. Certainly, we can never expect total health until we dismiss this crippling force from our lives. Dr. Alexis Carrel, a Nobel Prize winner in the field of medicine, once said, Businessmen who do not know how to fight worry die young. The silent killer lurks in the shadow of every difficulty, change, or problem we encounter. Worry is not written on death certificates, but it contributes to it. The good news is that we can learn to live without the excess baggage of worry by learning how to live in the light of God’s truth. His truth does