How to Stop Worrying—Forever

By Winston K. Pendleton

"How would you like to do just what this title says-stop worrying forever? Following the simple steps the author outlines, you can do just that. . . . There have been dozens of volumes on this subject in the past several years, but this is one of the best." --Baton Rouge Advocate

Say goodbye to the stressful life. In an age of discouragement and despair, this book offers a simple, personal philosophy to promote physical, spiritual, and mental well-being. For Winston K. Pendleton, faith provides the key to worry-free living. By finding faith in God, oneself, and in others, anyone can put anxiety to rest for good.

Biblical passages and accompanying explanations teach modern readers about how to banish stress. Explanatory metaphors and anecdotes illuminate the ways in which one can persistently keep worry away through strengthening one's faith and moving from faith to action. Concise and accessible, this volume includes all the tools necessary to live a stress-free life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 10, 2010
• ISBN: 9781455615933

Book preview

I

Jesus Points the Way

Do you ever worry? Do you ever let petty annoyances and irritations—or big problems for that matter—keep you awake at night? Do your tensions make you grouchy and hard to get along with? Do you sometimes get down in the dumps and have periods of discouragement and despair? Do you ever feel as though you would just like to lie down, shut your eyes, and never wake up? If you do, then you are missing some of the greatest benefits of the Christian religion.

If you are a victim of worry, depression, and anxiety, you need to listen to the clear call of Jesus and to study the teachings of your Savior, for in them you will find the light that will lead you to the path of joyful living. Jesus gave you the answer to the worry habit in clear, easy-to-understand language, but his advice won't do you any good unless you listen. You must study what he had to say about worry. Then you must follow his advice.

The teachings of Jesus are like a doctor's prescription. The doctor may prescribe the right medicine, but it won't cure the patient if he doesn't take it. Not only that, the patient must be careful to follow the directions on the label of the medicine bottle exactly, or he may wind up worse than before.

Jesus gave you the prescription, but you are not forced to take the medicine. He told you how to purge yourself of worry, anxiety, and tension—but doing it is left to you. If you are to get the full benefit of his medicine, you must use it and use only according to the doctor's directions.

Jesus spent a great amount of his time talking about worry and anxiety—and for a good reason. Most of the people who came to him were overwhelmed with worries and anxieties. They needed help. To understand their problems, it is necessary to look back and see what was going on in their part of the world when Jesus was preaching.

Matthew said, So his fame spread throughout all Syria, . . . (Matthew 4:24). He mentioned that great crowds followed Jesus. People had come from Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and even from the other side of the Jordan River. This was true fame, considering the transportation problems of that day. Most of those people walked. A few of the more fortunate may have had a donkey or a camel, but for the most part, walking was the only way they could reach their destination.

Matthew said that Jesus was making his home in Capernaum, but that he was teaching and preaching all over Galilee. For many of those people, it was a long walk to Galilee.

If a man was living down in Judea and heard about Jesus and wanted to see him, he probably would go first to Capernaum. If he did not find Jesus there, he would ask where he was teaching and follow him to that place. To join the multitudes following Jesus, he would have to walk at least 50 miles if he came from the northern tip of Judea or more than 100 miles if he came from down near Carmel. If he was one of those who came from Jerusalem, he had a hike of between 75 and 80 miles.

Walking wasn't easy in those days. Roads—if you could call them roads—were rough. A traveler had no comfortable hiking shoes such as there are today; he had sandals at best and bare feet at worst. There were no drive-in restaurants along the way and no handy motels to stay in at night.

Contrast the difficulty of traveling to hear Jesus in those days with the ease of driving to church today. This will give you some idea of his fame.

What was Jesus famous for? What was the attraction? These are important questions because it is necessary to understand something of the motivation of these people in order to understand why Jesus talked to them about worry.

Why did they come? Matthew explains why some of them were there: . . . and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he healed them (Matthew 4:24).

Part of these great crowds were the sick. However, if a man was sick enough to seek out Jesus to be cured of the palsy or if he was a demoniac, he couldn't very well travel alone all the way from Decapolis or the seacoast of Judea. Somebody had to come along to look after him. Consequently, another part of the audience consisted of the kinfolk and friends of the sick.

Many of the people were casual bystanders, persons who had stopped to see why the crowd had gathered. Many were merely curious, people who had heard about a man who was healing the sick. They had come to watch Jesus perform miracles and feats of magic.

Some were doubters. They came to see him fail and to prove him wrong, like a certain type today who will go to watch a parachute exhibition—not so much to see the show, but just to be there in case the parachute doesn't open, so they can tell their friends they were there when it happened.

Another part of any large crowd would certainly be those who stood on the fringes for profit—the peanut vendors and the hot dog salesmen. They are always there, but only to get what they can from the crowd. They couldn't care less about the speaker.

A closer look at the crowds that followed Jesus will show that almost always there were some religious leaders and church officials of varying importance. And too, there were many plain, ordinary, good churchgoers.

These were the people of the multitudes who followed Jesus—his congregation. They had come from everywhere. (Everywhere in those days meant from all over Palestine, which was really only a tiny unimportant province in the backwash of the sprawling Roman Empire.) They were from all walks of life. They were a true cross section of the people.

Jesus was healing the sick and bringing his message of salvation and of the kingdom and of eternal life, not to members of a fashionable and socially accepted city church, not to a group of theological students who had come to hear a university lecture, but to a multitude of odds and ends of humanity from everywhere.

This would be a hard congregation to preach to. The truth is, it would be an impossible audience to win over unless the speaker were skillful enough to discover some