How to Win Over Worry

Is worrying really a problem? After all, mulling things over in your brain is part of processing things, isn’t it?

The Bible has a few things to say about this subject. Philippians 4:6-7 says, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

Anxious worrying is not a state God wants us to dwell in. He wants us to have peace of mind.

Matthew 6:25-27 reinforces this: “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

“Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?”

In verse 33 Jesus gives us the solution: “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”

Reasons for worry

The society we live in and the cares of our physical existence automatically generate anxieties and problems for every one of us. As prices rise, it’s easy to wonder how we will feed, clothe and house ourselves and our families. We may have a loved one suffering from an incurable disease that causes us to wring our hands in mental agony.

The tumultuous world itself, with unstable regions in the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere, may cause deep anxiety. On an almost daily basis, bizarre weather catastrophes cause concerns somewhere on the planet.

All of these things can steal our joy and interfere with our spiritual growth and relationship with God. Yet He is our hope. He is the Creator of the universe.

Jesus Christ is coming back here to fix the chaos and the havoc that Satan has been allowed to wreak on humanity throughout recorded history. We look forward to the time when He will refresh and restore all things (Acts 3:19-21)!

Knowing that this is God’s plan is wonderful, but sometimes Christians still need a method to work through their worry now.

Get off the worry-go-round

Have you ever sat down to do Bible study and found that even though your eyes were looking at the pages in your Bible, the words weren’t actually going into your brain because you were on a “worry-go-round”? Your mind was spinning with questions—What if? How come?—and worst-case scenario thinking.

Have you ever knelt down to pray and found, once again, your stubborn brain hopping on the worry-go-round, getting you completely off track in your conversation and time with our Creator?

How do we win the battle with worry? I have found I have to methodically follow specific steps to help me jump off the worry-go-round.

The S.P.I.T.T. method for winning over worry

I use the S.P.I.T.T. method when my brain is whirring. This method has helped me over the past decades when worry threatened to take over.

For me, this past year included packing and moving aging parents who lived 1,000-plus miles away; seeing my son move to Mexico City for a job; having my dad fall, break his hip and die within three weeks; taking a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Philippines; and navigating major health issues for a child with asthma.

Such life stressors can steal your joy and interfere with your relationship with God if you don’t have a method of navigating through them. Therefore, I used the following step-by-step method multiple times in the last year to help with my level of worry.

I use the mnemonic S.P.I.T.T. to help me remember each of these steps. So here is how to S.P.I.T.T.

Survey

Write down everything that is causing you stress or worry and determine who is responsible for it. Proverbs 4:26 says, “Ponder the path of your feet, and let all your ways be established.”

I sit with pen and paper and make an exhaustive list of all the things that are stressing me out and causing me to ride the worry-go-round.

Then I survey the list I have compiled and evaluate what comes under my sphere of influence. I ask myself, What do I have control over? Anything I don’t have control over, I pray about specifically and give it to God.

When I was younger, I would write each worry on a piece of paper, pray about it and put it in a box under the bed, symbolically giving it to God. When I started worrying about it again, I would remind myself that I put it in God’s hands and could trust Him to take care of it. He is the Creator of the universe!

The other items on the list—the ones that you do have influence over—go with you to the next step.

Plan

Sit down and put your worries in order of priority. Then, starting from the most important and urgent, make a detailed plan, asking yourself, What can I do about this issue?

If it is something really big, seek guidance from God and from others. Proverbs 15:22 says, “Without counsel, plans go awry. But in the multitude of counselors they are established.”

With almost any plan, consider three levels of outcomes:

• What you would be okay with.
• What you would be happy with.
• Your ultimate, highest-level goal.

If you are doing your best in everything you do, celebrate wherever you land along this continuum.

Now that you have your plans written down, you have to move on to the next step.

Implement

Take a step forward, starting with your highest priority issue. Just as a baby learns to walk, we grow and improve as we do things. Don’t wait for the perfect time to pray, study, exercise, clean the house, look for a new job, meet a new friend, etc. Some movement forward is better than being paralyzed by inertia.

If we commit everything we do to God, we can rest assured He will bless even our fumbling and awkward tries. As Paul wrote in Colossians 3:17, “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”

Take time

Our society is so busy that we often neglect our health and well-being. If we skip this step, we miss out on many things that would help reduce our stress. Spiritual tools, like biblical meditation and Sabbath rest, and physical things, like getting enough sleep and exercise, can help us win over worry.

Carving out time to take care of our mental, physical, spiritual and emotional health will help us to deal more effectively with the worries that will inevitably occur in our lives.

Thank God

Finally, it helps to focus on the blessings God gives us. One way to do that is to keep a blessings journal. Write down all the ways God has blessed and intervened in your life. In the dark moments in life, reading these things can help us put our worries into perspective and reinforce our confidence that God can take care of even the smallest matters in our lives.

As Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5:16, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks.”

If we can S.P.I.T.T. (Survey, Plan, Implement, Take time and Thank God), it can help us get off the worry-go-round, rely on God and win over worry.

For more about dealing with anxious worry, see:

• “Coping With Anxiety.”
• “Surviving This Age of Anxiety.”
• “How to Deal With Fear and Stress.”
• “Finding Peace of Mind.”