If you do not worry, if you have never worried, if you do not plan to worry, do not read this chapter; it will be a waste of time. But if a dark cloud of worry overshadows your life, read this chapter carefully; the shadow can be dispelled.

We live in an age of anxiety. The image is the image of fear - not the image of faith. We respond to the old Scotch litany: "From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties. And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!" It seems that we expect the worst, and we get it.

Leslie Weatherhead, famous English preacher of the closing generation, once shared a helpful insight into the structure of fear. He observed that when an automobile breaks down it is more often the fault of the driver than the fault of the machine. The machine is to…