I know that someone reading this today is a worried, fretting child of God. You are almost eaten up with worry. You just cannot get that thing off your mind.

Oh, I know how you feel; I have done my share of worrying. Worry has a strange effect on your troubles, an effect like a magnifying glass: it makes them bigger and distorted. But it sure is hard to stop worrying!

In fact, when some well meaning friend tells you, "Oh, stop worrying, it will be all right," this just goes against your grain. You think, "Well, I can see that he doesn't know anything about worrying. You just can't stop worrying!" They say, "Don't worry!" and you get all angry inside and begin to wish that they had your problems; then they would know what you are worried about! When someone says, "Don't worry!" you get indignant. You think, "Don't worry, indeed! What kind of an amateur psychologist is this? Doesn't he know that I can't stop worrying!?"

This is the attitude so many of us have come to accept: I can't stop worrying; I've tried and I can't. But, child of God, you are wrong. You can stop worrying. Jesus said you could and the Bible says you can. God knows your abilities, He knows your strengths and weaknesses, and He says that you can "take no thought for the morrow" (Matthew 6:34). He says you can stop fretting, that you can cast your care on Him for "He careth for you" (1Peter 5:7).

Suppose that a man went out into his driveway, got into his car, put the shift lever into neutral, started the motor and sat there and raced his engine till he was out of gas. Suppose he did this day after day. He would wear out his car, waste a lot of time and money, and never get anywhere. Jesus said, "Which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?" (Luke 12:25). This phrase, "taking thought" is translated from the Greek. It comes from a word meaning "to be anxious." Which of you, by being anxious, can make any progress? Or, in more modern English: Which of you by racing your mental engine all day long, can get anywhere? You won't move an inch toward a solution of your problems; you will only get fatigued inside without ever accomplishing a thing. You will run out of gas in your driveway, so to speak. You will wear out your body and get nowhere.

The message of the Bible comes through loud and clear to our day: Get into gear. Shift into faith and prayer and you will climb mountains. Shift into praise and thanksgiving and you will drive unswervingly toward your goals. Worry does nothing but race up your whole mental and physical machinery. God's message to you today is: Put your life in gear and move out. Go places. Shift into faith and prayer and move into peace. Shift into trust and move into tranquility.

Suppose you went to the man who sat racing his engine in his driveway and said, "Look mister, why don't you put your engine in gear; then you'll get somewhere?" Then suppose he turned to you with a puzzled look and said, "I can't, I just can't!" You reply, "Why? Your car is working, you have a driver's license. There is nothing to hinder you from putting this thing into gear and getting somewhere." And suppose he just turned to you and said, "Oh, you don't understand, you just don't understand. I can't do it." You see, it is the man himself who is deluded; it is the engine racer who doesn't understand that he is being held in the clutches of a delusion. It is not that he cannot, but, rather, that he is persuaded that he cannot.

Many times when I counsel with a troubled person, I feel I am talking to an engine racer. It is not that he cannot stop worrying. It is that he thinks he cannot. His fears have convinced him of their power. His troubles have woven a delusion throughout his mind. His fretting has robbed him of true reason.

Some of you are caught in the bondage of this delusion. It is very real to you. You are fully, totally persuaded that you cannot stop worrying. You think this is just part of your nature. You get worn threadbare inside. Your nerves are always on edge. But you think, "Well, this is just how I am and there is nothing I can do about it." So you go on, day after day, racing your engine. Pressure fills your head, fear grips your heart, problems make your stomach ache or burn. You worry about your children. You worry about your relatives. You worry about your job. You worry about your worrying. Your engine is going a thousand revolutions a minute and you are standing still, not making any headway toward solving your problems.

God says you can shift from fear to faith; He says you can change gears and get into a forward position. You can shift yourself from fretting and worrying to prayer and faith, from reliance upon yourself and your abilities to trust in God and His abilities. Listen to Philippians 4:6 (from the Amplified version): "Do not fret or have anxiety about anything, but in every circumstance and in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving continue to make your wants known to God." This is a direct command: Do not fret about anything.

Now, if you couldn't stop fretting, God would not have issued such an order. But continue on with this command because inside it is the remedy, the remedy to stop fretting. You cannot stop worrying by trying or struggling to push thoughts out of your mind. This will only make these fearful thoughts more severe and place them even more in the center of your consciousness. This verse of scripture very plainly says to shift from worry to prayer.

If you are in prayer, talking to your Heavenly Father, thanking Him for the answer and praising Him for His goodness, you will very soon see that the energies you were wasting in worry are now being used to lift your heart closer to God; and the closer you get to your Heavenly Father, the more you realize that there is an answer to your dilemma and the surer you become that He is near you and that everything is going to come out all right. A man puts the clutch in on his car to shift into gear and get going. Prayer is the clutch that shifts you into faith and then you start going places.

I can remember a very severe trial sometime ago. No finances were coming in for the ministry; everything was going wrong; even my car was falling to pieces. I didn't think I would have any money to fix it. Bills were piling up and it seemed that every new day brought more trouble. I want to tell you that I raced my mental engine faster and faster and faster. I worried and fretted; my heart was tossed about like an ocean wave. I could not see any way that my problems could be solved, and this was part of my trouble: I was trying to see how the answer was going to come. If I couldn't see it, then I decided it just couldn't happen. I prayed, but my prayer was more the utterance of fear or doubt than a petition to God. I would go to prayer and my whole mind would become clouded with fears.

Then, one day, I read an article, a simple message of faith based on the verse of scripture that says, "Casting all your cares upon Him; for He careth for you" (1Peter 5:7). Through this short article, I realized that I had never really made an effort to throw my cares over on the Lord. Even though I was praying, as long as I was fretting I was not trusting Him. I would deny it and say I was trusting Him, of course, but I wasn't, really.

So I had a very unusual little ceremony. All alone, I knelt and said, "Lord, I am sorry that I have not trusted You more and have tried to bear my own burdens. I have not trusted You enough and I failed to avail myself of Your love and cast my cares upon You. I give You every one of my cares right now." And as I said that I imagined that I was taking my cares, all my worries, and lifting them from my shoulders (I actually went through these motions) and placed them on His shoulders.

When I did that, I meant it. I began to praise Him and thank Him for taking my burdens. The more I praised God and thanked Him, the more real this became. He had taken my burdens. My trust was really in Him.

I had five dollars in my pocket and I needed a very large sum of money. Two days later, someone gave me a small gift. Then someone gave me a hundred dollars. And then a person I had never met before in my life said, "I feel led of the Spirit to make this gift to you." It was a check for one thousand dollars. This met the need, and ever since that time He has been meeting my needs. Not once since then has God ever let me down, and He never will because I am trusting Him.

And you can do the very same thing. I didn't think I could do it, but I did. You don't think you can do it, but you can. Take the first step right now. Take all your cares and literally cast them upon Him for He cares for you. Avail yourself of His love. Have a little ceremony like I did.

The Bible says, "The government shall be upon His shoulder" (Isaiah 9:6). Let the gov- ernment of your life be on Him. Take your cares and put them on Him. Then, after you have done this, thank Him, praise Him, and make some positive declarations from scripture. Cast fear utterances from your heart. Stop talking about your worries; don't let them cross your tongue. Speak faith declarations. This will seal your decision; this will make it real. Continue to do this.

Say, "The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer. The God of my rock; in Him will I trust: He is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my Saviour" (2 Samuel 22:2. 3), and "I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust" (Psalm 91:2). Spend some time today searching through the scriptures, looking for these types of positive faith utterances. Write them down. Commit them to memory. Say them out loud over and over and over again. Watch what happens. You will actually feel yourself shift into faith and move on . . . move on to victory!