How to Stop Worrying — Murray on the Anxiety the Cross Carries
⏱ 14 min read
The mind has been running three steps ahead for months. The thing at work that could go wrong. The thing with the child that has not yet gone wrong but might. The phone call you have been bracing for. The medical result. The bill. The small lurch in the chest that arrives at four in the morning, on a Tuesday, when nothing is actually happening, but the body has been pre-living the next bad thing for so many nights in a row that the pre-living has begun to feel like a second job.
You did not choose to be this kind of worrier. The worry is not, finally, a character flaw — it is a small habit your nervous system learned in a season when something hard was actually happening, and the system has not yet been told it can stop scanning. The slow Christian answer to how to stop worrying is not to will the worry away, which has not worked and will not work. The slow answer is to learn the quiet practice of abiding — of letting yourself sit, daily, inside the love of Christ, until the cross becomes the place the worry can finally be set down. Andrew Murray, in Abide in Christ, wrote the most patient extended treatment of this practice in English devotional literature. Three of his passages, read slowly, are worth an evening. The Stilling Waves Devotionals on Anxiety carries this kind of reading into a daily companion for the woman whose mind has not, yet, learned how to stop. For now — read slowly. (If the worry has been keeping the journal page blank, the companion an anxiety and faith journal — how to hold both at once walks the slow practice for the mind that doesn’t trust it can do both. If the worry surfaces hardest at night, prayer for anxiety and overthinking is the scripture-anchored prayer page for that hour. The companion daily-prompt set Christian journal prompts for anxiety — 30 prompts to quiet your mind carries the practice into a month of small evenings.)
Andrew Murray was a Dutch Reformed minister in South Africa whose ministry was, for most of its forty years, lived under the weight of pressures most of his congregants did not see — chronic illness in his household, sons in distant ministry, the long ordinary anxieties of pastoring through droughts and political upheaval. He wrote Abide in Christ not as a man who had stopped being anxious, but as a man who had found a daily place to set the anxiety down. The slow reading below is about that place.
The first passage — abiding is rest, not work
Murray, very early in Abide in Christ, said the sentence that the worrying Christian most needs to hear, because the worrying Christian has been turning even the practice of abiding into one more thing to worry about doing correctly.
“Let this truth, accepted under the teaching of the Spirit in faith, remove every vestige of fear, as if abiding in Christ were a burden and a work. In the light of His life in the Father, let it henceforth be to you a blessed rest in the union with Him, an overflowing fountain of joy and strength. To abide in His love, His mighty, saving, keeping, satisfying love, even as He abode in the Father’s love — surely the very greatness of our calling teaches us that it never can be a work we have to perform; it must be with us as with Him, the result of the spontaneous outflowing of a life from within, and the mighty inworking of the love from above.”
— Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
The line worth keeping near the page is every vestige of fear, as if abiding in Christ were a burden and a work. This is the worried Christian’s exact mistake. She has been turning resting in Christ into one more performance she is failing at. I should be more abiding. I should be praying more. I should be reading more scripture. I should be less anxious. I should have figured this out by now. Murray, with great pastoral kindness, takes the should out of the sentence. Abiding is not a work you perform. Abiding is the result of the spontaneous outflowing of a life from within, and the mighty inworking of the love from above. The two motions — your slow daily settling into Him, and His ongoing love working from above — are not two different things. They are one motion, and you are not the engine of either.
This is the first thing to say about how to stop worrying as a Christian. The stopping is not a project you can fail at. The stopping is the slow daily setting down. You sit in the chair. You read the verse. You let the breath have one longer exhale. You hand the worry to Him, in a small evening sentence, and you go to bed. You wake up. The worry is back. You sit in the chair again. You read the verse again. You let the breath have one longer exhale again. The repetition is not failure. The repetition is the practice. Murray is firm on this, in a gentle way. The fear that the abiding itself is a burden is the Enemy’s last reflex. The burden has been lifted. The abiding is blessed rest.
For the woman who has been worrying that she is not abiding well enough — Murray is gentle. The worrying about the abiding is the worry the cross was made to carry. You can hand even that worry to Him. I am worried I am not abiding well, Lord. I salute this worry too. I set it down at the foot of the cross. I trust You with even my failure to trust You well. The handing is the abiding. The chair is the abiding. The longer exhale is the abiding. Nothing more is asked of you. The mighty inworking of the love from above is His work, not yours. (If the worry has soured into a heavier weight, the companion how to overcome bitterness — Murray on the root that defiles walks the slow next page. If a person has been at the centre of the worry, the sibling article how to forgive someone who hurt you — De Sales on hard forgiveness is the companion practice.)
The somatic — for the body that has been worrying for you
Pause here. The worry has not only been in your mind. It has been in the body for months. The jaw has been set. The lower back has been quietly clenched. The breath has been working high in the chest, in shallow pulls, the way bodies breathe when they are scanning for the next bad thing. The body has been worrying for you, faithfully, all the months your mind has been worrying on top of it.
Sit somewhere quiet. Both feet flat on the floor. Place one hand, lightly, on the upper belly — just above the navel, where the diaphragm sits. The diaphragm has been small and tight for some weeks. The breath has been going around it rather than into it.
Take one slow inhale. Not deep — slow. Let the breath travel down past the hand, into the lower belly, and let the diaphragm soften under the hand by a small amount. On the exhale, let the breath go all the way out, slower than the inhale. Let the upper chest lower by a quarter of an inch. Let the jaw soften. Let the small held place at the back of the throat release.
One more slow inhale. One more longer exhale. Then take the hand away.
The body did not need to do anything. It needed the acknowledgement that the diaphragm has been the part of you carrying the worry, faithfully, in your sleep. The slow exhale is not a technique to stop the worry. The slow exhale is a small piece of the body practising the blessed rest Murray named in the first passage. The worry is still in the room. The body, for two breaths, has set down a small portion of the weight. That counts. That is how to stop worrying — one slow exhale at a time, until the slow exhale becomes the body’s new ordinary.
The second passage — the still small voice that is mightier than the storm
Murray, in the chapter of Abide in Christ about hearing Christ speak the word abide, gave a sentence that names exactly what the worrying mind needs to hear under the storm of its own scanning.
“Let us set ourselves in quiet trust before Him, waiting to hear His holy voice — the still small voice that is mightier than the storm that rends the rocks — breathing its quickening spirit within us, as He speaks: ‘Abide in me.’ The soul that truly hears Jesus Himself speak the word, receives with the word the power to accept and to hold the blessing He offers.”
— Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ
Read it twice. Slowly.
The image is from Elijah, who, after the loss of his hope, stood on the mountain. The wind came, and tore the rocks. God was not in the wind. The earthquake came. God was not in the earthquake. The fire came. God was not in the fire. And then, a still small voice — and God was in the voice. Murray’s sentence borrows the whole scene for the anxious Christian. The wind, the earthquake, the fire — these are your worry. They are loud. They tear the rocks. They are not where He is meeting you. He is meeting you in the still small voice that arrives, in a quiet evening half-hour, when you have stopped, finally, trying to manage the storm by force.
The voice, when it arrives, is mightier than the storm. This is the line that the worrying woman needs to write down. The still small voice is mightier than the storm that rends the rocks. The worry feels mighty. The worry has been the loudest thing in the room for weeks. The voice, when it speaks, is smaller — but it is the mightier of the two. The voice does not have to shout to be the mightier. The voice has to be heard, and the hearing happens in the quiet, after the storm has finished being loud.
The blessing Murray names is not the absence of the worry. The blessing is the power to accept and to hold the blessing He offers. The blessing He offers, in this passage, is one word — abide. Stay near Me. Sit in the chair. Let your mind, slowly, settle on Me rather than on the next bad thing. The word abide is the medicine. The worrying mind hears the word, and receives with the word the power to accept and to hold what the word is offering. The receiving is itself the answer to the worry. You do not have to fix the worry first, and then receive the abiding. You receive the abiding now, and the worry, slowly, has less room to occupy.
This is the second thing to say about how to stop worrying as a Christian. The worry is loud. His voice is small. The small voice is the mightier of the two. The practice is the quiet — the small daily evening half-hour, the chair, the verse, the longer exhale — in which the storm is allowed to keep tearing the rocks outside, and the voice is allowed to be the loudest thing inside the room you are sitting in. The storm has not stopped. The room is quiet. Both are true at once. The quiet of the room is, slowly, the new centre of gravity of your inner life — and from the quiet of the room, the storm outside loses some of its capacity to dictate the chemistry of your chest.
The Stilling Waves Devotionals on Anxiety was built around this exact practice — one short passage each evening, a verse held next to the worry, room for the honest sentence about what is loudest in the chest today, and a small place to hand it back. The journal is not the cure for the worry. Christ is. The journal is the quiet room where the still small voice becomes the loudest thing.
The third passage — the blessed rest in the arms of Everlasting Love
Murray, late in Abide in Christ, wrote a sentence that names where the slow practice of abiding finally arrives — not at the absence of worry, but at a place underneath the worry that the worry can no longer disturb.
“Abiding in Jesus is nothing but the giving up of oneself to be ruled and taught and led, and so resting in the arms of Everlasting Love. Blessed rest! the fruit and the foretaste and the fellowship of God’s own rest, found of them who thus come to Jesus to abide in Him. It is the peace of God, the great calm of the eternal world, that passeth all understanding, and that keeps the heart and mind.”
— Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ
Read it once at speed. Then read it again, slowly.
The line worth keeping near the page is resting in the arms of Everlasting Love. This is, finally, the answer to the question of how to stop worrying. The stopping is not a technique. The stopping is the giving up of oneself to be ruled and taught and led, and the resting that follows. The worry has been your small attempt to rule the future. The rest is the slow handing of the future back to the One who can. The arms that are doing the catching are the arms of Everlasting Love — the love that does not waver when the news is bad, the love that does not turn away when the medical result is hard, the love that does not abandon when the worst thing in the worry actually arrives. The arms have been there the whole time. The worry has been small evidence that you had forgotten.
The blessing Murray names in the second half of the passage is the peace of God, the great calm of the eternal world, that passeth all understanding, and that keeps the heart and mind. The verb keeps is the verb worth pausing on. The peace keeps the heart and mind. The peace is not a feeling you produce. The peace is a hand around your interior. The peace garrisons what is otherwise unprotected. The worry no longer has direct access to the heart, because the peace, set in front of it by Him, has kept the door.
This is the third thing to say about how to stop worrying as a Christian. The peace is given. The peace is not a feeling you generate. You sit in the chair. You hand the worry back. You rest, for sixty seconds, in the arms of Everlasting Love. The peace, given, keeps you — and the keeping is durable in a way your own self-management was not. The worry will come back tomorrow. You will hand it back tomorrow too. The peace will keep you tomorrow as it kept you today. The slow practice is the chair. The keeping is His. The carrying is not, finally, your work.
For the woman whose worry has felt, for years, like a thing only she could carry — Murray is gentle. The cross was made to carry it. The arms have been there. You do not have to manufacture the rest. You have to give yourself up to be ruled and taught and led, and the rest is given. The giving is small and daily. The given rest is His mighty work above.
What the slow reading will do over a year
If you sit with Murray’s three passages — one a month for three months — and then the long question how to stop worrying as your slow companion for the rest of the year, what happens is not dramatic. The worry does not disappear on a Tuesday morning. What happens is that the centre of gravity of the worrying moves.
The worry, slowly, stops being the loudest thing in the room. The room becomes the quiet. The still small voice becomes audible. The body lowers its bracing, one slow exhale at a time, until the chest stops, in the middle of an ordinary afternoon, doing the small chronic clenching it had been doing for years. The blessed rest in the arms of Everlasting Love becomes, in small evenings, the actual chemistry of your interior — not as a feeling, but as a quiet underneath whatever the feeling is. The phrases become small lit rooms in the mind. Abiding is rest, not work. The still small voice is mightier than the storm. The peace of God keeps the heart and mind. You step into the rooms when the worry surfaces. The chairs are already in them.
The slow reading does not promise the worry will be gone by the year-mark. It will not. The slow reading does not promise the hard things in your life will become smaller. They will not. What the slow reading does is companion the worry. The worry and the rest can live in the same chest. Both are true. Murray held them together for the whole of his ministry, and the holding has not yet stopped working. The slow walk of the next year is the slow learning of how to carry both, and the carrying is, in Murray’s vocabulary, the giving up of oneself to be ruled and taught and led, and so resting in the arms of Everlasting Love.
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A daily home for the slow handing-back
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Devotionals on Anxiety. Each evening, one short passage and a verse, with room for the honest sentence — a small daily place to hand the worry back, while the storm outside is still tearing the rocks.
The Stilling Waves Devotionals on Anxiety carries Murray’s slow vocabulary — abiding as rest not work, the still small voice mightier than the storm, the blessed rest in the arms of Everlasting Love — into a daily companion for the woman whose mind has been running three steps ahead for months, without rushing and without pretending the worry can be willed away.
