"> '); Prevailing Intercessory Prayer : James McConkey: Worriment

Overcoming Worriment

James McConkey

“I recall an experience in my own Christian life. My father was dying of a disease brought on by worriment. A great physician had been summoned from the city. He was closeted with my father for a long time. Then he came out of the sick chamber soberly shaking his head. There was no hope. My father’s race was run. Then my dear mother asked the great doctor to take me aside for a conference. For I myself was breaking in body, and from the same dread enemy which overthrows so many Christians—anxious care. So the kind-hearted physician took me into the parlor, and we sat down for a heart-to-heart chat. Very searchingly and with all the skill of an expert did he draw forth from me the humiliating fact that I was a prey of worriment and suffering from its dread results. Then he turned to me and in a few, keen, incisive sentences with no attempt at concealment, told me that I had fallen a victim to the same habit which had been my father’s undoing, and that unless I overcame it, there was no hope for me even as there was none for him.

“I went upstairs. I threw myself upon my knees in my bedchamber. I cried out in my agony of soul— ‘Oh, Christ! He says I must overcome worriment. And Thou alone knowest how I have tried to do so. I have fought. I have struggled. I have wept bitter tears. And I have failed. 0 Lord Jesus, unless Thou dost undertake for me now it is all over with me!’ Then and there I threw myself in utter self-helplessness upon Christ. Somehow, where before I had been struggling I now found myself trusting as I had never quite done before. From that time onward Jesus Christ began to give me the beauty of victory for the sombre ashes of defeat!”—James H. McConkey, "Beauty for Ashes"