I was reading this morning in several different passages and still had the browser tab open from the last one from this morning: John 14. Those first words jumped out at me as I was reading again tonight, "Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me."
Christ was finishing His earthly ministry. His disciples had grown close to Him, walked with Him for years, were taught be Him, encouraged by Him, rebuked by Him, etc. They had left absolutely everything to follow Him and now He was going away. These are the words that He gave them: do not let your heart be troubled.
How quickly my heart is "troubled". It really shows me how weak I am in the flesh... how dependent on the Lord I am for strength. I am reminded of those words from Psalm 63:8--My soul clings to You; Your right hand upholds me. It is not about how strong I am, but rather about how strong He is. My heart becomes troubled when I am not believing in God. That sounds super cliché, but when we see things from His perspective... when we trust Him fully... our hearts need not be troubled. When we know and understand that His plans are perfect and that no plan of His can be thwarted... when we know that God is using sinful human beings to accomplish His perfect work, we can find rest in Him. We need not fear His plan being changed by the actions of man. We don't need to know why, but we do need to believe Him with all of our hearts.
Great is Thy faithfulness,
O God my Father.
There is no shadow of turning with Thee.
Thou changest not,
Thy compassions, they fail not.
As Thou hast been,
Thou forever wilt be.
Pardon for sin,
And a peace that endureth.
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide.
Strength for today,
And bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine,
With ten thousand beside!
Great is Thy faithfulness,
Great is Thy faithfulness,
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed,
Thy hand hath provided.
Great is Thy faithfulness,
Lord, unto me!
2 comments:
Thank you for the reminder. Isn't it so wonderful that we can lean on God for strength and not have to rely our own power. I can't imagine trying to do everything (or really, anything) on my own!
I don't want to seem rude, but you left seem to have left out a word of the verse. As I recall, it goes:
"Let not your heart be troubled: YE believe in God, believe also in me."
I noticed right off because I memorized the verse when I was young. I just realized how much of an impact the absence of one word can have on a sentence. It can change the entire meaning! In the above verse, it changes the statement into a command. . .
Thanks for sharing. Yes, it is such an incredible thing that we have the Almighty God to depend on. As far as the verse, I was reading from NASB, there is no Greek word there for "Ye", but translators assumed it was implied in some translations which isn't necessarily right or wrong.
God bless!
For more word study: http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=G4100&t=KJV
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