Exhortation-Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled

As I mentioned last week, life is full of trouble. In a particular church there is trouble because people are trouble. This would not be the case if people were not sinners. Except for the fact that we seem to always blame the sin on someone else. But we need to remember that Jesus is trouble, too. This really calls us up short when we think that our troubles are outside of us, that someone else is the cause of them. But why do men, women and children have a hard time with Jesus? He is no sinner, so it cannot be that. The only reason is that He confronts us. He reveals us. His truth reveals our way of life. We often do not like to see this and ignore His testimony in our lives. But doing that only brings more trouble. For Jesus is persistent. He will not let it rest. He keeps stirring up the trouble until it gets dealt with. Some do not like this but those who have tasted of the fruit of Jesus’s persistance in dealing with sin are humbly thankful.

Be we must remember that the purpose of all this trouble is not to be troubled. Jesus does not want this. People are trouble and sins are trouble but Jesus says, "Let not your heart be troubled." And He said this to a bunch of disheartened disciples who were about to fail their Savior in the most miserable ways. He will stir up trouble from Him to you or from one to another because it is His desire that we deal with Him and deal with one another so that our hearts will not be troubled. Trouble comes but trouble goes and good riddance. But troubles, strife with God or strife in the brotherhood, are like monsters in the closet. The more they are avoided, the scarier they become. Only when they are revealed as the petty tyrants that they are can they be effectively eliminated, nailed to the cross, killed with Jesus. And when the resulting blessing comes, we are thankful for the trouble. We even have a cliché that describes what we mean. We say, "It was worth the trouble."

So, let God deal with us. May the Spirit reveal to us where we have resisted the rule of Jesus, where we have been ashamed of His work in the world, where we have boasted in our flesh only to fail, where we have slandered the brothers, or another man’s good name. May we see that the purpose of Jesus in this is that we will see our own sins and deal with them so that we will be at peace and our hearts will not be troubled.