Jesus knows exactly what you are going through and what you will go through, long before you experience it. In the upper room with His disciples, Jesus made it a priority to prepare His men for the longest night of their lives, a night where their world would rupture and all their hopes would be shattered on a wooden cross.
Jesus, who hours later would be asking His Father to take this cup of sorrow from Him, if it was His will, was in this moment, caring and preparing the hearts of those He loved for what they were about to experience. Even in the worst of life, Christ remains in control and loves His children through it.
“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had knownme, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him” (John 14:1-7).
Troubled hearts are inevitable in this life. As I type this, I have a very troubled heart, yet I have to take this passage and learn from it, using it as a weapon of warfare, to stand firm against the enemy of my heart.
The phrase, “Let not your hearts be troubled,” in the Greek reads, “stop letting your hearts be troubled.” It is both a command and something that we are in fact able to do in the midst of trouble. How? How can we stop our hearts from being troubled when our world seems to be crumbling?
The answer lies in the following verses, “Believe in God; believe also in Me.” Just as Jesus was not surprised by what was before Him, the arrest, the mock trial, the beatings, the cross, and ultimately separation from His Father, He is also aware of what we have, are, and will go through in this life and gives us the tools to walk through these shadowy valleys.
First we must choose to stop our hearts from being troubles and this can only be done by believing in God and Jesus. We must turn our eyes to heaven, to the place where ultimately we will find our abode, and realize that the pain we endure on this earth, is, as Paul put it, “…light and momentary troubles which (sic) are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:17). We are passing through this life, our troubles are real, yet heaven is more real and Jesus has overcome this world.
Next, we cling to the promises that are found in the words of Jesus and all of Scripture. What God says, He will do. When He tells His disciples that He will come again, He is going to do it. When He tells us that He will never leave us or forsake us, He has done it. His promises are “Yes and Amen”.
Lastly, we follow Christ, no matter where this may lead us in life. His directions are clear, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the life.” Follow Jesus, for He is the way. Believe Jesus, for He is the Truth. Trust Jesus, because He is Life. The only way we can successfully do this is found in verse seven of John 14 were we are told to know Jesus and know the Father. This knowing begins with belief and grows by daily spending time in prayer and the Word. The disciples knew Jesus intimately. He opened His heart and mind to them and gave them the Words of Life. We too have these same Words by which to live. We have the tools to take our troubled hearts to the One whose heart bled blood and water for our salvation and we have the hope that David wrote about in Psalm 27:13-14, “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed
That I would see the goodness of the Lord. In the land of the living. Wait on the Lord; Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the Lord!”