“let not your heart be troubled, you believe in God, believe also in Me.”
(John 14:1 KJV)
These were the words of Jesus as He approached the Cross. His disciples, despondent over the fact that He spoke of his impending death, were troubled in soul, just as we are in the adversities that we see all around us. We ask -- where is God in all this -- is this the end -- what will happen next? While these questions reveal our human quality to be fearful, to be apprehensive about the future, to even despair of life itself, there is a greater power at work in the lives of those who faith has been placed in Christ. God’s Word reveals to us many precious promises that can calm the troubled soul in times of difficulty. We must know these in order to claim that inner strength and peace that only comes from our God. Recall that Joseph was the victim of his brother’s conspiracy to kill him, yet God intervened. Out of that perpetrated evil came good; God brought about the saving of Jacob’s entire family and his descendents who would become Israel. Joseph comforted his brothers with God’s Word --
... “and as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.”(Gen 50:20 NASB)
The promises of God remain faithful, but we must be in a posture to meditate on them, claim them by faith and then allow God to fulfill His Word without doubting that He will. The Apostle James, the half brother of Jesus, writes to his congregation --
… ”But let him ask in faith without doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.”(James 1:6 NASB)
Remember that when God works, the Christian can rest; when we work (our own solutions), God rests. Perhaps a simple formula or recipe might help us understand this principle: claim a promise + consider who God is, His character, mix these with faith and patiently wait on the Lord. Thus whatever calamity comes our way or into the lives of others, we can have the assurance that God is at work in all this. We may not know what God is doing, but we can rest in the fact that God is doing and He does all things well. That promise was in the thinking of the Apostle Paul when He wrote --
… “for I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”(Rom 8:38, 39 KJV)
If death could not conquer our Lord, for HE IS RISEN, then we too can be assured that His grace is sufficient for us in any situation in life. But let’s go one step further -- the Christian is to be a blessing in the lives of others and with that in view, Paul writes --
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”(II Cor 1:3, 4 NKJV)