This issue: Let not your heart be troubled.SINCE YOU ASKED
In John 14:27 Jesus said, “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” Of all his commands we have trouble with, this tops the list. If we’re honest with ourselves for a minute, we could think of a host of things that trouble us. Oh, we say we’ve given them to the Lord, but our thought lives say otherwise. In a moment of honesty, I quickly made a list of ten things that were bugging me-things that concerned me to the degree that they occupied my thoughts…a lot.

AS I SEE IT
How this must grieve God’s heart. What we’re saying is that we really don’t trust Him. We don’t feel confident giving these matters over to His care. If we have, we have quickly taken them back, thinking we can do a better job. What if a friend gave you something very valuable for safekeeping while their house was being remodeled? The construction was to take three months. During the first week, he called every day to make sure it was okay, to find out where you were keeping it, if this was the safest place in your home, if you had told anybody about it, etc. This continued through the second week. As the third week began, he came and politely took it back. How would that make you feel? You had put it in you safe deposit box, but that wasn’t good enough for your “friend.” He obviously didn’t trust you after all.
 
Can you imagine how many times we do the same thing to God and how this must make Him feel? He promises to be our rock, our fortress, our ever-present help in time of trouble. He has become our Good Shepherd, willing to lay down His life for His sheep. He wants us to entrust our concerns to Him and then forget about them, knowing that He will take care of everything. The moment we begin to doubt and take back our concerns, they are no longer in God’s divine fortress. Things cannot be in two places at once. They’re either in our hands or God’s fortress.
 
We must learn to cast all our cares on the Lord and then leave them there. When we take them back, we are telling God that we don’t trust Him. How can we possibly not trust the God of the universe? The only explanation is that we really don’t know Him very well. We have remade Him in our minds to be something far less that what He is. Once we finally see Him as He is, we will never doubt Him, and we can be at peace knowing for certain that He will take care of whatever it is that concerns me.

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