Trust God when troubled

"Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. " (John 14:10). Martin Luther called this passage "the best and most comforting sermon that the Lord Christ delivered on earth, a treasure and a jewel not to be purchased with the world's goods." Jesus continued, "I go to prepare a place for you.. I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also...I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me."

Picturing life as a journey is a very old concept. We move from one day to the next, one year to the next, one period of our life to another, just as on a journey one travels from place to place. We travel the journey of life that will lead to the destination. Our jouney takes us through a series of stages: baby stages, growing up, leaving home and so on until the journey in this world ends with death. A lot of us set goals at various stages and places we want to go to. But often times, the journey may take de-tours and changes because of unexpected events. Many people are attracted to the game of Pokemon where you try finding treasures where there is really no treasure. They are not travellers set on a journey to a destination, but tourists travelling through, moving from place to place in search of new experiences. The aim is not to get somewhere, but simply to keep moving on in order to be constantly enjoying the novelty of new places. In such a journey, you reach a point of weariness with perplexity and frustration. Others find themselves lost in a seemingly endless labyrinth of twisting paths that seem to lead nowhere except into a deeper and deeper sense of futility as depicted in Shakespeare's Macbeth, "a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

For a Christian life is a single and purposeful journey towards a goal on which there is no turning back to try a road again.The journey itself is a gift to be treasured. You may not know all the details of why certain things happen in your journey. But at the end of the journey, we ought to be able to look back and say like Paul, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." (2 Tim 4:7). The sixth-century Christian philosopher Boethius described beautifully in these lines: "To see Thee is the end and the beginning; Thou carry us, and Thou go before us, Thou art the journey and the journey's end."

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Fulll sermon audio: Mathew Philip

Blessings

Mathew Philip

https://youtu.be/gB15ZOADMVk

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