The disciples were on the edge of a world about to fall apart—at least that’s how it felt to them. Jesus had just spoken of betrayal, denial, and His coming departure. Into that swirl of confusion and fear, He looked them in the eye and told them that their hearts did not have to be ruled by trouble, but anchored by trust. This same invitation reaches into your day today, right in the middle of whatever makes your own heart restless.

A Troubled Heart and the God Who Sees It

Jesus does not ignore the reality of a troubled heart; He speaks straight to it: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe in Me as well.” (John 14:1). He knows that our hearts naturally tremble when we face loss, uncertainty, or change. He doesn’t say, “You’re overreacting,” or “Get it together.” Instead, He gently commands our hearts toward a different response: not denial, but trust in Him as surely as we trust in God. The Lord of heaven takes your inner turmoil seriously—and then calls you to something better than anxiety.

God’s Word consistently reveals His tenderness toward our shaken hearts. “The LORD is near to the brokenhearted; He saves the contrite in spirit.” (Psalm 34:18). You are not abandoned in your trouble; you are seen. But being seen is not the end of the story—being invited into trust is. “Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7). The God who sees your distress also invites you to transfer the weight of it onto His shoulders.

Believing in God, Believing in Jesus

Jesus links two kinds of belief: “You believe in God; believe in Me as well.” (John 14:1). Many people will say they “believe in God” in a vague, distant way. Jesus presses closer. He is not an optional spiritual add-on; He is the personal, visible revelation of the God we claim to trust. To believe in God rightly is to believe in Jesus—His words, His work on the cross, His resurrection, His present reign. The reliability of your peace rests on the reliability of the One you trust, and Jesus is not shaky ground.

A few verses later, He makes this crystal clear: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’” (John 14:6). This is why your heart can be untroubled even when life is chaotic: the One who holds your future is not an idea, but a Person—crucified, risen, and returning. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8). The more your faith is anchored in who He is, the less your heart must rise and fall with the headlines or the latest crisis.

Learning to “Let Not” Your Heart Be Troubled

Notice that Jesus gives a command: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” That means you have a role to play. You can’t control your circumstances, but by His grace you can choose where your heart will rest. This is not about pretending you’re fine; it’s about deliberately redirecting your fears toward God in prayer and trust. “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6–7). Guarded hearts don’t happen by accident; they grow as you repeatedly choose prayer over panic.

God also trains your heart through where you set your mind. “You will keep in perfect peace the steadfast of mind, because he trusts in You.” (Isaiah 26:3). When your thoughts spiral, you can intentionally turn them back to His character, His promises, His presence. Even a simple, honest confession can redirect the heart: “When I am afraid, I put my trust in You.” (Psalm 56:3). Over time, this habit—turning fear into trust, and worry into worship—forms a heart that is not easily shaken, because it has learned to rest in the One who never changes.

Lord Jesus, thank You for being stronger than every trouble that shakes my heart. Today, help me actively turn my fears into trust in You, and teach me to obey Your call to believe and not be afraid.

. . . the church is the bride of Christ. Jesus was a complete man. He had all the nature of a man, but He never married. He could have, but He never did. He never married any woman though He was a true and complete man. He never married a daughter of a woman that He might marry His whole church, the bride. A true local church is the bride of Christ in recapitualtion, in miniature. Everything that is in the whole church of Christ should be recapitulated in the local church. The church, part of it in heaven and part of it on earth, is the bride of Christ. Our Lord Jesus washed His bride, regenerated her and prepared her. He is coming back to take her--the whole church--as His bride. But any local church is the whole church in recapitulation, just as a local election recapitulates a national one. The same liberty is expressed. The same candidates run. They talk about each other; they plead their own worth and put up bulletins and do the same thing on a small scale that they do on the federal level. That may be a poor illustration, but the whole bride of Christ is recapitulated. Any local church is what the whole church is, just in miniature Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church (Ephesians 5:25-29). This figure drawn from husbands and wives is applied directly without apology to Jesus Christ and His church. Just as a young man would not marry a dirty bride, so Jesus Christ will not marry a church that has stains or wrinkles or blemishes. His desire is for a glorious church, and He wants to love that church as a man loves his own bride.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters. - Psalm 23:2

It is the hot noontide, and the desert lies baking in the awful glare, and every stone on the hills of Judea burns the foot that touches it. But in that panting, breathless hour, here is a little green glen, with a quiet brooklet, and a moist lush herbage all along its course, and great stones that fling a black shadow over the dewy grass at their base; and there would the shepherd lead his flock, while the "sunbeams, like swords," are piercing everything beyond that hidden covert. Sweet silence broods there. The sheep feed and drink, and couch in cool lairs till he calls them forth again. So God leads His children. Rest and refreshment are put first, as being the most marked characteristic of God’s dealings. After all, it is so. The years are years of unbroken continuity of outward blessings. The reign of afflictions is ordinarily measured by days. Weeping endures for a night. It is a rainy climate where half the days have rain in them; and that is an unusually troubled life of which it can with any truth be affirmed that there has been as much darkness as sunshine in it.

But it is not mainly of outward blessings that the Psalmist is thinking; they are precious chiefly as emblems of the better spiritual gifts. And it is not an accommodation of his words, but is the appreciation of their truest spirit, when we look upon them, as the instinct of devout hearts has ever done, as expressing both God’s gift of temporal mercies and His gift of spiritual good, of which higher gift all the lower are meant to be significant and symbolic. Thus regarded, the image describes the sweet rest of the soul in communion with God, in whom alone the hungry heart finds food that satisfies, and from whom alone the thirsty soul drinks draughts deep and limpid enough. This rest and refreshment has for its consequence the restoration of the soul, which includes in it both the invigoration of the natural life by the outward sort of these blessings, and the quickening and restoration of the spiritual life by the inward feeding upon God and repose in Him.

The Divine rest is not only a pattern of what our earthly life may become, but is a prophecy of what our heavenly life shall surely be. There is a basis of likeness between the Christian life on earth and the Christian life in heaven, so great as that the blessings that are predicted of the one belong to the other. Only here they are in blossom, sickly often, putting out very feeble shoots and tendrils; and yonder, transplanted into their right soil, and in their native air, with heaven’s sun upon them, they burst into richer beauty, and bring forth fruits of immortal life. Heaven is the earthly life of a believer glorified and perfected. If here by faith we enter into the beginning of rest, yonder, through death with faith, we shall enter into the perfection of it. Heaven will be for us rest in work, and work that is full of rest. Our Lord’s heaven is not an idle heaven, and the heaven of all spiritual natures is not idleness. Man’s delight is activity. The loving heart’s delight is obedience. The saved heart’s delight is grateful service. The joys of heaven are not the joys of passive contemplation, of dreamy remembrance, of perfect repose; but they are described thus: "They rest not day nor night." " His servants serve Him and see His face." Heaven is perfect " rest."