DO NOT BE TROUBLED

A troubled mind is one that suffers from continual discontentment. It is pressed down, disturbed, restless, fretting about the future and the past, as well as present circumstances. I am convinced there are more troubled minds today than in any past generation.

Apparently many lovers of Jesus are just as troubled in mind as the masses of unbelievers. I see evidence of this in some of the letters our ministry receives. Scores of believers lie awake at night, troubled and distressed. They go to church hoping to experience some kind of release from their burdens but once they leave the service, their troubles return.

Jesus warned that in the last days people’s hearts would be troubled by all the crises taking place in the world.

“There shall be . . . distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken” (Luke 21:25-26).

Jesus said the events coming upon the world would be so frightening, people would literally drop dead from heart failure.

Years ago a letter came from a preacher in his nineties. He remembers the immorality of the 1920’s that brought judgment on America through the Great Depression. He has witnessed two World Wars. He has seen transportation change from horse-drawn carriages to space shuttles, and communication change from crackling radios to the Internet. In short, he's seen it all.

Now he writes that the wickedness taking place in our nation today grieves him more than any he has ever witnessed. He can hardly take it all in, he says, because it is happening so fast, and the depths of depravity are beyond comprehension.

Yet Jesus gives us a word of reassurance in spite of everything we see taking place. He commands, “See that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet” (Matthew 24:6). He is telling us, “Let none of these bad things I'm warning you about trouble your mind!”