Posted on 10/28/2010 4:56:09 PM PDT by wmfights
Part One Calming Troubled Hearts
Don’t you wish you could turn anxiety on and off like a faucet? Wouldn’t it be great if you could worry from 9:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. and then shut it down so that you could get a good night’s rest?
Unfortunately, we cannot control anxiety; anxiety arises from within and is not subject to reason or the dictates of the human will. Rather than playing the role of a humble servant, it comes to take charge over the whole person. Like most dictators, it refuses compromise. We need a power greater than ourselves to bid it adieu.
When Christ told His disciples that He would be leaving them, they were filled with anxiety and fear. “Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You shall seek Me, and as I said to the Jews, Where I am going, you cannot come,’ now I say to you also” (John 13.33).
Peter asked for more details. “Lord where are You going?” Christ replied, “Where I go, you cannot follow Me now, but you shall follow Me later” (v 36). Peter’s response was to promise Christ that he was willing to die saying, “I will lay down my life for you” (v 37). Christ was unimpressed; He predicted that Peter would deny Him instead.
Fear gripped the hearts of the disciples when they realized that Jesus was leaving them. The thought of coping with hostile religious leaders on their own was more than they could bear. What is more, Christ had woven His way into their hearts. They loved Him.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox once heard the comment that the same wind that blows a vessel west can also blow one east, depending on how the sail is set. Out of that bit of information came these fines:
One ship drives east and another drives west With the selfsame winds that blow ‘Tis the set of the sails And not the gales Which tell us the way to go. Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate As we voyage along through life ‘Tis the set of the soul That decides its goal And not the calm or strife.
Christ was saying to the disciples, “You can weather the winds of loneliness and adversity if you adjust your sails!” The promises He would give them would enable them to ride out the storm.
When Christ washed the disciples feet, He gave them an object lesson on how to keep their hearts clean; now they needed some instruction on how to keep their hearts calm. If they remembered who He was and if they knew who they were, they would manage even though Christ was leaving them.
“Let not your heart be troubled,” Christ began. Troubled hearts — the world is full of them. A woman suspects she has cancer but can’t bring herself to go to the doctor for fear that he will confirm those suspicions. A man is frightened believing he might lose his job; and another is wrenched knowing that his child is running away from God; and still another that his marriage is about to break up. An accident kills a marriage partner and the shock, disbelief, and loneliness is overwhelming.
Many people are terrorized by anxiety but cannot identify the object of their fears. In fact, anxiety has been called the official emotion of our age and the basis of neurosis. Like a blip on a television monitor, anxious thoughts can flit across our minds without permission.
The disciples were about to sink beneath the waves. That’s why Christ turned their attention toward the certainty of their final destination. When everything is going well, heaven seems distant and even irrelevant. But when the big winds blow — when the doctor tells you that you only have three months to live, or when you are overcome by loneliness — heaven becomes ever so welcome. It’s then that we are keenly aware that the losses we experience here on earth will be made up to us. His peace will guard the hearts and minds of those who pray.
A young woman who lost her father in an airplane accident said, “What keeps me going is the knowledge that I will see my dad again.” Most of us think the worst that could happen to us is an untimely death. If we can overcome that fear, the lesser ones will take care of themselves. But sometimes, between our life today and eventual death, all kinds of other storms cross our path. So Christ, knowing what’s going on in the hearts of the disciples, pours a healing balm on troubled hearts.
“Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me” (John 14:1). Christ linked Himself directly with God; He asked His disciples to trust in Him just as they trusted in God. He discussed His own departure to heaven and assured the disciples that someday they would join Him there. Christ knew that His followers become controlled by what they gaze at. So He turned the attention of the disciples to the glories of the future.
“In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you” (14:2). Heaven is a special place. The King James translation, “many mansions,” elicits the vision of a ranch-style home with a fifty-acre front yard and limousines parked in the driveway. But the word mansion really means “dwelling place” and is used only one other time in all the New Testament — in verse 23 of John 14: If anyone loves Me, he will keep My Word and My Father will love him and we will come to him, and make Our abode with him.” That word abode is the same word translated “mansion” or “dwelling place.” Christ’s point is that heaven has sufficient room for us all. Yes, it will be beautiful, but the disciples were not concerned about that; being reunited with Christ was uppermost in their minds.
Nor should we think that Christ has been working for 2,000 years getting heaven ready for us. It has been facetiously suggested that since Christ was a carpenter on earth, He’s been exercising the same skill in glory; He is working to finish the rooms in time for our arrival!
As God, He didn’t have to get a head start. He can create our future home in a moment of time. Christ’s point is simply, “I am leaving, and while I am gone, I will be preparing a place for you” (v 3). Just as a mother prepares for the arrival of her son who has been at sea, so Christ is preparing for our arrival. Even now, it is ready for us.
Christ stresses that it will have plenty of room. The size of the New Jerusalem given in the Book of Revelation is 1,500 miles square and 1,500 miles high (21:16). If we take this literally, heaven will comprise thousands of stories, each one having an area almost as big as the United States. Divide that up into separate condominiums, and you have plenty of room for all the people who have ever lived since the beginning of time. The Old Testament saints —Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob— they shall be there. Then we think of the New Testament apostles and all the redeemed throughout 2,000 years of church history — heaven will be the home for all of them. Unfortunately, however, the vast majority of the world’s population will not be there. Heaven, as Christ explained, is a special place for special people.
Perhaps you think you might be lost in the crowd, or you are afraid you’ll get stuck on the 1000th floor when all of the activity is in the downstairs lounge! No worry. If heaven does literally have the length and width given in the Bible, we will be able to travel in a moment of time just as Christ did after His resurrection. All you will have to do is think about where you’d like to be and you’ll be there! Everyone will be equally important; we will all be given individualized attention. As someone has said, there will be a crown awaiting us that no one else can wear; a dwelling place that no one else can enter.
Are you weary of moving around the country? Some families move every two years. Wives don’t know whether they should unpack. It’s too hot in Arizona, too cold in Chicago, and too rainy in Seattle. But when you arrive in heaven, you can unpack. It’s your final home.
A special place, yes. But our focus in heaven will be on the Special Person, Christ. “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am there you maybe also” (v 3). Those are the words the disciples wanted to hear. Heaven is the place where all human needs for fellowship and security are fully met.
When Christ said that He will return, it is probably best to understand this as a reference to His return to earth. Though that event is still future, the bodies of the disciples themselves shall be resurrected at the rapture; and the disciples, together with us, will rejoice with the Lord in the air. His return is explained more fully in passages such as 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and 1 Corinthians 15:50-58.
As children, we probably thought that heaven might be boring — one eternal church service. You begin on page one of the hymnal and sing your way through. No matter how exciting it may be at the beginning, it will eventually become monotonous. Someone has said that the popular conception of heaven would picture it as spending a rainy weekend at a summer camp! You may have heard the story of a preacher who asked all those who wanted to go to heaven to raise their hands. All hands shot up, except that of a man sitting in the front seat. “Don’t you want to go to heaven?” the preacher asked. “Sure,” he said, “but I thought you were getting a group together to go right now!”
Heaven means the personal presence of Christ and the splendor of God the Father. Every church on earth has its faults. All of us worship imperfectly; our theology is not always as accurate as it should be. We sometimes don’t get along with each other, and even have harsh words between us.
But in heaven, we will be in a state of perfection. We will worship God the Father and God the Son. Our anxieties will be over forever; God will be dwelling with His people, and He shall wipe away all tears from our eyes. All negative emotions will vanish, and there will be no trace of sorrow or its effects. We’ll walk and worship with the King. Someone has written these words that have been set to music:
Just think of stepping on shore And finding it heaven, Of taking a hand And finding it God’s, Of breathing new air And finding it celestial, Of waking up in glory And finding it home!
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