Let Not Your Heart be Troubled

Well, greetings and welcome to the driving line. I might as well call it that. I mean, you've got the dividing line, driving line.

Might as well utilize the time that we have as we traverse the nation's superhighways, which really need a lot of work.

Anyway, well, some of them are getting a lot of work. Others, not so much.

Anyways, welcome to my thoughts as we're driving along here. I'm trying to get back to Phoenix, preaching this

Sunday at Apologia Church, and so I need to get back.

And we also have a baptismal service that night. And I am overjoyed to be baptizing my granddaughter,

Jannie, on Sunday evening. She's really excited about that, and Grandpa is too, and everybody else is as well.

And so praying for traveling mercies, obviously, and returning all that way home.

And no, not speaking along the way. This was a pick -up -a -vehicle trip, and I'm very, very thankful.

I'm not going to go into details. I wish I could go into details, to be honest with you, but it's just wisdom not to.

But the Lord has provided us with a significantly more efficient, durable towing vehicle for my trips, and I am driving her right now in Texas.

Of course, Texas is not a state. Texas is a nation. And I have to go east -west because, you know, east -west, you really discover that Texas is a nation.

There is absolutely no question when you have to cross all of it at its widest part, which is what

I'm doing, it is humongous. There's no two ways about it. But anyway, that's what we're doing, and so I'm trying to listen to a bunch of stuff, but I also want to comment on what's going on, sort of catch up since we weren't able to do a dividing line this week.

Maybe on Friday, we'll see. I hope so, if I'm feeling good and we're able to make everything work.

But a lot of stuff going on. I could not help but, I mean, if you're just aware of what's going on in the world, you know that we are literally as close to nuclear war as we have been since the

Cuban Missile Crisis. My concern is the vast majority of Americans have no idea what the Cuban Missile Crisis was, and hence don't even know what that means if they hear somebody say it.

And I've done some reading on that.

I was born right around that time. There may be why people don't know a lot about what happened back then, but when you think about it, it was a very similar situation to what we have right now, but in reverse.

That is, the Russians were trying to put nuclear weapons in Cuba, and the

United States said, nope, you're not putting them that close to us. And we blockaded the island, and everybody was on high alert, and there you go.

We came very, very close, but the Russians backed down, and there was no nuclear war.

We are the aggressors in this situation, I'll be perfectly honest with you. I am very concerned about what the

United States is doing, and why it's doing it, along with Europe and our allies in Europe.

The idea of nations that have shared borders with Russia, being a part of NATO is just insanity.

It forces Russia to do what we did back then. So we're incredibly filled with hypocrisy.

If we were willing to blockade and go to war over missiles in Cuba, and now we want to put, make

Ukraine and one other nation over there, NATO members, where we're right on the border with Russia.

None of this is making any sense unless you just really, literally have enough truly evil people in the world that want to massively diminish the world's population by like more than 50%, and do it via nuclear war.

But anyway, you think about these things, and the first text that came across my mind, me tracesto he cardia, do not let your heart be troubled.

Tossed about, put into a state of worry and lack of peace.

And I don't know about anybody else, but that's a sin of mine these days.

Jesus' commands to be peaceful, to be at peace, to be trusting.

You believe in God, believe also in me. And not only is that a clear reference to the exalted nature of Christ, no mere human would ever say something like that.

But we are called to trust in him, not because bad things may not happen.

The words of John 14, 1 were true before the first plague -infested sailor came off the boats in 1347, and the plague began spreading in Europe.

Those words were true, even though in many places more than half the population was about to die, and die in a horrible fashion.

At least, you can't help but see the comparison with nuclear war.

Because while many, many, many people die instantly, don't even know what happened, just simply are fried instantly, many, many, many, many more die over the course of days, weeks, months, years later due to radiation sickness.

Those words were true in each situation. What does that mean? I've been contemplating what does it mean to face the reality of the future, and yet to do so without letting your heart be troubled.

The first is we don't know the future. I don't know what's going to happen. I hope and pray that there will be no nuclear weapons exchanged.

But we don't know the future, and we pretend like we do and that we can, when the fact is we can't and we don't.

That's the first thing. I don't know what's going to happen, and I can't pretend like I do.

But secondly, to believe in God, to believe also in Jesus means you believe that God is in charge of what's going to be happening in the future one way or the other.

That means Jesus is on his throne, and he's ruling and reigning. If Jesus was ruling and reigning when people were dropping dead of the plague.

I'm just thinking of, I've used the plague as an illustration many times. I've done a lot of reading on it, but it's just a horrible situation where if we were in it, it would have been very easy for us to go,

God's lost control. This is it. It's all over with. That's why

I draw the parallel. I have to deal with my own unbelief in this situation, because that's really what it is.

Being worried and letting your heart be troubled is a manifestation of unbelief.

When I think about it, I think about how inconsistent unbelief is.

I truly believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. I truly believe that Moses parted the sea by the power of God and that God delivered the people of Israel.

It's one thing to look back on historical realities and go, God used his tremendous power to bring deliverance and redemption for his own glory, etc.,

etc. But then when you look at the future, that's where I become inconsistent.

That was one of the reasons, for example, why I was able to change my eschatological perspective is that one of the things you've got to believe is that God literally can change the hearts and minds of people, and not just one here and one there, but eventually the vast majority of people.

I just realized, well, if I believe he... I firmly believe that he can do that. That's why we've always done things the way we've done things.

I mean, we believe in the sovereign power of God to break the chains of Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses and Islam and whatever it might be, and open hearts and minds.

We go into dark, difficult places and proclaim a message of truth, trusting that the Holy Spirit of God is able to do that.

Well, if he can do it with individuals, he can do it with an entire group of...

He can do it with a lot of individuals. It's sort of pretty simple when you think about it.

But control Vladimir Putin? Really? Can God do that? Well, of course he can.

And can God bring his people through even massive examples of judgment?

Well, there's where the faithlessness comes in. That's where you go, well, he's done it in the past.

Why couldn't he do it in the future? And we... I fail, and hence my heart becomes troubled.

Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. There's so much there that we need to hear and need to practice and believe.

I think... And I'm preaching to myself here, okay?

I'm preaching to myself. I get it. But we are so exposed to the news cycle of people, and it doesn't matter what news sources you're using, they're always...

They want you to be staying tuned in. They want you hooked. And so there's frequently imbalance.

I'm starting to think that maybe we should... You can't be ignorant. You can't stick your head in the sand and go, it's all going to go away.

You can't do that. You have to be able to make wise decisions. But at the same time, constant exposure to fear -mongering produces fear.

And I just wonder, what percentage do you think should be the time comparison between the amount of time that we spend in the

Word and in prayer and in worship in comparison to the amount of time where we are being exposed to the world's fear -mongering and the news and everything that goes with it?

That's really a question that I'm asking myself.

And I know one thing. Right now, it is not in proper balance.

Not for me anyways. I mean, it's just... You're just surrounded with the influx of information.

And that keeps you from contemplation of the Word, meditation of the

Word, prayer, the things that would build you up. And so instead, it just tears you down and your heart becomes troubled.

The promise of Scripture is we should be able to have a peace that passes understanding. And the problem

I have is I want to understand it. I want to understand it. And I need that peace that passes understanding.

Not just in world events, but personally, the cancellations and slanders and everything else that is a regular part of my life.

I need that peace that passes all understanding. And very often, I do experience that.

People will frequently ask, how can you be calm in the face of all the slander and the attacks and things like that?

And part of that has been an understanding that you are always under the eye of God.

And as long as you do what you do, seeking to serve Him, you can have peace in that context.

So we all need sanctification. We all need to be made more and more like Christ.

And pray for me that with my experience and I share these thoughts with you, so that would be yours as well.

And so I have a lot more that I want to say, but I'll be honest with you.

There are technical aspects of doing this while driving that I'm still working on and so I'm a little nervous going for a really long period of time before stopping and making sure that everything is recorded correctly and I can upload and things like that.

So my intention is, if I've got things set right, to probably do more today than I did, in fact, maybe in a short period of time.

I also have a bunch of stuff to be listening to, but there are a couple of things I do want to comment on. And so I'm going to try to get this more positive, hopefully edifying, encouraging section sent to Rich, and then if that works out, we'll see where we go from there.

But I appreciate your listening and the trust that that indicates that you have for the ministry we've been doing for a very long time.

And we are only able to do what we do and doing the upcoming trips and debates and conferences and so on and so forth, and seeking to edify and provide an answer for the hope that's within us, because so many of you are so generous in helping us to do so.