Many of you may use YouVersion on your device as a Bible App. I opened it this morning to read a passage from Paul, but I decided to look at the “Verse of the Day” before I began and I never got to Paul.

“Let not your heard be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.” (John 14:1).

Maybe the editors chose that verse because it is a Monday. For many today begins another work week. For some, they worked all weekend getting ready for the tasks this week, so they never really had a “weekend.” Maybe you are a preacher and you realize that Sunday is coming. Maybe you are retired, medically disabled, lonely, and wish you had a job to go to. For some reason Monday gets you down.

“Let not your heart be troubled.”

Contextually, Jesus is telling His disciples that He is about to return to the Father, that He will no longer be physically present with them. He is telling them about the place He is preparing for them in heaven with the Father. “I am going away, you want have Me around, but don’t worry. I am not leaving You aimless. I am coming back and you can be with Me again in my Father’s house.”

We can infer from the conversation that there is application to us. Look at John 14:6′ “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Yes, it is Monday. Yes life is difficult. Surely, life would be easier with Jesus physically by my side. But He is not here physically. Yes as a child of God, Christ abides in me and so does the Spirit. But some days, sometimes, when life seems tough, when everything seems to pull me down, and when my heart gets heavy I need to remember, “Let not your heart be troubled.” When all seems more than I want to bear, I remember that I am a child of God in Christ and that this life is not all there is to me. Christ is preparing an eternal home. Come to think of it, Paul says something about this,

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.”             (2 Corinthians 4:16-5:7)

-Scott