Let not your heart be troubled….

“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” John 14:1-3

It is one thing to know and believe that indeed Jesus has prepared a place for us in heaven by going to the cross, suffering and dying for the sins of the entire world and rising again on the third day, but it is another for us to truly apply those words to ourselves and our loved ones when death is close at hand. The genuineness of our faith is put to the test when it comes to trusting and taking comfort in Jesus rather than being troubled by death – whether that be of a near and dear one or of our own.

Jesus spoke these words to His disciples on the night when He was betrayed. He was about to take upon Himself the sins of all the world and bear their just punishment upon the cross. He was about to die and be taken from the visible presence of His disciples.

Yet, He told them: “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” Instead of being troubled and filled with doubts and fears as Jesus went to die on the cross, Jesus encouraged His followers to trust God’s plan. It was necessary for Jesus to suffer and die that He might redeem mankind and open the gates of heaven for us. And it was also necessary that He rise again and ascend to the right hand of God the Father that He might rule over all things and pour out His Spirit upon His disciples that they might be enabled to proclaim salvation in His name to all nations and kindreds and peoples. Cf. Luke 24:46-47.

So also today, as loved ones slip away from us in death or as we ourselves fail, we need not be troulbed and afraid. Jesus has gone before us, dying in our stead and rising again in triumph, and He is even now preparing a place for us in the mansions of His Father’s house that He might come again for us and take us to be with Him there forever. Though the thought of temporal death alarms us, we have the comforting promise of life everlasting with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. For us as believers in Jesus and His atoning sacrifice for our sins, departing this life is the gateway to life in heaven with Christ our Savior (cf.Phil. 1:21-23).

Though we are saddened when we lose our loved ones, we need not sorrow as others who have no hope. “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thess. 4:14-17; cf. Rev. 7:9ff.).

Dearest Lord Jesus, strengthen our faith that we might take comfort in the promises of Your Word and not depair as others who have no hope but trust that You indeed have opened the gates of heaven to us by Your inocent sufferings and death, that You are even now preparing a place for us in the mansions of Your Father’s house and that You will soon come to take us to be with You forever. Amen.

[Scripture is from the King James Version of the Bible.]