The Cure For A Troubled Heart # 2

The Cure For A Troubled Heart # 2

If you have read carefully the stories of Darwin and Huxley, those world-famous scientists, you will find the confession in the latter end of the lief of both those notable men, of sorrow that they had so steadfastly steeled their hearts against that which was tender, against that which was gentle, against that which warms the heart, against that which provokes tears, against that which kindles the flames on the altars of emotion and sentiment and the finer feelings. Both of them bewailed the fact that they had pursued that course. The doctrine of the stoic is not the doctrine to cure a troubled heart. Sooner or later the heart will find it out, sometimes in the gathering of old age.

Another proposed answer as a cure for a troubled heart, is the answer of denial. There is a false philosophy abroad which proposes to cure a broken heart by denying there is any brokenness of heart - that there is no trouble at all. This denies the fact of sorrow, the fact of suffering, the fact of sin, the fact of death. But you cannot cure a broken heart by simply denying that there is any trouble.

Where can we get our trouble cured? Just one way, at just one place, from one source, and it is stated her in the glorious fourteenth chapter of John: "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me." Jesus here states the cure for a troubled heart. Jesus Himself is the physician for a troubled heart. "I am the way, the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by Me." "Put your case in My hands," says Jesus, "Come, with your sorrows and your vexation and your disappointment and your reverses, and your consuming grief - come to Me, and I will cure your troubled heart, and I will unfailingly re-enforce you, if you will come to me." Christ humanity's cure for a troubled heart.

Have you a troubled heart? Is there in your life one experience and another and another, every thought of which brings a stab to your heart? No matter what your occasion, there is one source to get it healed, and that source is Jesus. He is the one mediator between God and us. Christ is the cure for a troubled heart.

Now, why should you and I stake our all on Christ? If you ask me if I have, I answer you modestly: "I have staked my all on Christ." Living and dying, and in God's vast beyond forever, God help me, I can do no other. I have staked my all on Christ. Now, why? Why should we stake our all on Christ? He tells us: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by Me." Why should we come to the Father by Christ? Why should we accept Christ as our arbitrator, our mediator? Why should we take Christ as our physician, our leader, to be our friend supreme, and stake our all upon Him?

First, because Christ in His own personality is entirely worthy. Christ has vindicated His claims to our absolute confidence. Can you find fault in anything which Jesus ever said? Did He do anything when He was here in the flesh, and in the nineteen centuries since He went back to His Farther? Has He done anything for the world that you can condemn and complain about? Is there anything in the person of Jesus, in the character of Jesus, in the life of Jesus, that you can condemn?

And more. If Jesus shall go away, and we shall set aside His counsel and leading, we are left bewildered utterly and broken in the world in which we live. He makes no pretentious and vainglorious claim. Jesus is the light of the world. Will you take the world's biggest questions and answer them? You are utterly bewildered and in the darkness if you take Jesus away, and if you fail to take His answer.

What will you do about sin, if Jesus be disregarded and taken away? No man within himself has moral resources sufficient to meet life like it ought to be met, to live life like it ought to be lived, and to die at last like one ought to die. No man has within himself moral resources within himself sufficient to overcome and be the master of sin. If you will commit yourself to Him, He will make you a new man." Jesus alone can save us from sin.

There is one more mystery to baffle you, and it is the chiefest mystery of all. What shall you and I do when we walk down into the valley of the shadow of death, if Christ be taken away? Caesar stood up in the Roman Senate and said: "If there be anything beyond death, I do not know. If there be anything beyond the grave, I cannot tell." Jesus went down into the grave and explored its every chamber, and then on the third day He came back from the grave with the keys of death and the world invisible swinging at His girdle, and He says to you and to me: "You cleave to Me, and you need not be afraid of death and what death can do to you." The other day I saw a man, not a believer in Christ, bid his little curly-haired girl of six years goodbye, and as he kissed her little face and fingered the curls about her ears for a moment, he turned away with seemingly utter desperation, saying: "Goodbye little girl, forever!" And then, in a moment more, came the frail little mother, and she stroked the forehead and kissed the little girl's face again and again, and blessed God for the little girl, even though for only a few years. Life was richer and sweeter and better every way because of that child,she kept gratefully declaring. Then she kissed her, and said: "Goodbye, for just a little while, Mother will see you right soon, and be with you beyond the sunset and the night." She could say it because of Jesus.

Men and women, Christ is the Light of the world. Let us follow Him! Oh, let us follow Him! Let us follow today and forever! Let us sing with the poet:

So, I go on not knowing,
I would not know if I might.
I would rather walk with Christ in the dark
Than to walk alone in the light.
I would rather walk with Him by faith,
Than to walk by myself with sight.

Settle it now as we pray that Christ shall be your light, your Saviour and Master, from this hour until death, and beyond forever!

~George W. Truett~

(The End)