The First Thing: Believe in God

The first thing is to believe in God.

Anything that merely gives me relief from unpleasant symptoms is not enough.  What I should always be interested in, in every realm, is health.

If I want blessedness, I must start with righteousness.

If Jesus' disciples had really been believing in God, they would not have been unhappy.  To have a troubled heart means that I am not believing God truly.

I must believe that God is from eternity to eternity.  God is not a created being - God is.

If the secret of the quiet heart ultimately is to believe in God, then I must believe in addition that nothing happens apart from Him and that He is able to do everything, that nothing is too hard for the Lord.

It is still His world; He has not turned His back upon it.  He is not allowing it to sin itself into utter hopelessness; He comes into it.

"Let not your heart be troubled...believe in God."  Why? Well, think of the promises that God has made to those who do believe in Him.

God sometimes has to chastise me in order to draw me nearer to Himself.

He has promised He will never leave me.  Underneath, always, are the everlasting arms.

To believe in God means an utter, implicit confidence in what He has said about Himself and in what He has said about what He will do.

There is still more!

• Jesus Christ also comes into the picture.
• "Believe in God, believe also in Me," He says.

There are difficulties about believing in God, and God knows that.

• So He sent His only begotten Son into this world to live as a man among men and women, 

Jesus, looking at His disciples, said in effect,

• You find that to believe in God is hard and difficult?
• Well, look at Me again - believe in me also, trust me.
• If you trust me, you are trusting God;
• seeing Me you are seeing the Father.

"I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6).

• There it is in its essence.
• He is the guarantee of everything that God has said.

I believe in God, believe in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and will commit myself and my ways entirely to Him.

Isaiah 44:6 

• Thus says the Lord the King of Israel, 
• and His redeemer the Lord of hosts; 
• I am the first, and I am the last; 
• and beside me there is no God.

Adapted Excerpt From

Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled

Martyn Lloyd-Jones