Do Not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled

"Do Not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled" — Jesus Christ

John 14:1-14

Rev. Bobby Musengwa 

Transitional General Presbyter

My dear friends, the world has been changing at warp speed, and it’s a little scary.  

It’s not a stretch to say many of us, both locally and globally, are stretched and overwhelmed. 

I think we as pastors are leading congregations in a world that feels like it changed overnight, and nobody gave us the new map. 

We trained for one world and woke up in another. 

And if some nights we lie awake wondering whether we are enough for this moment — well, we are in very good company.

Thomas felt exactly that way. "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" Bless him. 

That is not a failure of faith. That is just an honest human being, saying out loud what everyone else in the room was too proud to admit.

But let me ask you something. 

Jesus says, "Do not let your hearts be troubled." 

And I want to pause right here, because this phrase is nagging at me right now.

Do not let your hearts be troubled? 

As if anxiety is simply a choice. As if a troubled heart is just a matter of poor self-discipline. 

As if we could simply decide — right now, this time — to stop being anxious about our congregation, our community, our Presbytery, our state, our world, or our calling in a world that no longer looks familiar?

Can you? Can any of us?

Most of us are analog leaders in a digital world. In fact, most national and global leaders are from the old analog world. 

My specific focus pertains to Mission Presbytery leaders.

We grew up with paper maps — unfolding them on the hood of a car, arguing about directions, trusting landmarks we could actually see and touch. 

Remember when families and friends drove on unfamiliar roads, one would drive and the passenger sitting shot gun would have an unfurled map in front of them, giving the driver instructions on where to go?

We grew up telling time on a watch with two hands. Now it’s all digital. 

We learned to lead through relationships, through presence, through wisdom earned slowly over years. 

And then the world shifted beneath our feet, faster than any of us expected. 

Generative artificial intelligence is turbocharging this change at warp speed. 

And our old familiar maps seem to have stopped working.

That anxiety is not weakness. 

That anxiety is the completely natural response of a faithful person standing at the edge of something they do not yet understand. 

We cannot simply will it away. And I do not think Jesus expects us to.

So what does Jesus mean?

I think he means something far more tender than a command.

I think he is saying — you do not have to do this alone.

The troubled heart is not something you fix by trying harder. 

It is something you bring to him. 

Because what follows is not a technique for managing anxiety. 

As a trained yoga instructor, I get it, the old way.

What follows is a Person. "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life."

Jesus does not hand us a new map and wish us well. 

We believe that Jesus goes ahead of us — through every disorienting, unfamiliar, frightening stretch of this strange new world — and he opens the road to God. 

The Way is not a program or a strategy, however helpful those have been in the past and perhaps would be today.

The Way is a Person. And that Person knows exactly where he is going.

At the Presbytery meeting last month, Mission Presbytery formed two task forces — one to tend the life of existing congregations, one to imagine ministries not yet born. 

We are aware that we are asking overextended, faithful, analog leaders to step into uncertain terrain. 

We are asking our leaders to trust and lean on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, instead of our own knowledge and brilliance.

To those renewing congregations — there is still life there. Do not give up.

To those pioneering new ministries — God has already gone ahead of you. 

You will not arrive anywhere God has not already been.

We do not have to figure out this whole strange world alone. 

We do not have to manufacture a peace we do not feel. 

We just have to bring your troubled hearts to the One who walks through it all with us.

Jesus is the Way. And he is not lost. Mission Presbytery will get there with him. To God be the glory! 

Your fellow servant of the Lord,

Rev. Bobby Musengwa 

Mission Presbytery

Transitional General Presbyter