What if Jesus returns as you are reading this post? What is your first thought and emotion? Are you excited about His return? Are you terrified? Are you happy but with hesitation because you think of all of the things that you want to happen before He comes back? When Jesus returns are you ready to meet Him?
If you are a person who said that you want Christ to return once your kids are grown with children, you and your spouse are elderly, maybe you just want the opportunity to be married and have kids, finish college, or build your business, I would encourage you to consider the posture of your heart. When Jesus called us to Him, He told us that we are not to have divided loyalty. If our hearts are entangled with our own desires above Him, we are not worthy of Him (Luke 14:26-27). Dreams, hopes, and aspirations will not end before Christ returns. In fact, it will be a normal day with people doing normal things and planning for their futures.
They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed (Luke 17:27-30).
If the thought of Jesus returning terrifies you, it does not have to. You can find peace in the salvation that Jesus offers to us. Jesus paid the price for our sin by dying on the cross. When we turn to Him in repentance, and have faith that His sacrifice is sufficient for our sins to be forgiven, His righteousness is credited to us. We can now have a relationship with God based on His terms, not our own terms, and certainly not our own righteousness (Romans 10:9-10).
The early Church stayed focused and excited about Christ’s return. They taught, preached, evangelized, and lived as though He was coming back at any moment. It was an essential tenet used to anchor the faith of new converts (Hebrews 6:1-2). When is the last time you thought of Jesus’s return? When is the last time that you lived as though Christ will come back now?
We must be prepared for when Jesus returns. It will happen in the blink of an eye, the snap of a finger…just like that! There will not be time once He is here. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night…in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed… For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 5:2; 1 Corinthians 15:52; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-18).
For more on our life once Jesus returns, read Successful Sufferer Part VII: Reap the Rewards
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Copyright 2020 T.L. Lockley. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
