Living in the Light of Jesus’ Return

A few weeks ago Pr Jonathan (senior pastor at BTC) preached about ‘God At Work – Preparing for His Return’ and it touched on something that has been stirring deep within me. It’s a subject not too often talked about and often connected with weird and wacky ideas that can be rather off-putting, yet it is a reality that we need to have centre-stage in our lives.

Living with an awareness that Jesus is the ‘soon coming King’ affects the way we live. Yet it’s all too easy to get caught up in the busyness of life and become unaware. Last Sunday’s message was a reminder and a wake-up call. (You can click on the link above to listen to it if you want to hear more).

One of the things that struck me in a new way that Sunday, was that ALL will see Jesus returning. It won’t be missed, it won’t be quiet, it won’t be unnoticeable. And those that know Him and have awaited His return will be both shaken and in awe, and those that have rejected Him or denied His existence will run terrified, crying even for the rocks to cover them.

So what does it mean for us to live in the light of the truth that Jesus is coming again? How DOES that affect our every day lives?

I believe that first and foremost it is a heart issue. Is Jesus first in my heart? Is He the centre? Do I pour out my love to Him daily? Jesus is returning for a pure and spotless bride – am I giving myself to Him daily to be made pure, to be cleansed, to be prepared? How I do I do that when the demands of the day are such that I don’t have a regular time set aside to pray and read early in the morning and by the evening have such a battle staying awake? Y’all, God gives grace and He gave us our children, but 4 girls aged 2-6 are exhausting!! The battle IS real. And it is a matter of the heart.

Reading the Word and being saturated in God’s Truth is central to living with an awareness of Jesus’ return. After all, it is the Bible that speaks much about His return and points to it throughout… the culmination of God’s plan of redemption and salvation for the earth. Without that we wouldn’t have any awareness or know how we are called to live. So we read, and we pray, and we seek to live and pray what we read.

There’s a wonderful song a friend sent me a couple of months ago – Yet Not I But Through Christ In Me by CityAlight – it quickly became my favorite because it encapsulates the truth that it is all about God anyway – my role is to yield to Him, surrender the entirety of my life to Him and to let Him have His way in me – He does everything else to get me to the goal.