Ready and Waiting

Posted on May 24, 2019

By Linda Rex

Back in the late 1990’s, Y2K was a common descriptor used to describe the changeover between 2000 to 2100. I was amazed at the number of apocalyptic movies which came out around that time. It seemed that many people besides Nostradamus held strong opinions about how the world was going to end and if/or when Jesus Christ would return.

I have read many books and articles over the years which talk about how Jesus is coming to punish all the bad people on earth while rescuing his good people from the coming evil or “great tribulation.” Often the focus is on how bad this world is becoming and how desperate we will be to have Jesus rescue us from all the evil Satan is going to perpetrate in “the end times.”

Whatever God decides to do in order to fulfill the scriptures he inspired in his Word, what really matters to me in the long run is that Jesus is coming back for his own and he will once and for all make right the wrongs of this world, bringing to fruition what he completed on the cross. The symbol of the bread and wine blessed and shared at the last supper is like the promise of a groom to return one day in the future and to take his bride home to be with him forever. Meanwhile he has a dwelling place to prepare for her and spends her days preparing in anticipation of his return.

As I personally wait for my own groom to wed me, I’m seeing that we can look forward to Jesus’ return with either dread and fear or longing expectation and desire. Do we believe that even now he is present by his Spirit in every situation and loves us faithful and completely? Are we spending our days preparing for his coming and caring for those who are suffering or in need as we wait? Do we believe that our Beloved will come again and take us to be with him in glory forever?

There is a dress hanging in my room which was picked out with this special day in mind. This brings to mind the robes of righteousness Jesus has given us to wear. We are encouraged to cast off our old garments of sin and shame and to don the new outfit Jesus created for us in his incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. We know that when he comes, we will be like him (1 John 3:2), and since he shines with great glory and beauty as the eternal God/man, we will be given glorious bodies which will be dressed up in his very own righteousness.

I was so grateful to watch and help as our ladies lovingly and creatively dressed up the church for the wedding tomorrow. The candles and flowers, ribbons and paper bells tell everyone this is a very special day. A special meal is being prepared for the reception by a gifted man which will bless all those who eat it. Everything points to the celebration of the joining together of two lives into a new oneness or whole.

What Jesus did was to perfect our humanity and to include us in his perfect relationship with his heavenly Father. Our human focus is so often on our moral behavior rather than on how we are bound together with God and one another in love by the Holy Spirit. We were designed for this perichoretic oneness with God and each other—and the only way this could or would happen was through God transforming our humanity from the inside out. In Jesus, the joining together of two substantially different essences into one being made possible our new existence as adopted children of the Father.

The Word of God entered into our sphere of existence and in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, joined our humanity with his divinity. In the sending of his Spirit, he enabled each of us to participate in a real way in these spiritual realities. The point of Jesus’ return includes the reality of heaven and earth joining together forever in glory. The new heaven and new earth, with the glorious new Jerusalem as her brightest gem, is the culmination of God’s story laid out in Scripture—Eden and its glories now surpassed by and fulfilled in the new heaven and new earth where God will dwell with man.

We can look forward to the second coming of Jesus with anticipation and expectation rather than dread because God has given us these wonderful and precious promises. Jesus has blessed us with the seal of his Holy Spirit, his personal presence in us and with us from the Father. Our hearts can be filled with joy, faith, hope, and love, for Christ is faithful and will come again to take us to live with him forever in that beautiful world he is creating for us while we wait for his return.

Thank you, God, for wanting to live with us forever, and for being willing to pay the steep price for our redemption and restoration. Thank you, Jesus, for your faithful promise and precious Spirit, by whom you live in and with us even now. Thank you that you are coming soon—we love you and want to be with you even now. Amen.

“And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.” Revelation 22:23-24 NASB

“Jesus answered and said to him, ‘If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.’” John 14:23 NASB