Longing for Eden

Today I am nearly at the 38 week mark in this pregnancy and the above photo couldn’t be more true – in more ways than one.

First of all, I am longing for my baby Eden to be born and am getting increasingly impatient for his arrival! As the end draws near, there is literal  discomfort and pain in the longing as my body aches from this journey of pregnancy, mixed with hope and anticipation and joy, knowing of the reward to come!

As I talked about in a previous post about how we came to name our baby Eden, part of the reason we chose this name was because it speaks of another, greater longing for the original garden of Eden where man lived in unbroken, intimate communion with God. This is the second longing which I think we feel more intensely even as we sense that His return to the earth is drawing near. This longing is also one of aching as we feel the pain of His absence, as well as joy as we look forward to the day when we finally get to see Him face to face!

In Ecclesiastes 3:11 it says that God has put eternity in our hearts – or in other words, a longing for Eden, our original home, to be restored. I believe that this longing exists in everyone, believer or not, for we were all created this way – with the belief that there must be more to life than what we are experiencing – whether we choose to acknowledge that or not.

I read a quote recently from the book The Longing for Home by Frederick Buechner, where he writes, “What is the connection between the home we knew and the home we dream?…The first home foreshadows the final home, and the final home hallows and fulfills what was most precious in the first.“  As another writer put it on their blog, “Maybe we have lost Paradise but our hearts long for Eden. A place of wholeness. A place where creation and the created ones coincide without incident. We long for the new heaven and the new earth. Creation groans and so do we. We long for things to be put back in place. Back the way they were supposed to be.” The new heaven and earth, our final home, is the fulfillment of the original home that man had with God and it is where all things will finally be made right again.

“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4)

Michael Milton, in his sermon entitled Longing for Eden, writes, “Every man and woman who ever lived intuitively longs for his or her eternal home. You were made for Eden…So there is a longing. That is the eternity God has placed in your heart — to be fully restored with God and to be home with Him. However, the longing is confused by sin. We cannot get home, we cannot identify or come to terms with the longing, much less fulfill it ourselves. We must have help to fulfill it. Jesus is the fulfillment. He is our way home…The longing inside of you, fulfilled in great part by the [first] coming of Jesus and the salvation of your souls, is going to be completely fulfilled at His second coming.”

And so, as I feel the discomfort and pain of longing for my baby to finally arrive and to get to hold him in my arms, I am reminded of the greater longing for my Bridegroom and to finally see Him and be with Him in Paradise.

“Indeed, the Lord will comfort Zion; He will comfort all her waste places.  And her wilderness He will make like Eden,  And her desert like the garden of the Lord; Joy and gladness will be found in her, Thanksgiving and sound of a melody.” (Isaiah 51:3)

Even so, Lord, come! (And you too, baby Eden)

The Essential Jesus – Isaiah 9:6-7 – His Government and Peace

You can read about the origins of this blog series on The Essential Jesus here and catch up on previous posts here.

Though I wasn’t due to write about Isaiah 9 for quite some time, I figured it was fitting to write about it during the month of December, as it is a key prophecy about the birth of Jesus. Since there was simply so much contained in just these 2 verses, I split it up into several posts that each focus on a certain phrase, with the last one being “His Government and Peace”. Merry Christmas!!

Isaiah 9:6-7

When I come into my Kingdom, the government of the earth will rest on my shoulders. I will gladly shoulder this responsibility and I am, in fact, the only one capable of doing so. I am the perfect leader and the burden of leadership over all of mankind is no burden at all for me!

My government is also an increasing one that began thousands of years ago and which is growing daily. The bounds of my Kingdom are ever expanding and its glory is ever shining brighter and brighter until it reaches its perfection.

The gates of hell will not prevail against my Church – it will keep reaching out and taking territory from my enemy. What joy I take in rescuing souls from the kingdom of darkness and conveying them into my Kingdom of light! My government and peace are relentless in their expansion, for I am relentless in my pursuit of the hearts of mankind! I am forever wooing and winning the love of my subjects and conquering sin and wickedness, that I might rule and reign in their hearts.

The more you submit to my leadership and rule, the more peace you will experience, for as my government increases, so does my peace. Allow me to govern your day, your thoughts, your emotions, your actions, your time, your words and watch the result of peace that will flood into your life! The more you say, “yes” to my Holy Spirit within you, the more you will be set free from fear and doubt and anxiety and striving.

As both the Root and Offspring of David, I will rule and reign upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, for my Father has given it to me and has set me on His holy hill in Zion. Where there has been chaos, I will order it and establish it, setting all things in their rightful place. I will be both a King and Judge and I will judge all things rightly with true justice.

In fact, I am the only one worthy to take the scroll from my Father, the title deed to the earth, and to open it and unleash its judgments. I am the only one able to judge the earth and its inhabitants perfectly with righteousness and equity, for I am the only one who was slain and who gave my very own life for mankind. I shed my blood and bore the wrath of my Father in order to redeem you to Him, which makes me the only one worthy to receive the power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing.

Just and true are all my ways, as King of the saints, for I alone am holy. I will reign from that time forward, even forever. My Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom and my dominion will never pass away or be destroyed. All peoples, nations and languages will serve and worship me, for it is from every tribe and tongue and people and nation that I have redeemed my chosen ones.

Not only will I reign as King of kings, but I will make my subjects kings and priests who will also reign with me on the earth. For in addition to being a King and a Judge, I am also a Bridegroom and you are my Bride and I desire to have you seated with me, ruling together with me, partnering with me in bringing my purposes to pass.

The zeal of my Father, the Lord of hosts, will perform this! My Father, who is the Lord Almighty, the Lord of the Armies of Heaven – He is jealous for His own honor, to bring to pass His word and to accomplish His purposes. The One who holds the heavenly hosts in His hands, who created all things, who has ultimate power and who commands an angelic army - He is passionate and filled with zeal to see me established on my throne. He trusts me explicitly to rule and reign in accordance to the desires of His heart and He is committed and determined to bring this to fulfillment.

All of this and more was being proclaimed and prophesied in my first advent and you will see it all unfold to its completion at my second advent. Surely I am coming quickly!

** This post was influenced by Matthew Henry’s Commentary on Isaiah 9 and David Guzik’s Study Guide for Isaiah 9 as well as the following scriptures: Isaiah 60; Matthew 16:18; Colossians 1:12-14; Revelation 22:16; Revelation 5:1-14; Revelation 15:3-4; Daniel 7:13-14; Ephesians 2:6-7; Revelation 22:20 **

Naming Baby #3

I am just over 28 weeks in my pregnancy with our third child and at my 20 week ultrasound, I greatly anticipated the possibility of finding out our baby’s gender, as we had with our first two children. However, I was sent to a different hospital this time where they have a different policy about this and they would not tell me the gender at the appointment, though they would put it in the report that they sent to my obstetrician. I was totally bummed, because I really wanted to know right then and now I’d have to wait a couple more weeks to find out!

However, I believe the Lord designed it this way, because a few days later, Joe and I went on a trip to the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, and I had the opportunity to pray for our baby and listen to the Lord speak to me about him/her without any preconceived ideas about the baby based on gender. I really wanted the Lord to speak to me about our baby’s identity and possibly about their name and He was faithful to show me some things.

Now, you’ll have to forgive me, but this is going to be a slightly lengthy story of how our baby’s name came to be chosen…

As I was praying, I recalled how many times in the Bible, babies were named based upon something that the Lord was doing personally in the life of the mother or even what He was saying corporately to His people. So I began to think about what the Lord had been speaking to us and putting on our hearts and He led me to Psalm 132:1-9…

¹ LORD, remember David…
² How he swore to the LORD,
And vowed to the Mighty One of Jacob:
³ “Surely I will not go into the chamber of my house,
Or go up to the comfort of my bed;
⁴ I will not give sleep to my eyes
Or slumber to my eyelids,
⁵ Until I find a place for the LORD,
A dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob”…
⁷ Let us go into His tabernacle;
Let us worship at His footstool.
⁸ Arise, O LORD, to Your resting place,
You and the ark of Your strength.
⁹ Let Your priests be clothed with righteousness,
And let Your saints shout for joy.

Something we have been longing for in this season is for a greater realization of the reality of God dwelling with us. There are multiple facets and levels to the dwelling place of God, the first being the incredible truth that God desires to dwell and abide in us (John 15:4-11; John 14:16, 23; 1 John 4:13-14; 2 Cor. 4:6-7). We are carriers of His presence through the indwelling of His Spirit – jars of clay containing the infinite treasure of Jesus within us!

Secondly, we desire for God to have a dwelling place in our city, that there would be a literal, physical place where He could come and rest and manifest His presence and receive worship and adoration from His people. We long to see a house of prayer established in our city where we could go to worship and pray at any time of the day or night. We long to have His presence in our city, to enjoy being with Him and feeling Him in a tangible way, and so that our city could be transformed by His power to save, heal and deliver the people who live here.

Thirdly, we are eagerly anticipating the day when Jesus returns to the earth and we get to see Him face to face! When He comes, He is going to purge the earth from all sin and wickedness and He is going to make all things new so that He can once again reconcile heaven and earth, that God the Father may come and make His dwelling place on the earth permanently, bringing the New Jerusalem to earth so that we can dwell with God for eternity! (Revelation 21:1-7; Revelation 22:1-5)

As I was praying, I also kept hearing the word “joy”, but didn’t know how it fit in with the idea of God’s dwelling place. But as I read these various passages I mentioned above, I began to notice a common thread of joy throughout them all. When we abide in Jesus and He abides in us, we experience the fullness of His joy in us (John 15:11), when we are in His tabernacle and in His house of prayer, we shout aloud for joy (Psalm 132:9, 16; Isaiah 56:7), and when He comes to dwell on the earth, there will never be sorrow or crying every again – only the sweet, inexpressible joy of being with our God forever (Revelation 21:4)!

My prayer for our baby became that he/she would know the joy of God dwelling in their inner man, but who would also long for the dwelling place of God here on earth, and who would experience joy in the house of prayer as a priest who ministers before Him, as one who simply loves His presence.

A couple weeks later we finally did get to find out the gender of our baby, which is “inconclusively” a BOY!! While the ultrasound technician’s confidence in their opinion leaves something to be desired, we are thrilled and our son Justice is very excited to be getting a baby brother! However, this news presented somewhat of a dilemma in the naming department. We had a name that we liked for a girl, but nothing for a boy. Joe kept trying to convince me that the name could be used for a boy as well, but I was not budging. I was stubbornly insisting that it was strictly a girl’s name and I simply could not imagine naming our son this. Finally he gave up and threw up a prayer to God to speak to me if this was the name for our baby.

The very next day after he prayed that prayer (without me knowing it), I sat down during my morning devotions and I specifically set out to talk to the Lord about this name and ask Him to show me if this was the name He had chosen for our baby. I decided to look up the meaning of the name in the Hebrew, since it comes from the Bible. The name actually means “delight” or “pleasure”, which certainly seemed to fit with what the Lord had spoken to me about the word joy.

I then began to look at all the scriptures in the Bible where this name appears, and since it is actually the name of a place, I only discovered one person in the Bible who had been given this name. It just so happens that it was a man (a point for Joe’s argument), but also a priest who served in the temple! When I went to read the scripture in context, I found myself in 2 Chronicles 29, which is the story of King Hezekiah, who ushered in a season of revival, especially regarding the restoration of the priestly service. The temple was in disrepair and ministry to the Lord had been neglected, so King Hezekiah reopened and repaired the temple and then issued a call to all of the priests to consecrate themselves and the temple and return to the Lord. His charge to them was this,

“My sons, do not be negligent now, for the Lord has chosen you to stand before him and serve him, to minister before him and to burn incense.”

Coincidentally (I think not), this verse has been a prominent one that the Lord has given to us corporately at Sanctuary House of Prayer, where we attend. We have prayed this verse countless times, asking God to raise up men and women who would love Him wholeheartedly and who would be called to stand, serve, minister and burn before Him. I was stunned when in the very next verse it lists the priest with this name – Eden. He was one of the very first to respond to the call and to consecrate himself to God and who was among those who worshiped the Lord with the instruments of King David’s tabernacle. They worshiped, played music and presented offerings to God, praising Him with gladness and calling the entire nation to return to God as well.

Wow!! I was blown away that the one person in the entire Bible who is named Eden was a priest who also longed for the dwelling place of God to be established in his nation and who desired to minister to Him there. It quickly became obvious to me that this was in fact the name that God had chosen for our child and it also confirmed all the things He had spoken to me earlier.

Not only this, but the Garden of Eden also happens to be the original dwelling place of God where He first lived and walked with mankind before sin entered the world. Eden was truly a place of delight and pleasure, where man walked with God in unhindered, unbroken, perfect communion and this is exactly what Jesus is returning to the earth to restore!

If our baby had been a girl, I may have never searched out the name so thoroughly and discovered these things! But, an added bonus is that if the ultrasound technician’s prediction is wrong, our baby will still be named Eden.

The name is continually growing on me and I am falling in love with my little boy Eden and can’t wait to meet him! Another fun little tidbit is that my initials are JRE and the first initial of my three children – Justice, Rayah, and Eden – match my initials! So, that’s just a special little gift from my Father to me.

Will He find faith?

A passage that has been floating in my mind lately is Luke 18:7-8, which says, “And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

This brought a rather sobering question to mind – is it possible to be in the house of prayer and crying out to Him day and night for Him to bring justice, yet still be missing what He will be looking for in my heart?  When it says that the Son of Man will be searching for faith on the earth, what does this mean?  As I was reading some commentary from Matthew Henry, here is how he interpretted this passage…

Now, when he comes, will he find faith on the earth? The question implies a strong negation: No, he will not…In particular, he will find few that have faith concerning his coming…Even his own people will begin to despair of it, and to conclude he will never come, because he has passed their reckoning…But this is our comfort, that, when the time appointed comes, it will appear that the unbelief of man has not made the promise of God of no effect.

It seems to me that this is very true of the Church today – that there are “few that have faith concerning his coming”.  Honestly, my faith wavers all the time!  I don’t think I doubt that He will come someday, but I am still constantly tempted to believe that it’s unlikely that He’ll come in my lifetime.  Now, this is also the type of faith I was instructed to have – we should believe He’s coming, because the Bible says it’s so, yet it’s foolish to have faith that He will come during any given period of time.  The popular opinion is that many have thought He was coming on a particular day and the doomsday preachers have tried to predict His coming countless times, yet always been wrong.  This I agree with, for it’s clear in scripture that even Jesus does not know the day of His return, however, He also rebuked the scholars of His day for not perceiving the signs of His first coming (Matthew 16:1-4).  I was also taught that the day of His return will come like a thief, catching all of us off guard, which will be true for the unbeliever, but Paul said, “But you, brothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief” (1 Thessalonians 5:4). 

I believe that it is the desire of Jesus to find His bride with not just a casual belief about His coming, but a strong, steadfast faith in His return!  He desires to find a bride that is watching and waiting expectantly for Him, with no doubt in her heart that He is coming for her!  And not only for her to be watching, but for her to be ready and prepared for it – not caught off guard and scrambling to put herself together (Matthew 25:1-13).  In fact, I have had several dreams where I dreamt that I knew Jesus’ return was imminent and fastly approaching and I was filled with regret and panic, feeling like I wasn’t ready for Him to come, knowing I hadn’t lived my life “worthy of the calling” (2 Thessalonians 1:11).  In one dream in particular, I woke up in my dream, somehow knowing that that day Jesus was going to come.  Foolishly, I was scrambling for my makeup case to try and make myself look pretty for Him, the whole time, knowing full-well that He does not look at the outward appearance, but He looks at the heart.  The same could be applied to our outward acts – I don’t want to be one who does all the right things and says all the right prayers and looks good on the outside, but in my heart, have Him find that there was no actual faith that He would come and actually answer my prayers!

Lastly, there is a verse in Hebrews 11 that always convicts and challenges me.  It’s the infamous “Hall of Faith” passage, describing all the men and women who under the most horrible circumstances somehow had strong and enduring faith in the promises of God, so much so that the “world was not worthy of them” (vs. 38).  But the striking thing is the next verse which says, “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.”  This is the type of woman I want to be – someone who believes with fierce assurance until the very last second before I take my last breath, even if I don’t see the promise of what I was believing for.  I do not want to be one who wavers in my faith, always doubting, “blown and tossed by the wind” and “double-minded” (James 1:6-8) – I want to be a woman of faith, specifically one who has faith in His appearing and that He will be true to His promise.  I want Him to find faith in me, whether it’s when He returns to the earth or when I die and come before His judgment throne.  Either way, I want to hear Him say, “Well done, good and faith-ful servant.” (Matthew 25:21)

Making Ready a People Prepared

Lately I’ve been reading and meditating on Isaiah chapters 61 to 63 which contains several scriptures pertaining to the coming of the Messiah, both His first coming and His second.  The verse which stuck out to me recently though was Isaiah 62:10 which says, “Pass through, pass through the gates!  Prepare the way for the people.  Build up, build up the highway!  Remove the stones.  Raise a banner for the nations.”

Prepare the way for the Lord
I believe this verse has many layers of meaning, but it’s especially important to view it through the lens of Jesus’ return to the earth.  This is quite clear from the following verse where the Lord instructs Isaiah to proclaim, “See, your Savior comes!  See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.”  The Lord desired for Isaiah to preach a message that the Savior was indeed coming, bringing with Him both a reward for His people and vengeance for His enemies.  Yet, before this message could be proclaimed, obstacles needed to be removed and the path built up and prepared so that the people would be able to receive the message.  This a similar calling to what was given to John the Baptist who was a forerunner that was to ”pass through” ahead of others and go before to prepare the way of the Lord… 

A voice of one calling in the desert: “Prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”  Isaiah 40:3-5

Make ready a people prepared
In the case of John the Baptist, a key aspect of preparing the people’s hearts was to call them to participate in the baptism of repentance.  For them this was an outward act to demonstrate the inner response of their hearts to turn from their wicked ways and return to the Lord.  But what is the Lord saying to the forerunners of today?  What do we need to do to prepare both our own hearts and also the hearts of those who God desires us to proclaim this message of His return to?  How can we remove the obstacles in the way, the things that are hindering us and them from being ready on that day?  How can we do what is necessary to “make ready a people prepared for the Lord”?  (Luke 1:17)

Watch and pray
I think a key component to being prepared for the Lord when He returns is found in Jesus’ talk with His disciples in Matthew 24 and 25.  After warning them of the signs of the end of the age, Jesus exhorts them to be like the faithful and wise servant who was found watching and waiting for his master’s return and the five wise virgins who kept oil in their lamps and were ready when the bridegroom appeared.  Among other things, I believe this speaks of prayer, for when Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane, he implored the disciples to “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation”.  (Mark 14:38)  Prayer is one of the most strategic ways that we can keep our hearts alert and on guard, full of oil and lit with the fire of passion for Jesus, as opposed to slumbering and being caught unaware when He returns. 

Remove the stones
Intercession on behalf of others is also critical for the removing of the obstacles in their way – we need to be watchmen on the walls of our cities that are never silent day or night (Isaiah 62:6-7), warring for the demonic influences over people to be taken out and for the blinders to be removed so that they are able to “see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4).  I believe this is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for people – that they are unable to see Jesus for who He is and that He is the express image of the Father.  Many, including myself, do not have a correct view of Jesus or the Father and we need to intercede for wisdom and revelation to know Him better (Ephesians 1:17) and also preach about who He truly is, tearing down the wrong mindsets and ideas of what He’s like and how He feels about us.

Return with fasting and weeping
Another passage of scripture that contains several instructions on how to prepare our hearts for Jesus’ return is Joel 2:12-17.  There’s too much here to go into great detail on each item, but the Lord calls for the people to return to Him with all their heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.  If we desire to be prepared and desire to make ready a people prepared, then repentance, fasting, and mourning need to be an essential component of our daily lives.  If we do not want our love to grow cold (Matthew 24:12) then we need to turn from our sin and turn to the Lord wholeheartedly – holding nothing back.  He wants our whole hearts – He desires for us to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30).  I believe that adding fasting to your repentance is an incredible accelerator to the process, as you are choosing to kill the desires of your flesh and live by the spirit (Romans 8:13-14).  Also, when we are able to connect with the reality of how our sin grieves the Holy Spirit and we can mourn over our spiritual condition and the condition of our cities and nations, our hearts will be tenderized and the gift of weeping and groaning will allow us to enter into partnership with the Spirit in intercession (Romans 8:26).

Raising forerunners
So what does this have to do with raising forerunners?  As a soon-to-be mother, I have been impressed on my heart with the importance of my calling to make ready my children to be ones who are prepared for the Lord’s return and who will also be forerunners that will prepare others.  Imagine what it was like for Elizabeth, realizing the destiny of the child she carried within her and how vital it was for her to raise him as the Lord had commanded and teach him the ways of God, instructing John about his destiny to prepare the way of the Lord and ready the hearts of the people for their coming Messiah!  I feel this same urgency, this same weight of responsibility.  I know that the child in my womb has an incredible destiny and purpose and it is my role to disciple them and prepare them for it, with the help of Holy Spirit.  I certainly cannot do this on my own and sometimes the thought of it overwhelms me, but I also must trust that the Lord has given this child to us and will equip us to train him or her in the way they should go.  I have a new appreciation for the story of Samson’s parents, who when told of the special calling on their unborn child’s life, cried out to God, “O Lord, I beg you, let the man of God you sent to us come again to teach us how to bring up the boy who is to be born.”  (Judges 13:8)  God answered their prayer and as I make this prayer my own, I believe He too will come and teach my husband and I how to raise this little forerunner in the making.

The Scoffing Spirit

First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation”…But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief…2 Peter 3:3-4,8-10

The Scoffing Spirit
Today at Sanctuary House of Prayer, the message shared began in 2 Peter 3 with a warning about our susceptibility to be influenced by the scoffing spirit of this age. The speaker went on to describe the danger of this spirit’s ability to clutter our fervency and leave us unknowingly dull. This provoked me to write about our need to combat this spirit with a holy violence in our lives.

What I “Knew” About the End-Times
Now, if you have never thought about the Second Coming of Jesus or if you’ve sort of avoided the topic because it seemed too difficult to understand, or perhaps a little scary, then you’re not alone.  Since I was a child, I had a fascination with the topic of the end-times and the book of Revelation, but I had absolutely no understanding on it and nobody around me seemed to either.  The only things I remember ever being taught or hearing about the end-times and the return of Christ to the earth was that:

1. The book of Revelation is far too difficult to interpret so leave it alone.
2. He is going to come when we aren’t expecting it so don’t bother trying to figure out when He might be coming.
3. Everyone who has ever thought Jesus was coming soon was wrong, so basically don’t expect Him to come in your life time (so taking point #2 into consideration, if I’m not expecting Him to come, wouldn’t that mean He’s probably coming? ).
4. If it does happen to occur in your life and for some reason you don’t get raptured with the rest of the saints, all you need to remember is DON’T TAKE THE MARK OF THE BEAST!!

One of Them
Now I don’t have time to refute each of these in this post, but, needless to say, my eschatology (end-times theology) was pretty limited, mostly ignorant and a little fearful.  To add to my struggle, I would often have dreams relating to the end-times and Jesus’ return, and since I believe that God speaks vividly and prophetically through our dreams, I was troubled by them and didn’t know what to make of them.  You can imagine the wrestling match I endured when I found out the man I was dating and knew I was going to marry began to tell me that he believed with all of his heart that Jesus would return in his life time!! I was appalled, confused, offended, angry, afraid, and embarrassed, to mention just a few of the emotions I felt!  I began to argue the four points above with great passion (mostly #2) and at that time in my life, was pretty much one of the scoffers mentioned in 2 Peter 3.

Dull & Slumbering
Sadly, my passionate conviction that we couldn’t know when Jesus was coming and that it was heretical to even think you knew when he might be coming was birthed by a scoffing spirit found not in the world, but within the church herself.  The very bride of Christ who is described in the book of Revelation as partnering with the Holy Spirit and crying out for Jesus to return to the earth, this same bride didn’t seem to believe He was actually coming!  Or at least, not likely in their life time, which is exactly what the speaker meant when he said that this scoffing spirit will leave us “unknowningly dull”.  If we buy into the lie of the enemy – whether it’s coming from the church or from the world – our hearts will become dull and listless and slumbering, for there is little reason to prepare for something you don’t expect to happen.

How then should we live?
Peter goes on in his letter to encourage the body of Christ, that in light of their firm belief in Jesus’ return (he was writing on the assumption that this was so), that it was absolutely vital that they prepare their hearts for what was coming!  Since it was absolutely certain that He was going to come back and that He was coming not just to sweep His bride off the planet, but to also bring judgment upon sin, Peter gave them the answer to the looming question of, “So what kind of people ought we to be?“  We must be asking this same question of ourselves – in light of this knowledge, how should we live our lives?  What kind of bride is He coming back for?  How do we need to prepare?  Peter’s answer was this…”live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming…make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him…be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

On Guard
We need to be on our guard against this spirit that would seek to steal away our hope and belief in the second coming of Jesus.  Yet, let’s take it one step further, and instead of just being on the defensive, take the offense and wage war against it!! If you don’t know what you believe about the end-times and Jesus’ return, then start digging into the scriptures and start asking those hard questions. Wrestle out your beliefs, do your research, argue it out with someone, truly examine the Word!  Then make every effort to firmly stand your ground against anyone who would try to lure you into to being carried away by their unbelief.  Seek understanding, but most importantly, seek to know Jesus and who He is and surrender to His desire to make you into the pure, spotless and blameless bride He is coming back for.

---

For a good place to start researching and asking questions about the end-times, check out the onething forums at the International House of Prayer’s website or check out the book End Times Simplified by David Sliker.