Cultivating A Heart of Expectation: Preparing For The Return Of Jesus

Given the current state of the affairs in the world, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Jesus may be returning soon. I’m trying to hold onto my confidence in God and live by faith.

Bible clearly instructs us to be vigilant. But he also teaches that no one can say for certain we are living in the “end times.” Jesus Himself repeatedly said that no one knows the hour of His return. In Matthew 24:36 Jesus says, “No one nows of that day and hour, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.” In Matthew 24, the disciples asked Jesus about the end of the age, and He warns of false prophets, wars, famines, and earthquakes as the beginning of sorrows.

Today we are seeing all those signs. That being said has there a period in the history of the world when this was not the case.

Can you imagine what it was like to be a believer in Rome under Nero or Darius the Mede when people were put in a fiery furnace or a lion’s den for your faith in God? What do you suppose believers were thinking when the legions captured Jerusalem and destroyed the temple in AD 70. my anyone recorded that the end was near when the black death decimated and wiped out entire towns and claimed more than 25 million lives? And the so-called Great War that destroyed an entire generation. Or when the shadow of Hitler and the Third Reich was rising over Germany and Eastern Europe. Clearly, the early 21st century has no monopoly on death, disaster, devastation, and terror. We don’t need to know a great deal of history to realize this.

But let’s assume for a moment that these are the end times. What then? How should I believe or respond? Fortunately, the apostle Peter gives us a straightforward. Answer to this question in 2 Peter 3:10. He wrote specifically in reference to the end of the age. “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up.”

Peter does not suggest that we should head for the hills, or adopt a fortress mentality, or start stockpiling food and weapons. He says all of these things will be dissolved, and we need to conduct ourselves in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day when Jesus will return. As Peter sees it, in time believers are called to do one thing, they are to practice, holiness, and do good to others whenever, and whenever they can. They are supposed to do the works of God.

Paul seems to have been thinking the same way when he wrote to the Galatians. Galatians 6:10 tells us, “Therefore as we have opportunity, let us to good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

Many people have bought land in the mountains, stocked up on weapons and food to avoid being times. But we are not called to run. We are called to live a spiritual alertness, love, actively, and steadfast, faithfulness, as we wait for Jesus‘s return. Rather than panicking or setting dates.