The Apostle John gives us a beautiful description of our future in the Book of Revelations chapter For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns. For the time has come for the wedding feast of the Lamb,and his bride has prepared herself. Once again I asked my congregation to think back to all the preparations that went into the marriage ceremony.
Do you remember how much you fussed over the wedding dress? Your hair? The colors and the flowers and the place that you would hold your ceremony? Everything had to be just perfect. As much as most of us men do not understand all this fuss and we want to get the whole thing over with, the motive of the bride is the desire to present herself to her husband as the most beautiful gift that he has ever received.
That motive is the same motive we need to have towards Jesus. We are to prepare ourselves to be a glorious bride without a spot or wrinkle. What we do and how we live our lives on earth is the way we prepare ourselves for Him. It is our planning session for that great and glorious day when we will be married to our bridegroom. It is not about performance, but about offering.
We are offering ourselves to Jesus. So when is the last time you thought about becoming that wonderful gift to Jesus as a bride is a gift to the bridegroom? For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. He is the Savior of his body, the church. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. This is a very famous passage that is used to teach about relationships in marriage.
However, Paul specifically says that He is talking about Christ and the church. There are some things that you need to get out of this passage and apply to yourself. About a year after I went through the pain of divorce, I was having a spiritual crisis in my life. My kids were angry with me, I was alone and I was both angry at myself for failing and angry with God for not watching my back.
I condemned myself for the failure of my marriage. I was a Christian. Repentence is not only feeling sorry for your sin, but turning from sin to God. Repentence takes humility, and it is one of the first steps in establishing a relationship with Jesus. But although repentence must take place at the beginning of a relationship with Christ, it is also something that Christians must continually practice.
We will still give into temptation and sin, so we need to humble ourselves before the Lord and confess how we have failed so that we can be restored to a right relationship with Him through His abundant grace and forgiveness.
But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. Jesus warns the Laodicean church of this in Revelation:. I wish that you were one or the other! But since you are like lukewarm water, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth! I have everything I want. I don't need a thing!
So I advise you to buy gold from me-gold that has been purified by fire. God has a call on your life, and he wants you to walk that out until the day you die or the day Jesus comes again. He would encourage you to fulfil your destiny.
It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. Follow through on what the Lord has given you to do; like the apostle Paul, run your race and receive a crown of righteousness 2 Timothy All of it is relevant, for Jesus is coming to renew planet earth and to rule righteously along with his saints.
There will be a renewed, overcoming Church ready to welcome Jesus; there will be a harvest of people coming to faith. God has got a plan; we know the beginning, middle and end of the story of history; evil does not win, but love triumphs! Hope is one of the most powerful aspects of living Christianly.
Many people around us have no hope or sense of where the future is leading us. Let your witness and hope shine. The apostle Peter reminds us that God "has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.
This inheritance is kept in heaven for you" 1 Peter Jesus called his end-time followers to "stand firm, and you will win life" Luke The apostle Paul calls his followers to "put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground" Ephesians The closing years of human history will be the best of times and the worst of times. God wants to enable you and I to live in a greater anointing of the Spirit as his people, like in the days of Pentecost.
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