Category Archives: Matthew

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Ripped With A Vengeance

Jesus Made Sure You Have Instant Access To His Father

At the moment Jesus died to atone for our sins, the thick curtain separating Holy of Holies from the Holy Place was torn in two—from top to bottom. It’s as if God himself reached down from the unseen realm where he dwells, grabbed the curtain with both hands and ripped it with a vengeance, thus opening up a new way for you and me into his very presence. Thank God, by the death of Jesus, a new and living way was opened to the Father’s presence for anyone and everyone who would come through the sacrifice of his dear Son!

The Journey: Matthew 27:51

Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

There is a high likelihood that you will pass by this curtain-tearing incident too quickly in light of all of the other heart-wrenching details of the crucifixion. If you do, you will miss one of the most significant events in the history of God’s dealing with mankind.

A little background information on the curtain may help. Kimberly Southwall writes,

The temple had two important rooms in it. One was called the Holy Place, and the other was called the Most Holy Place. A curtain separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. (Exodus 26:31-33.) The Most Holy Place represented the presence of God Himself. Because of that, the Most Holy Place was so special that God only allowed a priest to enter into it one time each year. No one else was ever allowed inside that room. The priest entered the Most Holy Place once a year to take the blood from a sacrificed animal to sprinkle inside to atone or try to make up for the peoples’ sins during that past year. For many years, this was the only way God’s people could hope to atone for their sins. But even this way wasn’t really good enough. That’s why God sent His only Son, Jesus, to die and atone for everyone’s sins, once and for all.

Keep in mind that this curtain was not like the ones in your home. To begin with, only the High Priest could get near it; and then only once a year. Not only that, it would have been impossibly tall to rip from the top to the bottom without a ladder. Moreover, it was so thick that, ladder or not, no human hand could ever have torn it in two.

So what is going on here? At the moment Jesus died to atone for our sins, it is as if God reached down from the unseen realm where he dwells, grabbed the curtain with both hands, ripping it with a vengeance, and thus opening up a new way for you and me into his very presence.

How awesome is that! No longer do we need to come to God through an ineffective system of religious laws, procedural sacrifices, or by a high priest. We can now boldly, confidently, and regularly come right into the very presence of God himself to obtain what we need. The writer of Hebrews describes it this way,

And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place. And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water. (Hebrews 10:19-23)

The writer puts it similarly in Hebrews 4:16, “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

Now, aren’t you glad God ripped the curtain? I sure am. Next time you read Matthew 27, pause at verse 51 for a little while.

And while you’re at it, be a little bold before God in your prayers! Then come back tomorrow (or five minutes from now, if you need to) and do the same thing!

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, thank you for the “new and living way” by which I can access your presence. By Christ’s sacrifice, I have been given the right and the privilege to come before your throne to obtain mercy and find grace. So today, I boldly ask you to pour out all of heaven’s blessings upon me.
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Easter Is Over, But Hope Lives

Take Resurrection Into Every Day Of Your Week

While Easter Sunday is now in your rear-view mirror, hope lives! The fact remains, even though Jesus died, he rose again. The stone was moved—the tomb is still empty! That’s why your faith is a living hope! So take Easter with you into Monday…and Tuesday…and…well, you get the idea. When you live Easter every day of the year, you will find stones still get moved and tombs still get emptied.

The Journey: Matthew 27:50

Then Jesus shouted out again, and he released his spirit.

Count Otto von Bismarck said, “Without the hope of eternal life, this life is not worth the effort of getting dressed in the morning.” But hope is alive, because Jesus is alive. The fact remains, even though Jesus died, he rose again. The stone was moved—the tomb is still empty! That is why your faith is a living hope! And when you live Easter hope every day of the week, you will not only have a reason to get dressed in the morning, but you will find a resurrected life where stones still get moved and tombs still get emptied.

Jesus died on Good Friday, but rose again on Easter Sunday, so that you and I can live with hope on Monday—and every other day of the week throughout life and for all eternity. That is why Peter calls it living hope:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. (1 Peter 1:3)

When you fully embrace this living hope, you will quit living like Jesus is still dead! That is our problem, I think: We embrace Good Friday and rejoice in Resurrection Sunday, but go back to work or school on Monday and live as if the body of the Lord is still in the tomb.

The story is told of Martin Luther, who once spent three days in a deep depression over something that had gone wrong. On the third day his wife, Katie, came downstairs dressed in mourning clothes. Luther asked, “Who’s dead?” She replied, “God!” Luther was offended, “What do you mean, God is dead? God cannot die.” Kate replied, “Well, the way you’ve been acting I was sure He had!”

Whatever day of the year it is, Peter calls to us to snap out of post-Easter funk because Jesus lives! We have a living hope that really matters beyond Easter!” I love how historian Jaroslav Pelikan said it, “If Christ is risen—nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.”

Jesus is alive, and that is all that matters. And here are some ways that resurrection Sunday will have an impact in your back-to-work Monday:

First, Christ’s death and resurrection are the foundation of your faith. The fact is, without the resurrection, your faith is meaningless. 1 Corinthians 15:14 says, “If Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty.” But your faith is not empty, so exercise it as you head into your week. And as you exercise God-pleasing faith, you will find that in response, God will supply even more of it.

Second, Christ’s death and resurrection are the basis of your hope. 1 Corinthians 15:19-20 says, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than anyone else in the world. But Christ has been raised to life! And this makes us certain that we will also be raised to life.” Hebrews 6:19 says, “We have this hope as an anchor of the soul, firm and secure.” Above all else, put your hope in God this week, and as Romans 5:5 says, you will find that “hope does not disappoint!”

Third, Christ’s death and resurrection are the guarantee of your resurrection Jesus said in John 11:25-26, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” If you do—believe, that is—the cross and the empty tomb become God’s signature on the Divine contract with you assuring you of eternal life after you die. So don’t forget that this week—you are going to live forever!

Fourth, Christ’s death and resurrection are the fountainhead of God’s love for you. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Yes, God loves “the world”, according to that verse, but you are the “whoever” the Apostle John had in mind when he penned those famous words. So take Easter Sunday with you as you head back to life on Monday, and no matter what happens, you are loved by the greatest love of all: God’s unconditional, unbreakable, unstoppable love.

Do you want to radically change your Monday mornings from here on out? Embrace God’s eternal, inexhaustible love for you that was on display when Jesus forgave your sins by dying on the cross and rising from the tomb on the third day. Begin to live Easter every day of the year.

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, thank you for the empty tomb. Now help me to live in the reality of the resurrection each and every day. Turn my Easter Sunday’s into Resurrection Mondays for the rest of my life until I reach eternity.
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The Divine “Eye” Of The Satanic Storm

The Safest Place To Be

Where is the greatest, safest, most satisfying place in the world to be? In the very center of God’s will, that’s where! That’s why Jesus prayed, “Father, not my will, but yours be done.” When we can learn to not only pray, but earnestly desire God’s will for our lives—unpleasant and undesired circumstances notwithstanding—then we will have discovered what Jesus knew all along when he prayed that prayer on the very night he was betrayed: the Divine “eye” of the Satanic storm.

The Journey: Matthew 26:39

Jesus went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.

Where is the greatest, safest, most satisfying place in the world to be? In the very center of God’s will, that’s where!

When we can learn to not only pray, but earnestly desire God’s will for our lives—unpleasant and undesired circumstances notwithstanding—then we will have discovered what Jesus knew all along when he prayed that prayer on the very night he was betrayed: the Divine “eye” of the Satanic storm.

Jesus desired his Father’s will more than anything else—even life itself. He knew his purpose in life was to fulfill God’s plan: To redeem a lost world by his sacrificial death. He entrusted his own personal preferences to the One who not only works out all things for his own glory, but for the good of his children as well. (Romans 8:28) That’s why Jesus, whom Hebrews 12 calls, “the author and finisher of our faith”, looked at the cross with great joy. That’s why he endured this ghastly assignment heroically. That’s why he even despised the shame of hanging upon that cross like a death-row inmate. For Jesus knew that the path to the crown was by way of the cross. Now he has arrived and is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.

So what about you? Have you come to that place where you can baptize your own preferences to the purifying waters will of God? When you can so entrust your life to the Father’s perfect plan, no matter what that means, you will have discovered, as Jesus did, the Divine eye in the midst of every Satanic storm. And that is the greatest, safest, most satisfying place in the world!

Hebrews 12:1-3 reminds us,

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [Jesus and other who heroically fulfilled God’s will], let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.

Are you struggling with God’s will? Does it seem a little too much to handle? Keep your eye on Jesus! Consider what he went through! For if you endure your cross now, then afterwards comes the crown!

Before he was martyred by the Nazis, German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in a letter from prison, “Much that worries us beforehand can afterwards, quite unexpectedly, have a happy and simple solution … Things really are in a better hand than ours.”

That’s why Jesus’ prayer, “Father, not my will, but Yours be done”, is a really good prayer for you to pray. Your life—unpleasant and undesired circumstances notwithstanding—is in better hands than yours.

And after your cross, if you endure by doing the will of the Father, comes the crown.

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, not my will, but your will be done.
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Your Judas

Sooner or Later, Everyone Get's a Betrayer

The fire, the hammer and the file of a betrayal may result in some of God’s finest craftsmanship—if you keep your heart soft and your eye on him. If you are going through the pain of a betrayer’s wound right now, remember, you are walking where great people have walked before. Their greatness came because they didn’t allow betrayal to ruin them; they learned how to turn their pain into greater usefulness for the Lord.

The Journey: Matthew 26:19

From that time on, Judas began looking for an opportunity to betray Jesus.

Sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but everybody gets a Judas in life. At one point or another, you will bear the pain of someone you trusted thrusting the knife in your back. It is simply, and sadly, the awful reality of living in a broken world alongside fallen human beings.

The passionate Scottish patriot William Wallace experienced it when Earl Robert de Bruce betrayed him. Julius Caesar knew such treachery. Among the 60 conspirators who assassinated the Roman leader on March 15, 44 BC was Marcus Junius Brutus. Caesar not only trusted Brutus, he favored him as a son. According to Roman historians, Caesar first resisted his assassins, but when he saw Brutus among them with his dagger drawn, he gave up. He pulled the top part of his robe over his face, and uttered those heartrending words immortalized by Shakespeare, “Et tu Brutus”, or as the historians have recorded, “You, too, my child?”

Not even the brightest theological mind who ever lived—the Apostle Paul—or the most perfect human being—Jesus Christ—was spared. Michael Card wrote,

Only a friend can betray a friend, a stranger has nothing to gain
Only a friend comes close enough to ever cause so much pain.

So here’s the thing: Are you willing to consider the possibility that God has a far deeper work to do in you that can only come through the betrayer’s knife. Charles Spurgeon said,

I bear willing witness that I owe more to the fire, the hammer and the file than to anything else in the Lord’s workshop. I sometimes question whether I have ever learned anything except through the rod. When my schoolroom is darkened, I see the most.

The truth is, the fire, the hammer and the file of a betrayal may result in some of God’s finest craftsmanship—if you keep your heart soft and your eye on him. If you are going through the pain of a betrayer’s wound right now, remember, you are walking where great people have walked before. Their greatness came because they didn’t allow betrayal to ruin them; they learned how to turn their pain into greater usefulness for the Lord.

Jesus responded to Judas’ money-making treachery with obedient submission to God—and transformed the world. Perhaps God wants to use your pain to form you, and transform your world.

If you are going through the pain of betrayal, memorize and pray Psalm 55:16-17, 22, a song David penned in a time of betrayal:

But I call to God, and the LORD saves me. Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice…Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall.

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, I call to you: save me! My heart is broken over the pain of having someone I knew, someone I cared for, someone I have called “friend”, turn around and stab me in the back. This is too much to bear. But you, O Lord, know the pain of betrayal by one so close. Give me your strength, put your heart in mine, help me to love as you would if you were in my place. Turn this for my good and your glory.
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Hell For Real – And Forever – But So Is Heaven

Jesus Experienced Hell So We Wouldn’t Have To

Hell is an awful reality, and that is why we must to do everything we can to make it really hard for people to go there. Love requires that from us, since God’s love sent Jesus to give people every chance on this side of eternity to escape it. God’s love sent Jesus to experience hell for them so they could spend eternity with him. So push past your awkwardness in sharing the truth, and out of love, invite your loved ones into God’s saving love.

The Journey: Matthew 25:41

Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, ‘Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons.

Is hell for real…and forever? That has become a hot topic in evangelical circles in recent year (although it has been around for centuries). A certain well-known pastor of one of America’s so-called “mega-churches” came to the conclusion that possibly, just maybe, perhaps there is an escape clause in the whole “eternal” part of the doctrine of hell.

On what does he base this departure from orthodox theology? The love of God, of course. After all, how could a loving God actually send people to hell forever? The thought behind this is that God’s love will ultimately triumph over man’s sinfulness, and in the end (even after death), every human being will come to the faith Christians have expressed in this life that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. At this point, I think it would be a helpful reminder to think about what John Hannah said on this matter: “No one who is ever in hell will be able to say to God, ‘You put me here,’ and no one who is in heaven will ever be able to say, ‘I put myself here.’”

The general term for those who hold such the belief that hell is not really forever is “universalism.” Theologian J. I. Packer says this of universalism:

A universalist is someone who believes that every human being whom God has created or will create will finally come to enjoy the everlasting salvation into which Christians enter here and now…it appears as an extreme optimism of grace, or perhaps of nature, and sometimes, it seems, of both. But in itself it is a revisionist challenge to orthodoxy, whether Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant evangelical; for the church has officially rated universalism a heresy ever since the second Council of Constantinople (the fifth ecumenical council, A.D. 553), when the doctrine of apokatastasis (the universal return to God and restoration of all souls) that Origen taught was anathematized.

According to Jesus, who knows more about heaven and hell than anyone, and according to other Scripture, hell is not a temporary place to pay for sins, it is a place of eternal hopelessness where sooner or later those that are there will realize there is no second chance. Leighton Ford said,

The fire, outer darkness, the thirst [of hell] depict spiritual separation from God, moral remorse, the consciousness that one deserves what he’s getting. Hell is disintegration—the eternal loss of being a real person. In hell the mathematician who lived for his science can’t add two and two. The concert pianist who worshipped himself through his art can’t play a simple scale. The man who lived for sex goes on in eternal lust, with nobody to exploit. The woman who made a god out of fashion has a thousand dresses but no mirror! Hell is eternal desire— eternally unfulfilled.

Hell is an awful reality, and that is why we must do everything we can to make it really hard for people to go there. Love requires that from us, and God’s love sent Jesus to give people every chance on this side of eternity to escape it. He, himself, paid the price to get you out of hell and into heaven!

The great preacher Henry Ironside told the story of pioneers who were making their way across the country to a place that had been opened up for homesteading. They traveled in covered wagons, and progress was very slow. One day they were horrified to see a long line of smoke in the west, stretching for miles across the prairie. It was evident that the dried grass was burning toward them rapidly. They faced certain death. But one man knew what do, and he set fire to the grass behind them, then had them move back on it once it had burned. As the flames roared on toward them, a little girl began to scream in terror, “Are you sure we’ll not all be burned up?” The man replied, “Child, the flames can’t reach us here, for we are standing where the fire has been!”

What a picture of being safe in Christ! The fires of God’s judgment burned themselves out on Jesus, and those who are in Christ are safe forever.

Hallelujah! We are standing where the fire has been.

Do you know someone who has not received eternal life by placing saving faith in Jesus Christ? What would God’s love have you to do for them? For starters, you can pray the following simple prayer.

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, far too many people in my life are bound for a Christless eternity. Would you help me to push past my awkwardness in sharing them the truth about the price Jesus paid to grant them eternal life? Overwhelm me in your love for them, the love that sent Jesus to experience hell for them so they could spend eternity with him. May my life mission be that people will have to push past me to get to hell.
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Risking Faith

There Is No Risk In Being Faithful

Just like the servants in the Parable of the Talents, you, too, have been given kingdom potential and kingdom opportunity. You have been given them according to your ability—not anyone else’s. You won’t be judged against either another’s potential or their actual production. Your only benchmark is your own faithfulness. As Charles Robinson pointed out, “The reward of being ‘faithful over a few things’ is just the same as being ‘faithful over many things’; for the emphasis falls upon the same word; it is the ‘faithful’ who will enter ‘into the joy of their Lord.’” It matters not if you have five, three or one talent potential. What matters is what you do with what you have been given.

The Journey: Matthew 25:15-18

Again, the Kingdom of Heaven can be illustrated by the story of a man going on a long trip. He called together his servants and entrusted his money to them while he was gone. He gave five bags of silver to one, two bags of silver to another, and one bag of silver to the last—dividing it in proportion to their abilities. He then left on his trip. … But the servant who received the one bag of silver dug a hole in the ground and hid the master’s money.

You probably know this Parable of the Talents well. The servants were given talents (a sum of money) each according to their ability, with the expectation that they would use these resources to produce something of benefit for the master.

The first two did—and were rewarded handsomely; the third didn’t—and was rebuked harshly. In fact, the talent was taken from the latter and given to the first servant, since he had proven to the master that he could increase exponentially whatever was placed within his care.

Now I have no way to prove this theologically, but I have a strong suspicion about this third servant. I don’t think the master would have excoriated him if effort had at least preceded his failure. I think it was because he didn’t try that the master’s anger was unleashed upon him. He played it safe. He feared failing, so he didn’t risk anything. This one-talent servant simply took what he had been given, protected it, and turned it back over to the master in the same condition in which he had received it. And the master blew a gasket!

This gracious but just master had entrusted something special to the servant and the servant did nothing to expand it. Now here is a crucial part of this story: The master had given his servant the talent according to his ability (verse 15). In other words, the master knew, even though it was small, there was production potential in this servant. But the servant wasted it! He let a golden opportunity slip by, and paid a heavy price for effortlessness. He didn’t damage the talent; he didn’t lose it; he preserved it—thinking he was doing the master a favor. However, the master found that kind of fear-based, lazy-hearted stewardship odious and offensive.

You, too, have been given a talent—probably more: talents in the literal sense of the word, and talents in the sense of kingdom potential and kingdom opportunities. You have been given them according to your ability—not anyone else’s. You won’t be judged against either another’s potential or their actual production. Your only benchmark is your own faithfulness. As Charles Robinson pointed out,

The reward of being ‘faithful over a few things’ is just the same as being ‘faithful over many things’; for the emphasis falls upon the same word; it is the ‘faithful’ who will enter ‘into the joy of their Lord.’

It matters not if you have five, three or one talent potential. What matters is what you do with what you have been given. You have been given your talents with the expectation that you will leverage your abilities to increase those talents and enlarge the kingdom for the real Master’s sake.

The whole point of this story is this: Don’t waste your opportunities. Don’t let the possibility of failure paralyze you into inaction. If you do, the regret at the end of your faith journey won’t be that you tried and failed. It will be that you didn’t try.

Risk a little. Even if you fall flat on your face, the fact that your heart was pure and your motive was to increase your Master’s kingdom will bring you to the joyful place of hearing him say to you on that glorious day,

Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things,
I will make you ruler over many things.
Enter into the joy of your lord.
(Matthew 25:23)

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, all that I have is on loan from you—talents, resources, skills, gifts and opportunities. Today, grant me the courage to increase them for your glory. May I know how great a good it is simply to please you which is all the reward I truly need and desire.
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Are You Ready?

Your Answer Awaits The Most Important Question Of All

The question of when and the details of how the end will come that so many people are focused on, though interesting, are not nearly as important as this one overriding issue: Are you watching, and are you ready? As John Frederick Boyes said, “It is vain to be always looking toward the future and never acting toward it.”

The Journey: Matthew 24:42-43

So you, too, must keep watch! For you don’t know what day your Lord is coming. Understand this: If a homeowner knew exactly when a burglar was coming, he would keep watch and not permit his house to be broken into. You also must be ready all the time, for the Son of Man will come when least expected.

Forty years ago, singer-songwriter Barry McGuire sang a song called, “Eve of Destruction.” Today, a lot of people think McGuire was dead on—that we are on the eve of destruction! Given conditions around the world, can Planet Earth as we know it continue much longer? Can the human race survive? Are we living in the end times?

Wars, rumors of war, global warming, the real possibility of pandemic, drug-resistant disease, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, the inexorable march toward a one-world government, the increase of evil, the rising tide of Islam, instability and unpredictability in the Middle East, escalating hostility toward Israel, increasing intolerance of Christianity, and the alarming surge of rage and violence that is being directed at believers!

Sounds like a nightly news program on CNN or Fox News, doesn’t it? Yet it is right off the pages of scripture. The fact is, 2,000 years ago Jesus predicted these very things that are happening today in Matthew 24 when he said, “So you also, when you see all these things, know that it is near—at the doors!” (v. 33)

For very good reason, interest in the end times is at an all-time high! Just look at the unbelievable success of the wildly popular “Left Behind” series—100 million copies sold. People want to know the future! And that’s not bad since we’re going to spend a long time there!

History is hurtling toward a conclusion—one that God has already ordained and foretold in the Bible. It could be soon—it could be today, or tonight, or this week, or it could be another thousand years from now. But no matter when, as the Bible says, God is not slow in fulfilling his Word—Jesus is coming back!

So what are you to do in response to that? Jesus twice said, “Watch and be ready for my coming.” (Verses 42,44) Jesus didn’t talk about the future just to get a crowd or to fill his disciples’ brains with prophetic minutiae. His purpose wasn’t to get them so hyped and overly focused on the second coming that they dropped everything to wait for his return. It wasn’t to make them so heavenly minded they were no earthly good.

Here’s the deal: Jesus’ prophetic sermon wasn’t meant just to clue us in, but to clean us up! He said these things to provoke us to purity! The Apostle John, who knew a fair amount about the end times—he wrote a book to which all other prophetic books combined don’t hold a candle, the Revelations—spoke of our hope in Christ’s return this way:

This hope makes us keep ourselves holy, just as Christ is holy. (1 John 3:3, CEV)

So the question of when and the details of how the end will come that so many people are focused on, though interesting, are not nearly as important as this one overriding issue: Are you watching, and are you ready? As John Frederick Boyes said, “It is vain to be always looking toward the future and never acting toward it.”

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, I long for the appearing of your Son. I ask, that by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, that this longing will grow increasingly intense as the end nears. I want to be one who is found watching and ready when Jesus returns..