Suddenly
“Go back to what you heard and
believed at first; hold to it firmly. Repent and turn to me again. If you don’t
wake up, I will come to you suddenly, as unexpected as a thief.” Revelation
3:3
We go
through life thinking things will always be the same. We may move to another house or buy a
different car, but life seems to go on at the same pace, until suddenly. Many years ago my friend, Pastor Lois Baker
came to our church and did a woman’s conference and it was about
‘Suddenlies”. I never forgot that
message. Just when everything is going
on as usual, something happens.
I’ve had
many catastrophes in my life, one was when I heard that awful word,
“Cancer”. Another was when a deer jumped
out of a ditch and landed on the hood of my car with its face looking through
the window. How about this week when I had stocked my refrigerator and freezer
at the camper getting prepared for summer at the lake. We went up to spend the weekend only to walk
in the door and smell rotten meat and other foods. We had to throw all of it out and then had to
buy a new refrigerator. That happened
suddenly and was not expected at all.
Have you
recently thought about the fact that someday suddenly Jesus is going to
return? I was shocked by a friend to
whom I was visiting and we were talking about the Lord. I commented about how bad the world was
getting and that I thought maybe Jesus would come soon. I was shocked when she said, “I don’t think
about that happening because he hasn’t come back yet and it’s been thousands of
years.” In 2 Peter 3:3-4 others said the
same thing. “Most importantly,
I want to remind you that in the last day’s scoffers will come, mocking the
truth and following their own desires.
They will say, “What happened to the promise that Jesus is coming again?
From before the times of our ancestors, everything has remained the same since
the world was first created.”
There are so many
scriptures in the Bible that tell of Jesus returning to take the Believers to
heaven with him, it’s hard not to believe it.
Even in the Old Testament in Malachi 3:1 “Look! I am sending my messenger, and he will prepare the way
before me. Then the Lord you are seeking will suddenly come to his Temple. The messenger of the
covenant, whom you look for so eagerly, is surely coming,” says the LORD of Heaven’s Armies.”
In 1 Thessalonians
5:2 “For
you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in
the night.” Over
and over again the Bible tells of Jesus return.
Don’t give up waiting, because God’s Word is true and it will happen and
it will happen “Suddenly”. This means that we need to be ready to go
with Him. God never said we are supposed
to just sit around and wait; it means we need to be preaching and praying and
lead others to know Christ as their Savior.
The reason we must be
spiritually ready is because we don’t know when we could die. The Bible tells us that there is time set
when our lives will end. It says that
our days are numbered and only God knows when that is. God loves each of us and has special plans
for our lives, but it never says we will live forever. I know this, He has a place prepared for us
in heaven. It was bought and paid for with
the death of Jesus when he died on the cross for you and for me.
Yes, we live in troubled
times but God knows what happens next.
Do we need to think about it? Yes
we do. We need to be sharing the truth with
others while we watch and wait for his coming which will happen “Suddenly!”
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