Will this be the year? Waiting well.
by | Posted on January 1st in Pastors thoughts
Over brekky we read an encouraging comment by Charles Spurgeon, that maybe this year will be our last.
Katie and I reflected on our ability to consider our lives on earth more excitedly than eternity with Jesus. In 2011 we got engaged, married & bought a house that we’re about to move in to. I started a new job (twice) and a bible college course. Lots happened, lots of good things. But things that we’ll forget if Jesus comes back.
Jesus has promised that he will come back, sometime that we can’t predict - “Now concerning that day and hour no one knows” (Matthew 24:36). It could be 2012 ironically. It doesn’t matter, because we’ve been told what we should be doing while we wait.
We are to wait together faithfully
Hebrews 10:24-25 says “And let us be concerned about one another in order to promote love and good works, 25 not staying away from our worship meetings, as some habitually do, but encouraging each other,(A) and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”
When Katie and I get tired, church is often the last thing we want to do on a Sunday before the regular week starts. When we do turn up, trying to look after other people, we’ll drive home saying “that was so good, I can’t believe we thought about not going”. Waiting together for Jesus’ return is both our work and our encouragement while we wait.
We are to wait together faithfully
When Jesus comes back he’ll measure our faithfulness relevant to what we’ve each individually been given. Matthew 25:29 says “For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have more than enough. But from the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.” What these servants have (or do not have) is fruit produced from what Jesus has given them. Individually and uniquely.
Last night one of the PM guys was reminding me about the need for Christians to deliberately and prayerfully have a look at where God has put them, what abilities and resources he’s given them, and to use those circumstances and abilities to produce fruit for God. The consequences for never doing this are terrifying (Matthew 25:14-30) and the reward for doing it is the opposite.
I’m praying this year that God will graciously force me to be fruitful. It may be the year.
Come Lord Jesus, come.
January 6th, 2012 at 5:42 pm
To Martin Luther’s remarks on the need for Christians to be ‘amongst our enemies’, Bonhoeffer in Life Together (1992) responds, describing Christians in exile and the sweetness of the Word or prayers and letters from brothers. The goal of all Christian community: they meet one another as the bringers of the message of salvation.”
“The more genuine and deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and His work become the one and only thng that is vital between us. We have one another only through Christ, but through Christ we do have one another, wholly and for all eternity.”