If The Lord’s Coming, Why Aren’t We Preparing?

Reposted from: gracethrufaith.com/ask-a-bible-teacher 

Q. Something has been weighing heavy on my mind for some time now. It seems that no one is preaching ‘preparation’.  I believe there will be a rapture of the Church soon. As things are winding down and we see prophecy coming to fruition it is time for true women and men of God, I believe, to focus on being prepared for His coming. What are your thoughts on this?


A. You make a good point. And of course the reason no one is preaching preparation for His coming is that very few really believe it. Even among the most sincere believers, the Lord’s return is still more theoretical than real, and to think of Him coming soon takes a huge paradigm shift that few are willing to make.  In fact the only time you hear the word preparation, it’s in connection with the fear that the Lord is not coming soon.

I think we should focus on two things to prepare for His coming. The first is to exercise our faith to make it stronger. As I’ve said before, we do this by walking by faith even if we aren’t currently experiencing difficulty.

Learn to rely on the Lord again as at the beginning of our walk with Him, not making any decisions without seeking His will. Pray without ceasing, pray about everything. Study His word daily.  Put Him back in charge of our lives. Cultivate like minded friends. Start acting like we really expect Him to appear soon. After all, we’re promised a crown for doing so (2 Tim. 4:8).

And the second thing is to keep working to simplify our lives, getting rid of all the things that distract us from nurturing our relationship with Him. The old saying is true. We work to get things, and then we work because we have them. These things divert both our time and our resources from “Kingdom activity” that would bless us and please Him. Let’s start extracting ourselves from the grip this world has on us and focus more on the next one.  This one only has a few more years to run, but the next one lasts forever.

Doing these things would make our lives into an example for others that would probably bring more people to the Lord than all our fancy evangelism programs could ever accomplish. Folks always respond better when they see that we actually believe what we’re telling them.