Dear Bride of Christ,

The Lord is Not Slow in Keeping His Promise

Dear Bride: the best thing you have going for you is that Jesus loves you! Already--right where you are. If He sees you returning to Him with your whole heart, His great Heart will melt with the intensity of His passion for you. He will open up ways for you to become the woman you need to become--ways all of your "church growth" technology could never pull off. He holds your keys, and what He opens, no one can shut.

Jesus Himself is your answer. There is no other.

I do not claim to have any word from God about the day and hour of His Son's return. I don't have a crystallized theology of pre-this or post-that. But the Scriptures do speak of His Coming, and they say enough to make me wonder whether your belief that Jesus is coming back very soon could possibly be true--unless some very radical changes happen even sooner. Please bear with me; I'll try to explain what I mean.

Early believers were united in hoping for the soon return of Christ, too. When the first generation of believers was beginning to pass away, scoffers in the next began to question whether Jesus was returning at all. Peter assured them Christ would return. He offered this explanation of Jesus' seeming slowness: "But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9-10).

The immense heart of God is so hesitant to pull the plug on history while there is still a work He wants accomplished in the hearts of men and women. Whether He must wait a day or a millenium means little to the Ancient of Days. What matters to God is that people turn to His Son and find life in Him. Of course God is sovereign. Seeing the end as clearly as He does the beginning, our Father knows exactly when Jesus will come back for the Bride. But don't read that statement to mean that our preparation plays no part in His plans--it definitely does.

Jesus Himself, when He walked the shores of Galilee, compared His Kingdom--that's God's rule over you, His church--to a crop of grain. There was to be growth, development, and mature fruitfulness before the harvest: "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain--first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come." (Mark 4:26-39)

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