A distracted driver crosses a line. A doctor speaks a dreaded diagnosis. A baby is born. A random conversation with a stranger opens new doors. An unlooked-for person appears in the frame of your life and brings decades of love and companionship. In the blink of an eye, life can change radically. We will all have ‘moments’ that indelibly alter the course of our lives, that derail or reroute the life we expected.
Certainly, for the follower of Jesus, the defining moment is when the effectual calling of the Holy Spirit savingiy renews our will and draws us to Jesus. The Bible speaks of this moment as a birth, a resurrection and new creation. In his letter to the church in Corinth, Paul wrote, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
But our life in Christ is always looking forward to another defining moment that lies perhaps beyond our earthly life and death. A moment that throughout Scripture is offered as comfort and solace to God’s people of all ages. The moment when the fullness of all God’s redemptive plan is finally accomplished and all things are made new. What moment is this? It is the moment we speak of every time we come to the Lord’s Table and hear the words, “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
The return of Christ is the “blessed hope” of all believers. Christ’s return will bring with it the renewal of all things; the resurrection of the dead, the judgement and the new heavens and the new earth. It is the blink of an eye in which all things are made new.
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15,
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.
And again in 1 Thessalonians 4,
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye Christ will return. It is the decisive moment for which all creation groans. The Bible instructs believers to watch, wait and live expectantly, longing for Christ’s return. Our mantra is to be maranatha or ‘Come, Lord Jesus.’ Is that your mantra? Can you say with the Spirit and the Bride, ‘Come!’ Or is your cry, “not yet!”
How eager are you for the return of Christ? How convinced are you that the day of His return will be the very best day, not a day of disaster? Will the defining moment of your life be the “blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us?”
Join us as we examine 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and consider what it teaches about the return of Christ. We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship. Get directions here or contact us for more info. Or join our livestream on YouTube.
