ARE YOU PREPARED WHEN CHRIST COME..?

_“The Lord Himself will come down from heaven,... we will be caught up together...  to meet the Lord.”...               (I Thessalonians 4:  16,17)_

*When the message of the Second Coming of Christ was preached to the Thessalonians  many of them had given up their daily work and were standing about in excited groups, upsetting themselves and everybody else while they were waiting.  Ordinary life had been disrupted.  Paul advised them in his letter that the best way in which Jesus Christ could come upon them was that He should find them quietly, efficiently and diligently doing their daily job.  “The thought that Christ will someday come is not a reason for stopping work; it is a reason for working all the harder and more faithfully.  It is not hysterical and useless waiting  but quiet and useful work for the Lord which will be a man’s passport to the Kingdom”, writes Barclay. The message of the Second Coming of Christ had brought another problem to the Thessalonians.  They were expecting Christ’s coming very soon.  They expected themselves to be alive when it came but they were also worried about those Christians who had died.  They were not sure that those who had already died would share the glory of that day which was so soon to come.  Paul’s answer is that there will be  one glory for those who have died and those who survive.  Paul laid down a great principle. The man who has lived and died in Christ is still in Christ  even in death and he will also rise in Christ.  At the Second Coming Christ will descend from heaven to earth.  He will utter a loud command, and then the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God will waken the dead.  Then the dead and the alive will be caught up in the clouds to meet Christ, and then they will be forever with the Lord.

Dear friends, the man who lived all his life with Christ is  never unprepared to enter His presence.  It is only the man who lives in the dark and whose deeds are evil will be caught unprepared at the Lord’s coming.  If a person lives in light, if he is watchful and sober, no matter when that day comes, it will find him ready.  Waking or sleeping, a Christian lives already with Christ, and is therefore always prepared.

*PRAYER*: Loving Lord, Your coming will be at any moment, day or night.  It will be sudden.  But since I have the confidence that I live with You, and my life is already with You, I am prepared to meet You any time.  Help me to stand firm in You till my end.  Amen.