People Get Ready, Jesus is Coming

Over the past couple of months, the Lord has begun to stir within me a hope that I know will not be quenched. It is the hope of his coming and the desire to see him face to face and to be found worthy in his sight on that day. It is the hope that my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is indeed the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings and that soon and very soon, he will come back to reign. 

This last year has been one of refining for me. Beginning in January, the Lord put me into the fire and for almost 8 months, I was in an incredibly dark depression that only grew worse as time went on. I think I've always had a root of depression in my heart, because it is the thing the Lord used to draw me to him my Sophomore year of high school. At that time, I went into a depression that was so deep that my parents seriously thought I was suicidal (I wasn't) and my mom forced me to do a 12 week "Intensive Discipleship Course" to try to get me out of it. I'm so thankful she did, because it was through that Bible study that I came to know the Lord myself and not just through my parents. 

So for the next couple years after that, I learned how to follow the Lord and to trust Him with everything. I decided to go to a Bible college to prepare to be a missionary because I wanted to follow God.  And 1) I thought that the only way to do that was to become a missionary and 2) I wanted to get the heck out of America with all its materialism and apathy and go somewhere that people actually wanted to hear about the love of Jesus. Number 2 was something God had to seriously break off of me over the last year and a half so that I can honestly say now that I love my broken country and her sleeping church and if the Lord decides to use me to help wake her up I would be incredibly honored. I've also come to find out that missionaries are not the only ones who God loves to work through, and that he actually wants to use my specific skills, talents and the things I enjoy doing to bring glory to him. And that might not look like I thought it was supposed to Aka: an incredibly poor, suffering missionary in the middle of some far-off African tribe. Do I believe Christians are called to pick up their cross and follow Jesus even unto death? Yes. Yes. And Yes. But I've come to find out that his burden really is easy and his yoke really is light and that has a lot to do with the fact that He wants us to our own individual lives for him and he loves to give us the desires of our heart when we choose to give him our lives. I now believe that I will actually get to do something I was made to do in order to serve him! How incredible!

So anyways, last August, I headed off to Bible college as an incredibly idealistic, wide-eyed Freshman ready to change the world for Jesus. First semester was good in a lot of ways, but then when second semester started in January of this year, some stuff happened that I won't share here but that seriously shook my faith in the Lord. It was the first time since deciding to follow him that the idea that God would not always protect me from pain and suffering actually started to sink in. And it was terrifying. I realize now that those fears were mostly unfounded because although the Lord will allow trials and sufferings in my life, they will never be more than I can handle with him, and he will always give me abundant grace in the middle of those trials so that they will be much easier than they would otherwise be.  But at the beginning of this year, he had not shown me that yet. And so I honestly became crippled by fear of anything and everything that could and would go wrong in my life. 

I started to be utterly afraid of rape, which is something that I had always thought God would protect me from. (I now have the assurance that if he did allow something as utterly horrifying as that to happen to me, it would be because it was a part of his infinite plan and that he would allow it only for the sake of the incredible gain that his kingdom would have because of it. How exactly this could happen, I do not know. But this is the mystery of being a finite being following in the footsteps of an infinite God. There's something called faith that we have to live by.)

I began to fear death because my perceptions of a loving God had been utterly shattered and he had not yet restored them into a picture of greater beauty that I am now able to see. I began to fear losing my family members and that God would allow terribly things to happen to them. I became so afraid of this that I actually went and visited my Aunt over the summer primarily because I had begun to realize that I may never be able to see her again if something happened to her. I also decided to go and help my grandparents for three months because I didn't know how soon they would die and I wanted to be able to know them before that happened. (Both these visits that I decided to go on out of fear actually ended up saving me out of my depression - the Lord is good to use our weaknesses for his glory). This fear drove everything I thought about and everything I did. I was convinced I was no longer safe in this world of desperate evil and I became so paralyzed with fear and depression that I eventually could barely drag myself out of bed to face another day. 

But, like I said, those two visits that I made to go see my Aunt and Uncle and then to care for my Grandma and Grandad are what the Lord used to save me out of this dark depression. It was my Aunt who first realized that I was, in fact, depressed and she was the one who told me the surprising fact that "You're not supposed to wake up feeling hopeless every morning". Because, at the time, I was so deep in sorrow and fear that I didn't even know I had a problem. But the Lord used her to show me that I did. 

After that visit, I came home with a little more hope than I'd had for a long time and it lasted long enough for me to start working out everyday and eating healthy - which I read were two of the most important things you could do in order to fight depression. (They also happen to be the two things you least want to do when you're depressed, but somehow I forced myself to anyways).Those habits helped a lot, but I knew deep down inside that it was my broken relationship with the Lord that was the real cause of all this hopelessness. I had lost faith in the source of all hope and so, of course, I had lost sight of all hope as well.

Then, about three weeks before I knew I was supposed to go back to Bible college for another semester (after the incredibly hard one I'd had the year before, I wasn't sure I would be able to go back at all), I started to ask the Lord to show me what to do about school. I was so sure that God wanted me to go back to Bible college, even though I honestly didn't want to go, and so I began making plans to go back for just one more semester in order to earn my Associates degree. After that, I was planning on moving on to an online degree in Education or something that could actually pay the bills. (I have never really thought or cared much about how I'm going to pay the bills after I move out, and so it was actually my Aunt and my father who planted this bright idea in my brain. I still don't really care about money because I have come to truly believe that God actually means what he says when he tells us not to worry about our food or our clothes because he will provide all that we need. But I also do believe that God had my Aunt and my dad "force" me into pursuing an "actual" degree that was accredited in order that he could lead me to where I am now.)

So anyways, I applied for the classes at Bible college that I knew I could take in order to get an Associates in one more semester and then waited to see if I could still get into all of them. I basically told God that if this didn't work out, he'd have to show me what else to do because I had no idea what to do next. And it turned out that I actually could get into all those classes...except for one of them. And I was the first person on the waiting list for it. It was then that something inside of me finally broke and I just gave up trying to figure everything out on my own. I was frustrated and exhausted and so I straight up told God that I wasn't going to do any more planning until he showed me what he wanted me to do next. 

So I waited one excruciatingly long week and then the Lord opened up the huge door he wanted me to walk through, and he even put in a bunch of neon signs at the entrance to point the way :). I found out through my mom that my Gramma had broken her arm and that her and my Grandad would need help with driving and making meals and lots of others basic living stuff until her arm was healed and she could start taking care of both of them again. Apparently, my mom told me, my dad had mentioned to her that he had had the idea that I could be the one to go to Phoenix and take care of them for a couple months. At the time, my Aunt was taking care of them, but my mom said that they would need help starting August 18th. Which is, I kid you not, the exact day I was planning on driving back up to Bible college. Yep, that was about as clear as it could get. Oh, and on top of that, my RA from last semester just so happened to be doing an internship in the exact same city... 

So I prayed about it for literally less that 24 hours and just decided to go. (A decision that I cried over for the next three days because I was sure that I'd gone against the will of God by not going back to Bible college, but it turns out everything worked out after all. :) The Lord still loves me and I don't need a Bible degree to follow him. Who knew, right?) 

And it was there in Phoenix, serving my grandparents day after day and being ministered to at a weekly prayer meeting that the Lord healed my heart and brought me completely out of my depression. How did he do this? Well a lot of it had to do with the fact that I just stopped thinking about myself for awhile and started thinking about somebody else for a change. But another huge part was that God showed me just a small hint of the revival that is already coming upon the earth and that is going to only increase in the days and years to come. And He showed me the incredible mystery that his love is much greater than any world crisis or act of evil upon this earth could ever be. He is working. "Aslan is on the move". And his church is about to be, and already is being, woken up from her slumber. He's opened my eyes to it and now I'm seeing it more and more places the more I look.

It's everywhere. 24/7 prayer meetings to the Lord are popping up literally everywhere around the world. God is allowing incredible signs and wonders and miracles to be done across the globe through the power of the Holy Spirit! Doors are being opened for the Gospel in places like India that have never been opened before! And there is a goal of Bible translators around the world to begin translation of the Bible into every language on earth by the year 2025! (A goal that is becoming increasingly more realistic as the Lord continues to raise up workers to go into the harvest field and proclaim the Gospel to those who have never heard it in their language ever before! I just read this morning that a new translation project is started every 5 days! And they only take about 20-30 years to complete!)  Our God is on the move! There is so much more than hope for those of us who are in Him. He is raising his church from the grave and the is breathing life into the dry bones or his tired and weary people.

Jesus promised that he was coming back very, very soon and that we must be ready for his return at any minute! He is not a lair my friends. He will do just what he has promised he would do: he is going to come back for his faithful bride! Ask him to put this urgency into your hearts to prepare for his coming just as he's done for me! The time is short! The day is close at hand! Do not be like one of the 5 virgins who ran out of oil and so they missed the coming of the Bridegroom and were left out of the celebration! Jesus has warned us to be ready and so ready we must be.

Be seeking him and purifying your hearts and your life NOW before it is too late! This is the Lord of the universe that we will all one day soon stand before and all our lives will be exposed before his perfect and holy eyes. If you have not been cleansed by the blood of Jesus, His Son, on that day, you will be rejected and thrown out. If you do not remain in him and bare fruit, you will be pruned from the vine. I urge you - do not be on the wrong side of our King's coming wrath.

Here is a sermon and a short video that both utterly woke up my heart! Watch and listen and ask the Lord to show you the truth.

Sing Zion Sing  (This is a dream that Misty Edwards, a passionate worshiper of the Lord, had. The Lord is a jealous lover and his world has rejected him. This is why he has promised in his word that the end of the world will be a great tribulation and trial. His wrath is about to be poured out on those who have rejected him again and again and again.)

"The Search for Relevance" (This, also by Misty Edwards, is a wake up call to live! This is what life is all about - loving the Lord our God.)

I love you guys so much. We are dealing with a holy God, and we must be on His side of this whole thing. We must chose Him now! We have way too much to lose not too.

People get ready. Jesus is coming. And this time, he's coming in power with the armies of heaven behind him! And he will receive the glory that he rightly deserves.