What Must I Do to be Ready?!

Songdove Books - Alarm Clock
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Songdove Books - Alarm ClockThe afternoon of 0911, I heard a whisper as I sat watching the CNN news as the events of that fateful day unfolded.  This whisper stated, “Arise, make yourselves ready, for behold, the Bridegroom comes”.  Two weeks later it would be added to, becoming this admonishment, “Arise, make yourselves ready, trim your lamps, for behold, the Bridegroom comes”!

That whisper has become a wake-up call, an alarm-clock to the churches as my almost-adult daughter puts it.  13 years later, the cry is getting louder for the Church to walk up!  Even as Israel comes under more and more attack both with rockets and rhetoric, even as so-called climate change creates ever-increasingly damaging weather patterns around the world, even as various national economies are becoming increasingly unstable and civil unrest is spreading, the Church, the Body of Christ, is being lured and lulled into thinking it has to look and act like the world in order to be “relevant”.  False teachers are rising twisting Scripture to suit whichever sin they wish to focus on at the time, and doing so with such eloquence as to deceive those who thought themselves firmly planted on The Rock!  We are urged by Paul to take heed lest we fall into the temptations of others while we seek to rescue them.

Those who are hearing the heavenly alarm clock are responding one of two ways:  Either they are groaning and turning over to cover their ears with their pillow and go back to sleep, quite happy with how life is going for them as long as they don’t tick off the local group of sinners.  Or they are being startled awake and all but freaking out wondering what they have to do to make themselves ready for the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

For those in the latter category, the alarm clock is carrying with it an increased call to holiness.  I am seeing an increasing number of people and Christian organizations writing about this.  This is good, because the term has been all but outlawed in modern churches because of the association with abolitionists and strict religiousity of the past.  The concept of holiness sounds too much like rules and regulations, do’s and don’ts that alienate people from their friends and families, coworkers and teammates.

In reality however, choosing a life of holiness has more to do with complete (and repeated, thanks to the sin nature that tries to rise up every now and then) surrender and submission to the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives.  The more we long to be held in the arms of Christ, the more we will actually WANT to take on His character traits in our own lives.  Getting to His heart however, requires passing through the flames of His love for us!  This is generally painful to some extent, but there is less pain when we consider the end result and just WHO we are doing this for.

God is a holy God and can’t tolerate sin in His presence.  Sin earns God’s wrath as spoken of at various times throughout both the Old and New Testament.  We are only able to stand in God’s presence and be gathered to His chest via the Righteousness Christ has imparted to us!  But we must learn to live in and walk out that righteousness to the world around us!  This is where the Holy Spirit comes in.  The Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 doesn’t come about on our own efforts.  Cleaning up our body soul and spirit isn’t effective and often futile without the Holy Spirit’s efforts in our lives.

But we must be willing to let the Holy Spirit do this work and actually cooperate with Him when He points out areas of our lives that are our responsibility to deal with.  How we look after our physical body, which is called the Temple of the Holy Ghost in the New Testament, is very telling of just who we think lives there.  If we are on the throne of our lives, how we treat our body will show it.  But if God is on the throne, that will have an impact on how we look after the body He’s given us.  This ranges from how much junk food we eat, the exercise we engage in, whether we smoke or drink, etcetera.  It always amazes me, the stories I hear when true conversion has taken place and the incredible healing changes that take place in the bodies of those coming to Christ.  What also amazes me is the large number of professing Christians who turn around and engage in those things that new converts were healed from, all in the name of liberty and grace!

To that end I would urge the reader to read the entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 3.  The following smaller passages are quoted directly here:

Romans 12:1-3  I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.  2  And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.  3  For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.

2 Corinthians 6:1  We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.

2 Corinthians 6:12-18  Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels.  13  Now for a recompence in the same, (I speak as unto my children,) be ye also enlarged.  14  Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?  15  And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?  16  And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  17  Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,  18  And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

Photo by Utne
Photo by Utne

This is all part of trimming one’s lamp in preparation for the coming of the Bridegroom!  The flames of the Holy Spirit cannot burn very well through heavily soot-topped wicks.  The soot must be trimmed off so the Light of the Gospel can shine brightly in an ever-darkening world!  The call to make ourselves ready is a call to holiness.  Do you hear it?  Are you living the grace God has given you or are you squandering it instead?  Remember, there were 10 virgins!  TEN VIRGINS!!!  But only five were ready when the time came to enter the marriage feast!  Those who choose to separate themselves from sinful indulgences, fashionable, trending, and regardless of how relevant such involvement offers to make them, will be on the road to making themselves ready for that trumpet blast that catches away the Bride before the wrath of God falls.  But those who did not make themselves ready will die a martyr’s death.  Your choice. . .

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