Make Ready the Day of the Lord

Everyone’s getting ready for something. Some people are getting ready for college. Others are getting ready to get married. Still others are just getting ready to get out of bed.

What are you getting ready for?

God desires we ready our hearts for Him. No matter how glorious His plans are, no matter how powerful God is, He always makes things ready.

If you planted a garden this spring, you’ll know how important it was to ready the soil. I was roto-tilling a greenhouse earlier, chewing up the fecal matter on top and breaking up the dirt to make it easier to receive new life. If I hadn’t have done that, the seeds wouldn’t have had the chance to take off. They would’ve just died.

Even Jesus, before He came to earth, had to make the earth ready for Him. He sent John the Baptist, who went and told everyone:

“Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.”

If you aren’t getting ready for the Lord, you’ll miss it when His Spirit comes.

He comes like a thief in the night. Most people think that’s on some Judgement Day in a million years. No, it’s right now.

We get so limited in our thinking, that we forget how big God is. We forget: this is a NOW God. A NOW kingdom of Heaven.

God has had this day a million years in the making.

This, today, is the day of the Lord. This is the day to receive Him. In this moment, reading these words, God is wanting to change your life.

But are you ready for Him?

It doesn’t matter how glorious His gifts are. It doesn’t matter how glorious His plans are. If you aren’t ready for it, it won’t matter a bit.

God’s Spirit is constantly moving. He’s working to get our hearts ready to receive Him. This is why you have trials and rebuke in your life.

If you want to find more of God in your life, run to the fire.

Most people think that’s crazy. More torment? More abuse? No thanks!

But it’s not torment. You have to realize the Man behind the curtain. He’s already set things in motion to deal with those thistles and weeds in our lives. To break up the rocky soil to receive Him.

Do you feel God’s chastening?

I did something really stupid. I was planning a bachelor party. We were going to go camping and grill steaks and… guy stuff. You know. 

Well, I was helping plan it. I got into a bit of a tiff. I got uptight with one of the guys, and I embarrassed myself. Others heard about it. Pretty soon I was hearing about what a jerk I was from others.

Thing was, they were right. I was being a jerk. I wanted to stick my head in the sand for awhile. I had already acknowledged my fault. “God, what else do I do here?” I asked.

“Praise Me,” God said.

I immediately knew why.

I was being chastened. No, it did not feel good. At all. But it wasn’t just people dealing with me–God was. God wanted to use the situation to keep me from going back there again.

Hebrews 12:6 says: “...For whom the Lord loves, He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.”

I latched onto that when I was a teenager. I felt God’s rebuke and correction in my life, and I felt almost in awe. “God loves me,” I realized. I didn’t think: “Oh man, this sucks.”

I mean, it didn’t feel good. (I was kind of a crazy kid.)

But all I could think was:

“God loves me. What an honor. God considers me a son! Whoa!”

God has to keep correcting us. That’s because His thoughts are not our thoughts, nor are His ways His ways.

So what’s God to do?

He corrects so we can get in line with His thoughts and His ways.

That’s why God told me to thank Him when I felt like running and hiding.

God was making me ready. God is making you ready.

Thank God!!!!

If you do not get ready, you will not be ready to go with Him. That is a terrible day, if you aren’t ready.

“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved!” (Jeremiah 8:20)

Jesus told a story about ten virgins who were getting ready for a glorious wedding.

In Jewish weddings around that time, the groom would typically lead a torch-lit procession to a big wedding feast. The procession always took place after dark, so the bridesmaids were always required to carry torches or oil lamps. If you didn’t have a lit lamp, you could be mistaken for a wedding crasher or outsiders.

In this story about ten virgins who went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them had extra oil for a long night, but five didn’t.

The groom took way longer than usual. When he finally showed up, the five virgins who had come prepared were ready for him. The other five weren’t.

“Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out,” the five virgins begged.

“No way. We won’t have enough for ours,” the other five replied.

The groom came through and proceeded to the wedding feast.

But the five virgins with the extinguished lamps chased after them, telling them, “hey, let us in!”

“I’m sure I don’t know you,” the groom said. “Go crash some other wedding.”

They weren’t ready.

I’ve heard about people who WERE ready. Catastrophe came. Their child was lying on the brink of death in a hospital bed.

But they were ready. They spoke the truth, and life stole the child from the jaws of death.

Keep your hearts and mind stayed on the Truth.

Keep your spirit charged with God’s word.

Keep your oil full. When personal tragedy strikes, when oppression comes knocking, when the unexpected comes calling, you won’t be moved then.

You’ll know the day of the Lord and the glory of His coming.

And that day, the day of the Lord, is now.

How to See God

You might say: “Wait a minute! ‘How to see God’?! Doesn’t the Bible say ‘No man has seen God and lived’?” Yes, but if we want to see God move in our lives, we need to have a pure heart.

After all, Matthew says:

“and the pure in heart shall see God”.

In other words, if our motives are pure, then we’ll see God.

What’s pure supposed to mean? We want to be really good?

No way. After all, Jesus said: “No one is good but One, that is, God.” (Mark 10:18). We’re never going to be good on our own.

So, how do we see God? If we want to see God, our heart is pure.

If our heart is pure, we’ll see God. Therefore:

If we want to see God, we’ll see God.

That’s simple! So why don’t we?

Because we don’t really want to.

Someone said: “Why?” is the most feared question in the English language. That’s because it goes deep and tends to expose our hearts in ways that are uncomfortable.

I felt that. Even over the week, God was asking me:

Why? Why are you deciding to do this or that?

I was being motivated–not by God, not by His Spirit–but by something else. It made sense to do such-and-such. I would make more money if I did. But I felt that still, small Voice continue to shine a Light on my hidden motives.

Is that your goal? Really? Just to be logical? Just to make money? Didn’t you say you wanted to follow Me?

Oops. God caught me.

I wouldn’t have seen that before, except God had gotten to my heart enough that His plans mattered more to me than mine.

I wanted to be onboard. I wanted to align with Him. I wanted to see God.

Because of that, God could finally show me how we were clashing.

That’s the beauty of God’s promises. Sometimes, we don’t really know what’s motivating us! Sometimes we ask “why?” and we can’t even answer for sure. But God promises:

“...if, in anything, you be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this to you”. (Phillipians 3:15)

In other words, if you want to see God and don’t know what’s hindering you–if you really want to see Him–God will help you see where you are clashing with Him!

That’s an incredible promise!!

Insecurity about making decisions has NO grounds when you’re determined to follow Him, then!

Someone told me: “John, take a few steps forward.”

There were a few of us gathered. I felt a little funny walking out in front of everyone as I responded.

“Why are you insecure?” someone asked me. “Don’t you know ‘the footsteps of the righteous man are ordered by the Lord?’ “

So, no matter what, if I have the heart to see God in my life, I can step out in boldness and faith and expect to see Almighty work in powerful ways!

So the ONLY thing that gets in our way…is ourselves.

I want to challenge you. I want to challenge you to really look at what is moving you throughout your day. Really get honest with yourselves! 

Without this kind of brutal honesty with ourselves, we won’t see God move in our life with abundance. Sure, we might get touched by Him here and there. There’s lots of what I would call “sometime” Christians. They’ve seen God move here and there a few years back. But they aren’t having a continual experience and interaction with the Divine. So they’re lacking things they need in life. They’re spiritually malnourished.

I still have this vivid childhood memory of a woman branded into my mind telling my dad in a meeting: “You don’t think I got faith? I got FAITH, bubba!” 

But then she started talking more. 

As a child, it occurred to me that her faith was based on a singular event years ago. Her and her husband had hit black ice and were sliding towards a horrible accident. 

She cried out to God. Her vehicle suddenly reappeared back on the road, with them in it, with perfect traction.

Totally miraculous! And I’m not knocking her encounter with God. But God had so many more experiences for her! 

I know this, because later when she heard about someone who lost her purse and trusted God to bring it back, this same woman said:

“Oh, I wouldn’t have faith to give that situation to God like that.”

Later, God’s love touched her so profoundly, her and her husband just sat all day, doing nothing but talking about how good God was. Perfect, divinely granted peace washed over that troubled household.

God’s presence transformed their lives.

But I watched as she took that perfect, divinely granted peace, and exchanged it for her familiar, comfortable darkness.

Why in the world would someone choose torment over miraculous peace?!

She was much more comfortable there. That darkness felt like home. It called to her, and she heeded the call. She turned her back on God. The last time I saw her, she was shouting at her hen-pecked husband to get into the car: “we’re getting out of here!”

The old tension was back. God’s peace had gone.

Psalm 78:41 talks about how the rebellious Israelites’ rebellion and refusal to walk with God–and their unbelief–“limited the Holy One of Israel”.

Reader, what we choose to give to God or hold back from Him also limits the Holy One of Israel. That’s right! God, the the Almighty one has chosen to limit Himself by our fickle, human motivations.

That’s astonishing!

But, again, I challenge you. Examine yourself. See if you are in “the faith”, as 2 Corinthians says.

Do you want to see God? It begs repeating. Do you, really?

You’ll know pretty quick.

When you do–you’ll see Him!