PRAYING FOR YESHUA’S RETURN

What do you pray for? Who is most advantaged by your prayers?  You?  Others?  God Himself? You might want to take a moment to consider how you would answer your own prayers.  I had to.

This morning I had a dream that was more of a message than pictures. Some dreams you know are from the Lord.  This was one of them. I must preface the dream’s message with a story. In writing the book,  Heaven is Beyond Your Wildest Expectations, (available on Amazon.com) I interviewed a number of people who had been to heaven, most had died but after they experienced heaven, the Lord sent them back to bring the message of what they had seen and heard and to tell people to prepare for the coming of the Lord is soon. How soon is soon, we do not know. But we would do well to “prepare” as He said.   

One man I interviewed recounted the Lord’s words to him which impacted me greatly, causing me to rethink my own priorities in the Lord.  While I do not remember the exact words I do recall that basically it was this:  “My people are more concerned with their own comfort than with Me coming, so they do not pray about what must take place prior to My coming” (my paraphrase).  

I had to ask myself, did I even pray much for His coming when it will be the greatest moment in all of creation?  But in considering the implications of Yeshua’s message to pray for His coming, and what we do or do not pray for, it seems that God takes (most of) our prayers seriously, that He answers the desires of our hearts most often, and that what is NOT sincerely the desires of our hearts, He either does not “hear” or doesn’t take seriously since we really don’t either.  How many things have you prayed for that you either forgot because they really didn’t matter in your life after all, or because you realized later it was God’s protective blessing that He didn’t answer as you had asked?  It’s happened to all of us. 

But I was struck with what this man reported were Yeshua’s own words that His own people’s concerns were largely other than His return.  Now, I’m sure that just about all of us live in great anticipation of His return.  Or do we?  I think each person’s answer may be affected by what “His return” means to them. It is Biblically true that one glorious day Yeshua will appear, no doubt brighter than lightening in the sky to “catch us up” to be with Him forever (1 Thes. 4:16). "in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed" (1 Cor. 15:52). While His coming is a given, the question is when?  

If you believe in what we call a “pre-trib rapture” that before the great and terrible days of tribulation which the Bible indicates will take place in the end of days, then surely you are confident that one day soon you will be “home free” without suffering the ravages of any days of serious difficulty.  Personally, I don’t see it this way in Scripture - the "last trumpet" is after all, the last trumpet. To believe otherwise, if you'll allow me to say so, seems rather escapist to me - though I would be enormously happy to see that I have been mistaken should I find myself suddenly in the sky with Him prior to any difficult times. That would be wonderful, but personally, because as far back as Abraham, there are statements that God does not deal with the righteous as He does with the wicked. There are, in fact, 99 such statements in the Bible.  We see that in Egypt when God brought the plagues upon the Egyptians, Israel remained free of them. The darkness was all over Egypt but the sun was still shining in Goshen.  Pretty superantural, wouldn't you say?  God kept them protected, just as I believe He will keep His people protected as we trust in Him to do so. Still, Israel did go through the first of them.  

So what if we will be here for some of it, half of it, or all of it?  How then should we pray?  What do we need from God if we might in fact remain on the earth for some difficult days ahead?  After all, there are many believers throughout the world today who are suffering now for their faith in Yeshua. Surely, He cannot come too soon for those being persecuted for their faith. We should all pray for His protection and provision, courage and rescue for those suffering for Him until He does come.  

But shouldn’t we be praying that He does come and whatever circumstances will be involved in that marvelous event?  For those who expect a “pre-trib rapture,” what about the millions of people who are left who will go through times of tribulation as the Bible describes?  What is our concern for them?  And what if there is not “pre-trib” happening and we turn out to be the people who are going through difficult times.  What then shall we pray now?  Can we pray to bring about Yeshua’s return?  The Bible does end, after thousands of years of input, with the words, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”   I’m not at all sure I have the answers, but I do feel that I am to put the questions out there for whomever God leads to read this. So if you’ll allow, I will share some further thoughts. 

I expect that most of us know that the world is in trouble. Being an American, without going into the details of American foreign policy or even what is taking place internally in America, it appears we’re losing our grip as a superpower and making some really bad deals, decisions and alliances.  I might not have to remind you, in light of Genesis 12:3, that siding with Israel’s enemies whose intent is their destruction, is far from wise.  Additionally, we are feeding the hand of the dog that will bite us, if we think radical Muslims will decide we’re not really the Great Satan after all because we’re funding them.  Well, I said I wasn’t going to go into it, so I’ll stop and go back to what I feel God wants to put before us – the matter of praying for His return even if it means difficult days ahead.

Are we not praying about it either because we don’t expect to be here, or because we’re leaving it up to God because it’s too scary a picture to look at, or it seems too confusing to sort through all those prophesies or the News to know what to pray?  Maybe it’s a combination of these.  But the question still remains –  how then shall we pray?  And what about the Lord’s statement that we desire our comfort more than His coming? Isn’t that a piercing remark?  I think of myself as desiring Him and His will more than anything else in my life, but this statement has caused me to realize that I really do not want to experience what I might have to, before His return, should we not be “raptured” out of any harm’s way. Or to put that in wider terms, neither do I do want “us” – that is my family, my friends, my people at large, my church, the church, or my country to go through what the Bible describes in various places as end time events. None of us do, which is why most of us would rather not look too closely at that option – being here, I mean. 

Without going into those verses here (you could do a Google search for end time Scriptures) or discussing possible scenarios, what I believe God would have us focus on, at least in this article, is whether the desire of our hearts is His coming more than anything else in our lives.  Of course, while we are still here, we must be concerned with issues in our lives and the lives of those we care about. Life does go on in the here and now and we always need His help and wisdom, so yes, praying about those matters, matter!  

But what is the deepest desire of your heart? Where does Yeshua’s appearing truly fit into the plans and purpose of your life? Do we each really want Him more than anything else? We readily say yes, of course, at least most of us. I would have said it too. But then I came to see, what I really want is “peace and safety.”  Well, of course. We all want that too and that’s God’s desire as well.  He has promised us both peace with Him and protection which is to say, being safe in Him. Only it doesn’t necessarily mean in the worldly sense.  

I want to be a candidate to be able to say with Paul as I’m sure you do, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day….” We agree, right? We want that too.  But then Paul finishes the sentences by saying, “and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing” (2 Tim 4:7,8).   Are we each among the “all who have loved His appearing?” Of all the things we love, and the ways we love Him, is His appearing high in our priorities and the greatest desire of our hearts?  I mean really?  How much thought do you give to what may be required of you before He returns if what the Bible says will eventually take place does actually come about in our lifetime?  Does that dim or fan the flames of our “love for His appearing”?   

Most of us would agree that “we have peace with God through faith” (Romans 5:1).  I’ve never known why Paul didn’t finish that sentence.  I always want to ask when I read that verse, “Faith in what?  In who?” not that I don’t know.  But I didn’t always.  I remember times in my walk with the Lord when there was such an emphasis on faith that my focus was on having enough faith, rather than on Him.  That was, of course, works because it was dependent upon me having enough faith, so I never felt as if I had enough because any time we look to ourselves and not Him, we are in the deficit.  It will never be sufficient.  Only what is in Him and from Him can be sufficient. Once I put my faith in Him and not in having enough faith, I was at peace.  So then, should we pray for more faith? Or shall we put our trust in the Lord that His goodness is entire toward us, that His promises are true and that He will keep us safe in Him no matter what. Shall we not come to Him with David’s psalms, for instance, to pray them though to God until God’s protection and His goodness become as real to us as they were to David in the midst of his days of tribulation.  He certainly had them, but he remained wrapped in a blanket of confidence of God’s goodness and His love for him, no matter what happened.  And we have a “better covenant” (Hebrews 7:22; 8:6) than David did! 

If God helped David, He’ll surely help us in whom His Spirit lives!  Whatever circumstances may come about in our lives, God has said, “I am the Lord, I change not” (Malachi 3:6).  And we know that “Messiah Yeshua is the same yesterday, today and forever,”(Hebrews 13:8).  If He was enough for David, He’s enough for us.  God assures us, “For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, but My lovingkindness will not be removed from you, and My covenant of peace will not be shaken,” says the Lord who has compassion on you” (Isaiah 54:10).  I love that verse. It’s one of my favorites. Is that truth real to you, no matter what comes?  And if we’re His, “…we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). 

His purposes are to bring redemption to the world, and we get to be a part of His doing it.  So even though we may go through difficulties, God gave us His word to strengthen our faith and confidence in Him. Paul wrote, “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor 4:17).  When we think in terms of eternity, anything we go through here on earth is momentary.  And any difficulties we may go through, when our trust is in God and we honor Him with our faith in His goodness, no matter what, it results in "an eternal weight of glory to us in ways we cannot even begin to imagine.  Paul was taken to the third heaven so he could write those words, to tell us of what can be our expectation of one day when we stand before the Lord and hear Him say to us, “Well done, good and faithful one.”  Do you live for that all–fulfilling moment?