Prayer
Briefly prepare your heart in silence, and ask the Holy Spirit to awaken your sense of anticipation that God is about to speak to you through His Word. Then, before you read, I invite you to pray this prayer based on Psalm 57:10.
Great is Your love, Lord, reaching to the heavens;
Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
Show me how to live in step with Your love and faithfulness today.
Amen.
Reading
Our focus today is on verse 14, but I’ve included v.4-14 in the reading link above, simply to remind us of the context.
Jesus warned that in this Age of Grace between His resurrection and return, painful realities like wars, famines and natural disasters will grow more intense and more frequent as His return approaches. Equally, He warned that believers will face hardships, hatred, betrayal and persecution during this Age, because of their faith in Him. This is a tough word to hear. No wonder that in verse 13 He called us to “stand firm to the end” – to remain deeply committed to Him, His Word and His Way. And now, in verse 14, He declares:
“This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”
Remember, just before He ascended, Jesus gave His first disciples (and us) the Great Commission, to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. To couch the same command in “Kingdom” terms, Jesus commanded us to announce all over the world that the Kingdom of God has come near in Jesus Christ. He called us to invite everyone to enter that Kingdom by repenting of their sins and placing their faith in Jesus Christ, and then to learn to follow Jesus in living the abundant life of the Kingdom in the power of the Holy Spirit.
This is the Christian community’s primary mission, and Jesus will not return until it has been completed! Of everything the Bible teaches us about the End of the Age, these words of Jesus may be the most important, because they remind us of what we are to be occupying ourselves with until He returns.
Ironically, focussing on the Second Coming of Christ often becomes a distraction for Christians. Instead of focussing on the mission Jesus gave us to complete before His return, Christians end up studying timelines, signs of the times, and predictions based on current events. We can easily become like those first apostles in Acts 1, gazing up into the sky after Jesus’ ascension and forgetting the mission He has given us.
This should not be! Any study of the Second Coming should motivate us to get out there and tell others the glorious good news that the doors to the eternal Kingdom of God have been flung open by Jesus Christ, and that all are welcome to enter in. So let’s get to it! Who will you tell today?
Contemplation
Please take time to ponder what Jesus has commanded us. Turn one or more of these declarations over and over in your mind. Keep them in mind throughout the day and live in step with Your King, Jesus.
As a disciple of Jesus Christ:
- I will share the good news of Jesus with others to the best of my ability.
- I will trust the Holy Spirit to lead me and empower me to do this well.
Lord Jesus, I love You. Help me to do my part in spreading the good news of Your Kingdom to all people everywhere. Amen.
Dave's Diary 
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