We are family, beloved ones, and we must live like it in this hour. Do not hold yourself back from the task of love and let lesser concerns fall quickly to the ground. We are in the last hour. Pace yourself for the journey and posture yourself in your true calling of love, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Be a shelter in a time of great storms.
If wine is richer than water, and old wine is better than new wine, Jesus is out for our fullness—our maturity, to be sure (old wine), but our transformation as well. Truth transforms us insomuch as it sets us free from the slavery of this “present evil age,” and the wise folly of Heaven prescribes a song for us to sing our way through this holy exodus. That song opens with this mighty blast: "Your love is better than wine!" Or, perhaps, "better than bourbon."
The Lord is urging us not to be voluntarily ignorant about His return. Not simply because He wants us to ace an eschatological pop quiz, but because our Father wants us to walk in light of His decrees. The nature of His return reveals to us more fully the nature of His character. This is about knowing Jesus better. Those who know Jesus don’t get cut to pieces when He comes back.
Most of us won’t die as martyrs in the face of savage persecution. Most of us will go through our lives trying to stay faithful through bouts of disappointment, suffering, or day to day discouragement. Testimonies like this remind us it’s possible to not only endure, but to find and reflect His triumphant glory in this life. This person endured more suffering than most of us will ever even have to imagine, and came out brighter than most of us will ever shine.
Jesus, our Great Shepherd, clearly wants His disciples to discern the season of His return. And He surely does not want us to be led astray from what He is teaching. We are responsible before the Lord for how we steward this crucial subject. But how are we to do so if no one knows the day or hour except the Father?
As we barrel towards the Day of the Lord, as crises mount and the pregnancy of this age approaches the escalating birth pangs and labor into the next age, we must “be sober, redeeming the time” because the present days are “evil.” These mundane days are full of micro injustices, full of macro injustices, and all of them have an appointed end—when Jesus rides His horse.
To engage in this age, to obey our Commander’s assignment, we must soberly reckon with this age. We must soberly reckon with the Man and Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. And we must soberly reckon with the cost. Only cowards take their hands off the plow and turn around. We cannot be cowards. We must count the cost without cowardice.
It’s easy to dehumanize God, to view Him as a rock wall. At best, we see Him as able to connect with our pain and empathize with us. But what if it is His pain we connect with when we suffer? When affliction won’t relent and life has wrung us out, we’re stepping into an area of God’s heart only suffering can take us to.
Here’s a quick breakdown of what the Lord is doing in places where public expressions of Christianity result in persecution, excommunication, and death: Jesus is saving people. Many of those people are part of a disciple making group. Each person in a group is leading another group. Each of those people are being discipled and are obediently reproducing other groups of disciples that do likewise. And most of those people are women.
No one wants to get whooped so badly they can only escape by running through the public square bruised and bloodied in their birthday suit. But for all the popular fervor over “signs and wonders” putting the power of God on public display, only God can know the men and women with “hearts fully loyal to Him, on whose behalf He can show Himself strong.” May we be such a people.
We’re here to bear one another’s burdens. To help shoulder the messy, weighty responsibility of restoring the person who sinned and coming alongside any other persons affected or involved. If the exposure of another person’s sin makes us feel superior because it’s not something we struggle with, we’re in deception, and we’re being of no use to the brother or sister in sin. We’re just playing into the slanderous symphony composed by the Accuser of the Brethren.
The intensity of the dynamics present on the earth leading up to the return of Jesus can often result in people feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. The magnitude of the disruption coming to planet earth is only going to increase in the years to come. We want to respond to Jesus with wholeheartedness to what He is saying and doing, but what do we do when we feel weak and disqualify ourselves from wholehearted pursuit?
It wasn’t God’s design for the people to have earthly kings. His desire for them was to have judges as the leadership in place, men and women who knew Him and were familiar with His ways, listening to Him for their guidance, rather than lusting after power and control—the undying, infamous motivation of earthly princes. We all long for a good and trustworthy king, but there is only one.
