Let’s Chat: Pleased to Dwell 20

We live our lives in the shadowlands between two great spotlights. So we look back to God’s grace bursting into our self-absorbed world in the form of self-giving grace personified. We look forward to our great God and Saviour appearing gloriously once more. And we live now, washed by the inner renewal of the Spirit Himself. Not looking to ourselves and our effort and our personal drive for pure living. Rather, we live looking toward Christ, grace personified, who shapes us into His very own people, transformed from the inside out.[1]

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Maybe this Christmas you are or were waiting for relatives or friends to arrive. Now, maybe you were waiting for them to arrive because they were bringing presents. But chances are you were more excited to see them than their presents. Indeed, the presents themselves aren’t much of anything at all without the presence of the love of the person giving them. As the ladies sometimes say on Valentines Day to their often less-than-ideally-romantic husbands, “It’s the thought that counts!”

It is the grace of God in the first coming of Christ that creates a longing in our hearts for the second coming, His glorious appearing—He who is our great God and Saviour!

What drives anticipation for Jesus’ return? Jesus. His heart of grace spilling over for us in the incarnation and out from there – that is what captives and thrills Christians all over the world! Indeed, that is the fuel for living the new lives we’ve been given in Jesus. We aren’t looking forward to a nice pension or comfy eternal retirement. We are looking forward to an eternity with Jesus.

Death conquered, deadly passions being overcome, we have sights set on a future made bright by the face of our Savior.

Let’s Chat

How can we help ourselves and our families anticipate Jesus’ second coming through what we see in His first coming?

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[1] Peter Mead, Pleased to Dwell,