Facebook Question: How do we prepare for the Lord's return? Can we hasten His return?

Recently I have started asking some questions on facebook, partly because I want to know how my friends on Facebook think / feel about some things, and partly to see how much of the Word of God and the ministry gets into us and becomes part of our constitution. We read the Bible, we live a daily life under the divine dispensing, and we do our best to enjoy the Lord both personally and corporately. And from time to time, whether through people around us or in the church life, there are some of these questions being asked - how do we answer them? Here are some of the previous questions which were posted online:

1. What would be your prayer to the Lord for the new year 2012?
2. What do you love the most in the home meetings of the church?

And now, here's another question I asked my friends on Facebook: 

HOW do we prepare for the Lord's return? He wants to return, but He's waiting for us to be prepared - how do we / you prepare for the Lord's return? How do we hasten His return? 

And here are some of their answers :) 

• Brother, I would do my best to share the Gospel of Jesus... As much we do this, His return would be closer. Amen!
• I've just read something like this, "All of our hope rests in the coming of our Lord. When He comes, all problems will be solved. Instead of focusing on problems, we can turn our eyes upon Jesus (Hebrews 12:2). He has already taken care of the problem of sin and today we can receive Him as our Saviour and as our new life. To do so, simply open your heart to the Lord and pray: “Lord Jesus Christ, I need you to solve all my problems. Thank You for dying to save me. I open to receive You as my new life. Lord Jesus, come quickly!”
• The Lord is waiting for His Bride to be prepared. The Bride is a matter of love. We must love the Lord, our dear, lovely Bridegroom with all our heart, and all our mind, and all our soul and all our strength. We must tell Him a thousand times a day: Lord Jesus, I LOVE YOU! I still love You. I love You more today than yesterday and not as much as tomorrow. Lord keep me in this bridal love for You all the days of my life. When we love the Lord, His heart is duplicated in us, and we long and yearn for His coming, and our entire life becomes geared toward this. Eventually, we become the Shulamite and then the Bridegroom will return! (Also, check out hymn 1159.) 
• A very good question, brother. Our sister answered for us already: the preparing is our living. We are preparing for His return through many experiences, just as the bride prepares for her wedding day. The garment must be readied, stitch by stitch beautified. But likewise, we need to ourselves be matured, for the Lord will come back to a bride who is "ready." If we are immature, the Lord cannot come back. The practical way, as our sister wrote well, is to have a loving and turning heart toward Him, to seek after His heart continually and to even live unto His appearing. This means a continual kind of living, allowing His heart to be our heart, and allowing Him to work in the inward and outward ways to make us more ready. This also would involve our personal prayer for this regard: "Lord, make me ready."
• preaching the Gospel to all the nations....
• We prepare and hasten the Lord's return by lovingly being in the enjoyment of the Lord continually.
• We need to love Him and do things not for Him but with Him and through Him by telling to others about the One we love (Rev. 22:17 note 2) preaching the gospel requires also shepherding for His corporate expresion because He desires marry not a little girl but a Bride which will match Him.
• The 2 greatest prophecy in the Bible are in Matthew 16:18 which says "...I will build My Church, and Rev. 22:7...."behold I come quickly.." Untill the Church is built, the Lord will still tarry. The church is built directly by the Head Christ and indirectly thru the members of His Body. We are the members of His Body, and for us to build the Church as the Kingdom of God, the gates of hades must be shut. Three main gates of hades frustrating the building are: the self, the soul life and the mind. And if we shut these three gates by taking up the keys of denying the self, taking up the cross, and losing the soul life through exercising to always turn to the spirit, the church will be built and the coming of the Lord will be hastened
• Amen dear saints! Matthew 28:19-20
• That's right, we really don't know yet, because we need to depend on Him for He is the One who will make the way and make the preparation on His returned. We don't have the power to make our own plan for His coming back but He has! Praise Him...

It is so wonderful to have such friends on Facebook! We can pursue the Lord, remind one another about His Word and His life, speak His word and open up to Him, share songs and hymns, and even ask questions that remind us to turn to Him - even on Facebook! How Wonderful!

The Lord's desire is to return soon. When? We don't know - but He says, I am coming soon! Therefore, we need to be those faithful slaves who are giving food to others at the appointed time and manage things in God's house in faithfulness (while preparing for His return in the long-run) and at the same time we need to be the virgins who gain oil in their lamps, eagerly awaiting the return of their Bridegroom to enter with Him at the feast (see Matt. 25). ... 

This is NOT a comprehensive and all-inclusive answer, but the answers given by the above listing is quite good. What do YOU think? How can we prepare ourselves for the Lord's return? How can we hasten His coming? Leave a comment below...

Lord, prepare us! Lord, grow in us! Lord, gain us! Make us the overcomers You need that will bring You back! O, Lord, how we long to see You again and even hasten Your return! We give ourselves to You, dear Lord, that we may be prepared!

go for the chicken and forget about the bones! (1 picture + 1 experience with the Lord today) 30-days challenge

The title of this sharing is inspired from the article, My heart overflows with a good matter; I speak what I have composed concerning the King(Psalm 45) - via agodman.com, somewhere in the last few paragraphs. I like KFC (as I was sharing before) with the saints, and I mostly love having Nando's (grilled chicken - yummy!) with the saints. But when I have chicken, I don't emphasize or get disturbed by the bones of the chicken - I go for the meat! The skin is also good, especially if it's grilled.... - but the meat, that's what I like! It's the same with the church life - "go for the chicken in the church life"! More about this after,

1 Picture Today - King's Cross in Central London

This is the BIG building behind and above the King's Cross train and tube station in Central London. I promise you - I don't want to advertise for these guys, but it looks like Marriot Hotels owns this place also, and they call it, St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel in London. They have been working on this place to renovate it forever, and now it's open! I've been around King's Cross many times, especially since the saints live there and we meet around there many times. You can get the London Underground, the National Rail, and the International trains from this location (some leaving from St. Pancras). You can see more pictures of the hotel via, Explore St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel, or check out what's up around this are - King's Cross stuff. Of course, the best thing about King's Cross is the saints - they are the excellent, all my delight is in them!

1 Experience with the Lord - Go For the Chicken and Forget About the Bones!

I was touched by this illustration that brother Ed shared in the message for this week - Crystallization-Study of the Psalms(1), message 7. If someone comes to your home to visit, you don't put the rubbish bin on the table and tell him, Here, have a banana peel! Neither do you put the garbage somewhere that can be seen - NO! You hide the rubbish, you clean the house, and you offer the guest something good to eat and drink! And if there's rubbish you see around, you put it away! No one invites someone else to his house and makes sure that people see the litter bin / rubbish bin...

It's the same in the church life - you don't point out the defects or weaknesses of the saints; rather, we learn to cover one another in love, pray for one another, and see Christ in the saints! This is a secret that will help us in our whole life and will uplift our appreciation of the saints - seeing Christ in the saints! Sometimes you can't even see Christ living in some of the saints, but your negative speaking or your condemnation / exposing will NOT help! What really helps is for us to throw away any weaknesses, failures, or defects - into the universal rubbish bin, the lake of fire! What we want to focus on is enjoying Christ, ministering Christ, and seeing Christ in the saints!

It's interesting: we eat the WHOLE LAMB(since the lamb is Christ), but we don't "eat the whole chicken" - rather, we eat the meat and the other softer parts that can be edible(depends on people's taste...). What really matters about the fried or grilled chicken is that we eat the meat and forget about the bones! Put away the feathers, the bones, or even the dung - focus on the meat! Look away and throw away into the trash can any "feathers" or "bones" or even "dung" you may see among the saints - and focus on the meat! I wanna go for the meat and forget about the other stuff! If you try to eat the bone - God forbid... - you may get sick! In the church life, go for the chicken!

In the Old Testament king Balak got Balaam the prophet to curse the people of Israel, but Balaam couldn't do it - he rather blessed Israel(Num. 23-24). There is no failure or sin in Israel! God sees His people as being holy and without blemish, filled with Christ an put into Christ! Blessed are those who bless the church / Israel, and cursed are those who curse the church / Israel. We need to learn to see the saints as the Lord sees them - God-men filled with the growing and flourishing divine life! When we see the church and the saints as God sees them, we will speak well and bless the church!

The church life is wonderful! The church is glorious! The church in our locality is spotless and blameless - it is pure and it is glorious!

If we "go for the chicken", we will see Christ in the saints and we will minister Christ when there's a deficiency or any failures... I want to learn to know the saints not in a natural way but learn to know them according to Christ and no longer according to the flesh. And if there's a lack of Christ, I want to learn to minister Christ and pray for others - rather than criticizing or pointing out their condition... God knows our condition, but He also knows that His divine life in us can do it! He can do it in us! :) Go for the chicken, and forget about the bones or the feathers!

Wearing my, Christians On Campus T-shirt Today - One Meaningful Thing I Did Today (30-day challenge)

This may not mean much to some people, and it is definitely not "an item of the faith" or something that everyone should practice or else.... No, this is just my recent experience with this. The United Kingdom, and Western Europe in general, is not just in "open rebellion against God", but many people hate everything that is Christian while at the same time they declare themselves to be atheists.

If you try to talk to someone on the street about the Lord, you get looked at, rejected, talked back despisingly, ridiculed, and even hated. The Muslims have more effect or impact on the society than Christianity. Someone from the USA recently, after going out with the saints to speak to people about the Lord, asked, "WHY are people here so rude? If you don't want to hear about this, just say NO THANKS, but don't be so RUDE!" People are not afraid to show their real feeling towards God / Christians...

What I have been impressed with while being in Western Europe / the UK, among other things, is that people don't feel shy to express themselves, to express how they feel, even if this means being almost naked, staying up late on streets, drinking, putting on a lot of make-up, trying to copy all the latest fashion or pop stars, having lots of tatooes or piercings, etc. One of the main things they do is they WEAR stuff - some wear simple stuff, others more bright colours, some classy, while others wear all kinds of T-shirts with all kinds of inscriptions / slogans. Sometimes just by reading what those T-shirts are saying you are defiled and filled with death - and young people wear them, recommend them, and boast with them! This is why I'm now coming to,

One Meaningful Thing I Did Today - Wearing my Christians On Campus T-Shirt!

Christians On Campus at UC Berkeley -
similar to the T-shirt I wore today 

I walk about in London, travelling to work, to meet saints, visiting, sight-seeing, etc, but I very rarely see anyone wearing anything that has a "Christian message / text" on it. Rather, the heavy metal, skull bones, rock inscriptions, and all kinds of dark and weird writings can be seen on people that look relatively normal. Just like Lot(2 Pet. 2:8, For that righteous man, who settled down among them, in seeing and hearing tormented his righteous soul day after day with their lawless works), my spirit has no rest, and you are stirred up within...

The only ones that wear something related to God are either pastors, evangelists, street-preachers, ... and they are mainly older ones. If they are young and wearing something Christian-related, it is so "cool" and complex that you "have to think about it"... - there's no life, divine life, that you receive from reading something like that....

Even us as lovers of the Lord many times have no problem wearing what's sold "on Oxford Street" in Next, Topshop, Accessorize, Burton, Halfords, JJB sports, JD Sports, House of Fraser, French Connection, Topman, Uniqlo, Gap, Banana Republic, Primark, etc, - even in the meetings! So when I went to the gym these past few months I gladly wore my Poland Camp T-shirts - The Birthright, The Nazarites, the Testimony of Jesus, The Spirit, And The Rock Was Christ, etc. Though it's just a "piece of clothing", I felt like it sanctified me, separated me, and kept me.... People would look at me, some trying to read the writing, some were curious what's written / what's that, while others turning their head from me... but I believe there's something of the Word that's infused!

Actually this week I was wearing The Testimony of Jesus Poland camp T-shirt and someone approached me and said, Nice T-Shirt! After I conversed with him it turns out he's a brother and he's looking for fellowship with believers - since he has a hectic schedule at work! I have been praying and I am praying + enjoying the Lord at the gym, and may the Lord continue to sanctify the environment we're in even in this way! We don't know who is seeking, but we can be a testimony! I'm looking forward to meet this brother soon!

But today as I went to the brothers mtg I wore my Christians on Campus T-shirt(I received it as a gift, Christians on Campus at the University of Oklahoma), and I really really felt people looking at me. Who would wear a T-shirt with the word Christians on it? I felt the people stare at me as I was walking, but this only encouraged me to pray and continue enjoying the Lord. Even in this simple way, wearing something with the Word of God inscribed on it, we can preach the gospel! I may not have the courage to go speak to a stranger on the street, but I can wear something that gives him Christ! If someone is hungry, he knows where to go and get some real spiritual food! I would feel people's looks and pray for them as I was walking...

Again I say, this is not to "promote" this, even though it would be good - as the brothers have advised in some conferences - to have some T-shirts or jackets / jumpers with "O Lord Jesus!" or "Taste and see that the Lord is good", or another call to salvation and drinking... But I realized that even what I wear can preach the gospel, or at least can be an entrance to the gospel! Yes, people will stare at you, but some also will look and smile approvingly - this is how you know where the believers are! And if there are seeking ones, they will come to you - or you will see them being ready to talk to you!

Praise the Lord for the Christians on the campus! Praise the Lord for the Poland camp and the T-shirts we receive there! Praise the Lord for all the saints who are consecrated to the Lord and know how to and can design some clothing / inscriptions on clothing - with God's economy! There are so many who wear the "SUPERDRY" stuff (what is THAT all about?) but WHO wears something that tells people about God's economy? How will people hear or see or know about God becoming a man? How will man know that he needs to repent? ... This is why I love this series of Students Testimonies, Christian Students on Campus facebook fan pages / web pages collection, or Christians with a blog online - compilation of links. If we don't speak, WHO will speak?

.... Lord, what about the things I wear? Lord, make my living the preaching of the gospel, expressing You even without words! Make us living testimonies, Lord, and sanctify the things we wear! Save us from wearing what the world wears - save us from BEING like them even in this! O LORD! We open to You even in this matter...

Being Supportive Without Being Noticed - One Meaningful Thing I Did Today (30-day challenge)

We all need support and a friendly advice. Some need this more than others, while some seem like they don't need anyone or anything - they are "all-inclusive" and they "know everything". Apparently I am the second kind of person, at least that's what hits the eye when one meets me / sees me. But within, just like everyone else, "I am NOT OK"! Here in the UK everyone asks you, instead of "How are you?" - "Y'alright? Y'alright?" In the beginning I would say like the rest, I'm fine, thanks... but then I realized - nah, I'm not fine at all! Funny thing though, sometimes I would answer them, NO, I'm NOT OK... and they would nod... [obviously, not even listening!]

This doesn't mean I have major problems or some issues(which I do, just like everyone else), but this means that we as human beings are NOT OK - we need help! We need the help of our parents when we grow up, the help of our teachers in school, the help of our friends(and sometimes this help is "not very helpful"), the help of our professors and teachers in university, the help of our family in need and at any point in life, the help of our workmates at work, etc - no matter how much we give the impression that we are OK, we actually are the product of being helped a lot by many many people in our life! Which brings me to,

One Meaningful Thing I Did Today - Being Supportive Without Being Noticed

Maybe I started a bit too dramatically than the principle and the "thing I did today", but even at work we need to help one another - and in the church life it is the same. Somehow we need to shepherd one another in a way that is not "obvious" or "to be applauded", but in an organic way and even "being supportive without being noticed". Things may be piled up on you - you have a lot of things to do, but someone comes and demands your immediate attention to help him. What do you do then? Do you care for "the many things to do", or do you care for the person? Most times I just "go right ahead as a steaming train" and "do my thing", but sometimes it's better to STOP and HELP / SUPPORT someone...

There's no incident or a particular event of today that I am referring to, but I realized it's all about the PEOPLE and not about the THINGS you do. At work, in the family life, in the church life, wherever we are - we need to care for people! And having a being that is open to them and available to them, caring more for people than for what you think you need to do or something that HAS to happen... that is noble and also much needed! I'm NOT that kind of a person, but there are situations, even pressing environments or surroundings, where the test comes and exposes me of my lack + brings me to pray,

O Lord, WHY? Why am I like that? Is it my disposition? I'm always right, I always judge others, and I always criticize others! Why don't I rather help or shepherd others - instead of having this "attitude"? O Lord.... Work Yourself into me to such an extent that You will live the God-man life on earth IN ME!

There was One Person that was like this - He did not live for Himself, He did not speak His own words, He did not do His own work, He did not seek His own glory, and He did not express Himself. This One expressed the Father by being one with the Father. Because He was always listening to the Father, the Lord Jesus also listened to the people and could meet their real need. Some people would come to Him with questions to ensnare Him, but He would answer in such a way that would show them that what they need is not "a doctrinal answer" but "a living Person who can save them". Some people were physically sick, but the Lord would not just heal their body but also their soul and their spirit.

Being right does not satisfy, and doing all things right / "according to the book" does not fully approve one before man or God. What really satisfies both man and God is the living of the God-man Jesus to be reproduced in the 21st century in many believers who express Him corporately as the Body of Christ! Only by allowing Christ to live in us can we support others, help others, in a way that it's almost un-noticed. The Lord ministered to people and then when they would try to crown Him as King, He would disappear / leave! I want to learn from Him by enjoying Him until He lives in me the same life He lived on earth 2k years ago - the life that pleased the Father!

... I thank the Lord for my workmates, for my family, for the people I know, for the saints in the church life, and for everyone that somehow the Lord brought in my life. They mostly did one thing towards me - showing me what I really am and exposing me of what I am not. I'm not supportive, I am not helpful towards others, and I can't do things that will not bring me appreciation from others. All the characteristics of the Lord which were aromatic, expressing the bountiful God - this is what I am not. But Lord, little by little, stitch by stitch, work Yourself into me / into us until we become Your duplication - Your increase and Your extension on the earth today!