To nurture a love for Jesus' appearing, we will do work from the inside out to help us identify the objects of our hope, and from the outside in, where we learn three life rhythms to nurture a love for Jesus' appearing: gather, fast, and rest.

God’s Word teaches that the appearing of Jesus Christ in his resurrected glory is the Christian’s “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13). Our hope is not vague wishful thinking or unfounded optimism. Our hope is Jesus and what he will accomplish when he returns.
Yet so often this hope in Jesus’

When Jesus returns, he will return as the Lover of our souls, the Bridegroom returning for his bride. He will also return as the conquering
King and the righteous Judge. His appearing could be the best news or the worst news of a person’s life. This gap between the beautiful and the terrible has ...

While Jesus’ final return is a future event no one has yet experienced, the New Testament contains accounts of Jesus’ glorified appearings that give us hints of what the big reveal will be like.

Our afflictions draw us close to the Savior, who alone will bring about final justice in the end. And his sure vengeance gives us the freedom not to be a people of vengeance. Rather, it frees us to love our enemies and pray that they too would be saved by Jesus.

Understanding that Jesus expects us to fast and watch and wait for his return can remind us that loneliness is a part of our fallen world that will draw to a final end at the coming of our Bridegroom. By the Spirit we, the bride of Christ, cry out for the return of the Lover of our souls even as ...

Up to this point, the portraits of Jesus’ return have focused on what he will look like—not his physical features but the spectacle of his return as Warrior King or Bridegroom. But when the New Testament pictures Jesus as Judge, the emphasis is not only on what he will look like but also on what ...

Jesus will come not only as the resurrected one but as the resurrecting one. In his resurrection Jesus was not only a living being like the first Adam but, as the last Adam, “a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45). Jesus will return to change you, to make you forever new.

The very act of meeting together has an end-times focus. The “one another” work we do is consequential because the Day is consequential, because Jesus’ return matters.

In hard times we actually need to create more space to nurture a love for Jesus’ appearing, space to recognize our pain and longing rather than numb or ignore it. Fasting connects us with that hope in such a way that the Holy Spirit gives us joy, peace, and rest in the presence of God now.

I see the Sabbath as practicing for eternity. The weekly cycle of work and rest is a microcosm of this life preparing for our final rest with God. You work and work and work throughout the week, then you make preparations to rest.

Jesus’ return will purify your heart when your expectation boils down to one thing: abiding in him. When dwelling in his presence is your supreme desire, then you can have confidence, when he returns, that you have spent your life on what matters most.

For the apostle Paul, anticipating the coming of Jesus—that moment he would see his Savior face to face—wonderfully concentrated his mind for decades. Nowhere is this impact more pronounced than in his work of making disciples of Jesus Christ.

Whether or not the difficulty we face is a result of our faith in Jesus, the hope we hold in his appearing can carry us through such trials. To that hope we look now as we explore four ways in which Jesus’ return empowers our perseverance through affliction.