Book 2 in the Could We Be series
While We Wait--Living with Purpose Until Christ Returns
When we decide that Jesus is worth everything and choose to make Him the center of our lives, we will discover we love spending time with Him. That genuine closeness and acknowledgement of who Jesus truly is will bring overflowing joy and peace into our hearts and souls. When we have felt His presence in moments here on earth, it is a sense of what Heaven will be like every day, forever.
But we’re not there yet. We are in a waiting season, a season of trusting in the Creator of all things that He will fulfill His promises of a better world where we will live with our heavenly Father and Jesus, our Savior.
We trust there is a purpose in this time of waiting, in this divine holding back of events before we (who are followers of Jesus) reach our true home.
This book is dedicated to the true church of God, Jesus’ Holy Bride, to encourage believers to grow in faith, to be different from the world in which we live, and to use our spiritual gifts to work for God’s kingdom as we wait for Christ’s return.
Those of us who love Jesus are living in a culture that is foreign to the ways of God, just as in the days of Babylonian captivity for God’s chosen people. The Israelites had to endure a temporary time of discipline because of their continued sin.
God’s message to the Jewish captives then and to us now, while we wait for freedom from this ever-darkening world, is that during hard times, even in punishment, there is purpose and light.
Jeremiah 29:4-6 NIV “This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ‘Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.’”
For the Israelites, that commission was for seventy years of captivity. God gave instructions to the Israelites who had been taken to Babylon to live life doing normal things like building, planting, working, marrying, and raising families.
That message is for us also—we are to live a regular, good, and productive life as we walk out our temporary sojourn on this earth.
Jeremiah 29:7 NIV “Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
Micah 6:8 “He has told you, mortal one, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”