Recently my pastor has been preaching about the end times. With 12/21/12 coming up soon and all of the hype about that date being predicted to be the day that a huge catastrophe or even the end of the world will happen, he thinks it's important that we be reminded about what God says about the end times.
Now I'm not going to say that there definitely won't be any big event happening on that date. But I can say with quite a bit of certainty that it will not be the end of the world.
This subject in general did get me thinking though. And a combination of things that my pastor said about the rapture occurring (1 Cor 15:50-58, 1 Thess 4:13-18), standing before the Judgement Seat of Christ (1 Cor 3:10-15; 2 Cor 5:10) where all of the things we've done during our lives will be judged, and that we're all here to fulfill God's plan for our lives before we die got me thinking. And when he said that he believes the only reason why Jesus hasn't come back yet is because he is being patient with humanity and trying to allow us enough time for people to hear the truth and decide whether to follow Him or not.
After thinking about it for a little while, it reminds me of a concept called the tipping point that is really an economic or social economics concept that was popularized by Malcom Gladwell in his book of the same name. It can basically be described by saying that regarding a certain technology, belief, concept, invention, etc. there won't initially be very many people who subscribe to it. But as some do, more will. And then before those people did, even more will. This continues at a slowly increasing pace until at a certain point, the rate explodes so that it becomes the norm/new standard/etc. That point is the called the tipping point.
I wonder if Jesus is waiting to return until the population of the earth reaches a tipping point in the balance of good and evil in the world. It seems as if there is more and more evil in the world as the years go by, but there is still plenty of good to counteract that evil too (at least in my opinion) - even though it's not reported nearly as much in the news. But that balance still seems like it's shifting more and more toward evil.
So then if the balance is shifting towards evil more and more, and Jesus really is waiting until the world reaches a tipping point before He returns, then it really could happen fairly soon - within my lifetime. So maybe I really don't have much time because even if I think I'll live to be 90 (I'm 29 now), maybe Jesus will return before that so my life will be shorter than I think it will. Now I know there are plenty of other ways my life could be cut shorter than that too, but that's not important here...
So it all finally clicked. If I am going to do what God has planned for me to do, then I really should be doing my best to get going on it and work on it as quickly and as well as I can, as soon as I can. And every day that passes by, brings me one day closer to either the day Jesus comes back or the day I die and meet Him that way. So every day I waste not doing what God's plan for me is, is a day I've wasted in. That's a day where almost everything I did will probably be burned up when I'm in front of the Judgement Seat of Christ.
I don't want to waste my time, effort, money, and emotions on things that are just going to be burned up! How stupid would that be?!?! So I have a renewed sense of purpose and sense of urgency about how I live my life now.
I don't know where you are in your life or the path God has laid out for you to follow. But I encourage you to think about these things a little bit and maybe you'll develop a bigger and better sense of purpose and urgency like I have. The more of us who do, and then act on it, the better!!!
Mega Blessings!
