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A DIRECTED HEART (II)
TUESDAY, JUNE 8
2 Thessalonians 3:5

Revelation 21:1-5

 

“…the Lord direct your hearts into

…the patient waiting for Christ.”

 

A DIRECTED HEART (II)
 
Additionally, Paul’s prayer for the Thessalonians was that their hearts might be directed also “into the patient waiting for Christ” (2 Thess 3:5).  Now, once again, their patience (like their love) was something Paul had already commended: both in his previous epistle to them (“Remembering without ceasing your… patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ,” 1 Thess 1:3), and also in this second epistle (“your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure,” 2 Thess 1:4). Yet, just as with their love, their patience also needed to be persevering; and it could not be taken for granted that their patience would continue to hold out.
 
Those who are facing such “persecutions and tribulations” need much prayer that their hearts would continue and remain in the path of patience. Just as “the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain” (James 5:7), so also we are to persevere in patience.
 
Yet, it is difficult, if not impossible, to have “patient waiting” without a specific object toward which such patience is directed. Here, the object is clear: it is a “patient waiting for Christ.” Thus James also exhorts us to “be patient… unto the coming of the Lord” (James 5:7). It is as we continually remember that “the coming of the Lord draweth nigh” (James 5:8) that we are strengthened and enabled to endure afflictions. This is the hope of the one who suffers injustice: that the day draws near when the righteous Judge will sit on the throne and all accounts will be settled! This is the hope of the one who suffers pain and affliction: that the day draws near when the kingdom of heaven will be established forever, and “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away” (Rev 21:4)!
 
Let us therefore, by faith, keep our eyes on this horizon, and may the Lord direct our hearts “into the patient waiting for Christ.”
 
THOUGHT: “He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly” (Rev 22:20).

PRAYER: “Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev 22:20)!

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