Readiness is not a chart on the wall. It is an affection in the chest.
Ask a roomful of believers if they are ready for Christ to return and most hands go up. Ask a harder question — do you want Him to come this week? — and watch the hesitation move through the room like weather. Be honest about your own. There is the trip you have planned. The child you want to see married. The season you are finally enjoying after years that were hard. Somewhere under the theology, a quiet voice says: yes, Lord — but maybe not yet.
That hesitation is worth examining, because Scripture measures readiness in a way we rarely talk about. Not by how detailed your prophecy chart is. Not by how many signs you can recite. By whether you love His appearing. Teachers in the pastoral lane of Bible prophecy — David Jeremiah prominent among them — keep pressing this point: the end times are not given to the church as a puzzle to solve but as a hope to live by, and hope is a matter of the heart before it is a matter of the calendar. The framework is only as good as the affection it produces.
A Crown for an Affection
Paul is in a Roman cell, writing his last letter. He can hear the end coming; there will be no release this time. Read what he says with the executioner’s shadow on the page.
“For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.” (2 Timothy 4:6–8, NASB1995)
Look at the last clause. The crown of righteousness is not reserved for apostles, martyrs, or men with prophecy diplomas. It goes to all who have loved His appearing. Paul reaches out of his own death row and hands the promise to every believer in every century who shares one qualification — an affection. Loving His appearing is not a fringe temperament for prophecy enthusiasts. It is listed as the family trait of the crowned.
And notice what the affection did for Paul. It did not make him drift; it made him finish. The man most certain of the next world fought hardest in this one. That is the pattern everywhere in Scripture: expectation produces endurance, not escapism.
What It Says When You Don’t Want Him Yet
Now the confrontation, and let it land gently but land. If the honest answer of your heart is “not yet,” what is the “yet” protecting? Name it. It is usually one of two things.
Sometimes it is an unfinished good — a wedding, a grandchild, a harvest you have prayed over. Understand something that pastoral prophecy teaching has always emphasized: His coming does not cost you those joys; it is the arrival of the thing every earthly joy was previewing. “In Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever” (Psalm 16:11). You are not being asked to prefer loss. You are being asked to believe the wedding feast outshines the rehearsal dinner.
But sometimes — be honest — the “not yet” is guarding something else: a compromise you are not done with, a room of the house you do not want lit. John makes the connection without blinking.
“Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” (1 John 3:2–3, NASB1995)
The hope purifies. Which means the reverse is also diagnostic: where purity is not being pursued, the hope is not being loved. A believer avoiding his Lord’s return is like a man avoiding his doctor — the avoidance is itself the symptom. The cure is not more guilt. It is dealing with the thing, today, so that the door can be a doorway you face with confidence and not shrinking (1 John 2:28).
The Blessed Hope Has a Face
“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus.” (Titus 2:11–13, NASB1995)
Two appearings hold that sentence up like bookends. Grace appeared — Bethlehem, the cross, the empty tomb. Glory will appear — the eastern sky. And notice what lives between the bookends: the present age, the one you are in right now, with its ungodliness to deny and its ordinary Tuesdays to live sensibly through. The blessed hope is not an exit ramp from the present age; it is the light you live it by.
And the hope is not an event. It is Him. We do not love “the rapture” the way a man loves a travel itinerary. We love the Bridegroom. The last prayer of the Bible is not “come, kingdom” or “come, justice,” though both come with Him. It is personal: “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming quickly.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20). Can you pray that prayer and mean all three words?
Living Like You Love It
So what does loving His appearing look like on an ordinary week? Not date-setting — the Lord closed that door Himself: “But of that day and hour no one knows” (Matthew 24:36). Not sign-hysteria, either. It looks like this:
Keep short accounts. The servant in the parable who said “my master will be a long time in coming” used the delay as permission (Matthew 24:48–51). The one who loved the master kept the house ready — not frantic, ready. Confession kept current is readiness in its work clothes.
Hold your plans with an open hand. Make the trip. Plant the field. Build the business. “Occupy till He comes” is the posture — faithful engagement, not paralyzed sky-watching. But write “if the Lord wills” over all of it (James 4:15), and mean it, so that if He interrupts your plans with His presence you will not feel robbed. You will feel found.
Comfort somebody with this. Paul ends the great resurrection-and-rapture passage not with a debate assignment but a ministry: “Therefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:18). Somebody in your circle is grieving, or afraid of the headlines, or aging toward a door they dread. The appearing you love is the comfort they need. Say it out loud to them this week.
The Judge Who Is For You
One last look at Paul’s sentence, because the sweetest word in it is easy to miss. The crown comes from “the Lord, the righteous Judge.” For everyone outside of Christ, righteous judgment is the terror of that day. But for the believer, the Judge is the One who already took the verdict — “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). The bench you will stand before is occupied by the Man who bled for you. That is why you can love His appearing: the day of His glory is not the day of your exposure. Your exposure happened at Calvary, and it was covered there.
So run the diagnostic honestly. Do you love His appearing — or have you just filed it? If the affection has gone cold, do not manufacture excitement. Go back to the first appearing until the second one becomes personal again: the grace that appeared, the cross that carried you, the tomb He walked out of. Love for His return is never worked up. It is warmed up — at the fire of what He already did.
He is coming. The Judge is for you. The crown is real. Live this week like a man who would be glad to be interrupted.
Teaching the Word. Watching the Times. — SmithForChrist