Are you sensing an intense longing for the Lord to appear?

I don’t mean so much a rapture out of this world and into the next. Rather, a deep stirring to see Christ manifest right now. I’m referring to the desire that He shows up not just in intermittent glimpses of particularly poignant services or camp meetings or prayer times. But that His presence is a tangible visitation in our midst. That when it is not there, we are so mindful of it, we wonder what happened.

Do you meditate on Jesus saying, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled” and wonder at the gap? Do you yourself long to be righteous in your thinking, so that it transcends your current physical, spiritual and emotional state? Might Jesus even designate what He said to mean the world at large?

Can you remember a time when you saw righteousness reconciled in a person or situation and the transformation filled your parched soul like a wave washing over it?

Do you feel that if you had to remain in the state that you are in without Him appearing, you could not exist much longer, any more than a creature of the sea that is floundering at low tide can thrive if the waters don’t soon rush in?”

There is too a tremendous dichotomy that would seem to pull at both ends of the heart in longing for His appearing, not just in our own lives and experiences, but in that of humanity as a whole. There is a terrible groaning at the state of suffering in people who are powerless against the oppression that keeps them in prison, impoverished and even enslaved under tyranny – be that political totalitarianism or the edicts of a culture that worships demons.

There is a cry in our spirit even at the best of this world’s experiences. As we stand on a sandy beach inhaling the salt air, arms and back absorbing the heat-glow of sunshine, but glimpsing the surrounding beach-goers and knowing that all might perish and never know their Creator.

“The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price” (Revelation 22:17, ESV)