"Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also."-John 14:1-3 (NKJV)
Although the world we live in is only going to get worse and worse, every follower of Christ has a reason to look forward to the future. On the night before His crucifixion, Jesus gathered His followers and told them that He would be leaving them to return to His Father in heaven. Moreover, He prophetically promised to prepare a place for them and one day return in order to bring them into His heavenly habitation.
This prophetic promise appears again in Paul's letter to the Thessalonian church:
For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18 NKJV)
Jesus will personally return for us and take us to be with Him in heaven. Students of the Scriptures refer to this prophetic promise as the rapture because the expression caught up was translated as rapere in the Latin translation of this passage. It's an amazing event that hasn't happened yet, but it can occur at any moment.
The implications of this are obvious. If Jesus can come for us at any moment, then we ought to live each moment with that expectation. When we approach life with this mindset, it serves as a "godly governor" over our lives. It will have a profound impact on the decisions we make, the thoughts we think, and the things we say.
Discuss with your group the emotions you feel when you look forward to an exciting future event. When thinking of the coming Kingdom, what happens in your heart?
Dig deeper into John 14. What “troubles” do you need to let go of? As you compare this passage to Matthew 6:33, how then should you live your life? How has reflecting on the promise of heaven encouraged you?
Decide with your group to take 1 Thessalonians 4:18 seriously. How are you going to “comfort one another with these words”? How are you going to encourage one another to look towards heaven and not on current circumstances?
