The Daily Word of Righteousness

I Will Come to You, #21

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18)

When we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior He is born in our heart. He comes and lives in us. We know He is alive from the dead because He is living in us. This is the beginning of the coming of the Lord to us.

Filling us with the Holy Spirit is a coming of the Lord to us.

When we are healed miraculously, that is a coming of the Lord to us.

Some of us have had the Lord come to us and call us into the ministry.

Numerous Christians have had personal visitations from the Lord that were their own unique experience.

Christ has not left it up to men to build His Church. He died in order to purchase the Church with His own blood. Now He personally is building the eternal Temple of God on the Rock that He Himself is.

He who died and left to us the legacy of the new covenant has been raised from the dead. He, the living Christ, is administrating His own testament. Throughout church history men have been attempting to do what Christ has reserved for Himself—the building of the Church of God.

Christ comes personally to each believer and receives him to Himself. He does not leave us desolate, having to fend for ourselves as we attempt to press into the Kingdom of God. He Himself comes to us. He personally guides the progress of each saint.

When the maturing saint enters seasons of suffering, as explained in the fourth chapter of First Peter, this is a coming of the Lord to him in judgment. Divine judgment has overtaken this particular "room" of the Father's house.

Though we go through the fire and the water, the Good Shepherd is there to comfort us in every trial. Christ always is present in our hour of need when we are serving Him. He never abandons His own. He is with us always through to the end of the wicked age in which we are living.

The most wonderful aspect of the new covenant is that Christ Himself brings the believer through the various stages of redemption. He guides us every step of the way. We can be victorious in every situation because Christ is with us and is assisting us.

John 14:23 announces that the Father and the Son will come and make Their eternal abode in the personality of the saint who, through the Holy Spirit, is keeping the words of Christ. This is a coming of the Lord in fulfillment of the feast of Tabernacles.

When Jesus stated, "I will come again and receive you unto myself," perhaps He is including all of these visitations—visitations that will climax and find perfection and completeness in His glorious, visible descent from Heaven in the sight of the nations of the earth.

One of the characteristics of the Christian Church Age is that the Lord Jesus Christ has been kept on the outside. When He comes and knocks, only a few open the door and allow Him to come inside.

It often is true that those who do allow Him to come in and receive them to Himself in a greater measure are resisted viciously by those who have decided that Christ has come far enough and it is up to human beings to finish the work of the Kingdom of God.

To be continued.