jesus-return

Waiting and Hastening: The Bridal Paradox of Prayer

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9 The LORD is not slow concerning HIS PROMISE, as some regard slowness, but is being PATIENT toward you, because He does not wish for any to PERISH but for all to come to REPENTANCE. 10 But the DAY OF THE LORD will come like a thief; when… the earth and EVERY DEED DONE on it will be LAID BARE… (therefore) WHAT SORT OF PEOPLE SHOULD YOU BE, CONDUCTING YOUR LIVES IN HOLINESS AND GODLINESS, 12 while WAITING FOR and HASTENING THE COMING OF THE DAY OF GOD? … According to His PROMISE, we are WAITING for new heavens and a new earth, in which RIGHTEOUSNESS truly resides. 14 Therefore, DEAR FRIENDS, since you are WAITING FOR these things, STRIVE to be found AT PEACE, WITHOUT SPOT OR BLEMISH, when you COME into HIS PRESENCE. (2 Peter 3:9-14)

The Lord’s preparation of the Church is one of the most overlooked, New Testament dynamics that is (day by day) impacting the people of God right now. Whether we see it or not, the truth is, the closer we get to the return of Jesus, the more the heart and the collective mind of the Bride is being refined to both understand and champion the reign of our King!

Jesus is not coming to “take us home”. If we’re in Christ, we’re already home! He’s coming to rule and reign on the earth, WITH HIS BRIDE IN GLAD-HEARTED CELEBRATION of the way He administrates His Kingdom. 

Right now, the Church is still “working the issues out” in our collective thinking. Our narratives are not filled with appreciation for the ways of our King. We don’t esteem the values of meekness, holiness, patience, and mercy-giving the way our King does. In fact, we count much of what He wants to work into our world as foolish, unpractical, and/or too religious. Where Jesus calls us to “serve”, we want to dominate. Where Jesus calls us to “pray”, we want to rush to action with human power. Where Jesus wants to aim at relationship, we want to build laws and structures. This disconnection from Jesus’ mind is what both Peter (here in 2 Peter 3:14), and Paul (in Ephesians 5:26,27) call “spots, wrinkles, and blemishes”. This is where the Bride is operating unlike Christ – where we are not Christlike!

So, how does the Lord bring us into like-mindedness? How does He conform us to His image?How does He cultivate both an understanding and appreciation of the ways of His leadership?

He shapes us by employing two living and active realities. The first are the affairs of 200ish nations, and the pressure points in our own lives. These are actually “grinding bearings” that the Lord uses to drive us to Himself. Where the answers are “out of our reach”, and “beyond our under-standing”, He nonetheless calls us to bring the tension points to Him, in both humility, and honesty. This means that we don’t allow other players to become the primary “shapers” of our narrative. It means that we bring what we see, what we know, and what we feel, into the “tent of meeting” with Him, and allow Him to illuminate our minds, and our hearts about both the facts of the storylines, and the issues they create in our own lives. He may or may not want to tell us the details about the nefarious activities of globalists. But He will most certainly want to talk to us about how these true or false reports are shaping our trust in Him, and our love toward others. Make sense?

The second living and active reality that He’s using to shape the Bride is His own Word. 

Paul writes: “He (Jesus) sanctifies her, and cleanses her by THE WASHING OF WATER WITH THE WORD, that He might present to Himself the Church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.” (Ephesians 5:26-27)

Jesus uses both the crises in our world, and our daily, disciplined commitment to engage Him in prayerful dialogue with His Word, and in this kinetic mixture, He shows us how He leads, how He redeems, how He analyzes, how He rewards, and how He purges humanity, and the human spirit. And then He calls you and I, His Bride, to agree in prayer with Him about the ways and the intents of His government.

It’s in this turbulent forge that our Bridegroom King forms and purifies our thoughts, responses, attitudes, countenance, and will. As we bring our outrage, passivity, temptations, and promises in the context of these worldly, national and personal crises into His courts, with truthfulness, a spirit of yieldedness, a dash of expectation, and a will that is prepared to give Him the gift of repentance, He is faithful to remove the impediments (the spots, wrinkles, and blemishes) so that His authority can freely work in, and through our lives. This is how we, the Bride, are conformed to His Image. This is what it means to be aligned to the “true righteousness” (v.13) that He will manifest on the earth when the fulness of His Kingdom comes. We do this by faith, now, in anticipation of it fully coming when He comes. And this is, according to 2 Peter 3:12, (wonder of wonders) how we “hasten the coming” of that Day – His Day – when He rules in our physical presence!

Until that Day comes, 2 Peter 3 tells us to “wait” three times! This is an exhortation to
a.) abide in, and not lose touch with this truth,
b.) to walk in growing patience and peaceable confidence in the Lord, and what He is accomplishing, and to
c.) give ourselves to these conforming dynamics with abandon. 

However, the Kingdom of God is always a paradox. In the context of patiently “waiting”, v.14 also charges us to “strive”. (This paradox keeps us from turning the dynamics of the Lord into a math equation – and keeps us close, and reliant upon the nimble, intimate, breath-by-breath leadership of the Spirit.) It is by the Spirit that we “strive” toward coming to the place of “peace” with the Lord’s Bridal purification process. We are in His more than sufficient Hands. We belong to Him. We are in His care. He knows how to get ahold of us. He has our number. He knows how to call us out. He isn’t perplexed about how to bring you, your family, your Bible-study group, your community, and your nation into agreement with His ways. v.14 is the Spirit’s loud encouragement to “TRUST THE KING’S PROCESS!” He will bring us forth, into His Presence, without “spot” or “blemish”; purified; like a sacrificial lamb; ready to be offered up to Him; wholly yielded to His majestic reign.

This is His goal: that we come forth, by His power, united to Him, and each other, loving Him and His ways with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. (Mark 12:30)

This has massive implications for HOW WE “DO CHURCH”. It underscores the vital necessity that we become a people of daily, reliant PRAYER. WITHOUT BEING MUCH IN PRAYER THE BRIDE WILL NEITHER BEHOLD NOR YIELD OUR HEART AND OUR WAYS TO THE LORD’S REFINING WORK. NOR WILL WE LEARN TO WALK IN THE AUTHORITY OF HIS DIVINE ORDER.

This brings us to the other side of the coin. And it is the reason that spurs the apostle Peter to write these injunctions in the first place. Should we neglect, and/or withdraw from Jesus’ capable, prayerful, purifying process; should we instead, give ourselves to spiraling conspiracies, spouting our own opinions, -becoming rigid in our carnal thoughts, we will not come forth in mature love. We will actually come forth with a mutant love – shaped by our world, the devil, and our own corrupt soul. Perhaps, (or perhaps not) filled with “Christian-sounding” rhetoric – but no substance, and no fruit.

When we neglect Jesus’ prayerful, purifying process, and instead, give ourselves to spiraling conspiracies, opinions, and rigid carnal thoughts, we will not come forth in mature love. we will come forth with a mutant love.

The wretched truth of the matter is, when we refuse to give ourselves to His ongoing refining process, we are in essence saying to Jesus: “WE REALLY DON’T LOVE YOUR RULE AND REIGN in our world. We would rather continue to have our own way, under our own power, than have You remove the SPOTS and BLEMISHES from our hearts… We’d rather You NOT do what You want to do to manifest Your vibrant RIGHTEOUSNESS through our lives.”

This is the spirit of antipathy. This is the spirit Peter calls us to “strive” against. This posture will produce endless enmity (and never “PEACE”) in our lives. And, truth-be-told, it is the sentiment, and slant that accounts for SO MUCH of the hostility in the Church today.

Beloved, the Lord is not relenting. He will not let us sleep-walk through the fires that He has kindled in our world. He is a holy-disturber of our “false peace” Who is making every provision for us to be aligned to Himself, in joyful unanimity with His Kingdom.

Let’s go into the place of prayer, and wholly give ourselves to His refining process. Let’s hasten the return of our King!

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JSB • December 12, 2025

Is Christ Our King?

/ JSB / 1 Comment

In the Age of Social Media, Many Times Our Hash-Tag Declarations Need to be Explained and Detailed. Here are 12 Specific Ways that Saying CHRIST IS OUR KING Begs to be Unpacked in 2025.

For the last few weeks, it has become vogue to declare “Christ is King!” throughout evangelical circles. Memes, banners, t-shirts and coffee mugs trumpet this exultant proclamation. And it “is” a glorious reality. But what does it mean? In an age of spin, and nuance, when we openly launch our hashtags at each other, this phrase especially begs to be unpacked. It’s critical that we Christians understand what gives this statement great worth, and where it can lead to profound misunderstanding about the nature of Jesus’ Kingdom.

“There is a way of a man”, (Proverbs 14:12; Proverbs 16:25) and then there is “the way of the King”. This phrase, “the order of the King” is the literal, root definition of the greek word for righteousness: “dikaiosune” that’s found throughout the New Testament. To speak of righteousness, is to speak of THE WAY OF THE KING, or THE WAY OF CHRIST. One day, ONLY the way of Christ will exist on the earth. Consequently, it’s very wise, and right that we learn, honor and appropriate His way, within ourselves and our world, today, before He returns.

It’s also vital to note that in Jesus’ day, many good, moral, conservative Jews subscribed to the notion that CHRIST (defined literally, as the Jewish concept of Messiah) IS KING. But the KING they envisioned was one who would dominate, conquer, subject others, and ruled in glory WITHOUT the need for suffering, and the agency of a cross. This is the concept of JESUS IS KING that the twelve struggled with all throughout their discipleship. This is largely why Judas betrayed Jesus. And this is why the Jewish leaders simply couldn’t see their concept of Messiah in Jesus of Nazareth. Their concept of “CHRIST IS KING”, (or “Messiah will be King!”) was VASTLY different than Y’shua’s concept of “CHRIST as KING”.

When we say CHRIST IS OUR KING, we want to declare two things:
1. We agree with the Father’s decree in Psalm 2 to “anoint” (the literal meaning of the word “Christ”) Jesus of Nazareth, His eternal Son, as the historical human, Jewish King, to rule over every individual heart, and every distinct nation. We are saying “It is this God/Man, and not another ‘false christ’, that the Father has chosen to be King over the earth!”

2. We, ourselves choose to submit our lives to the reign and the claim that this King (Jesus of Nazareth) has upon us. We’re saying, “We submit our wills to Your will Jesus!” – often doing what He wants in direct contradiction to what we believe is good, and right, and permissible. As a result, we TAKE EVERY daily THOUGHT, piece of rhetoric, cultural narrative, value, belief and VAIN IMAGINATION CAPTIVE INTO OBEDIENCE to the desire and glory of CHRIST (2 Corinthians 10:5). We remember that WE ARE NOT OUR OWN (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). We live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28) unto His glory – which often means we will operate quite contrary to that which seeks our own pride and glory.

Personally, I don’t believe we’ll arrive at Y’shua’s concept of CHRIST AS KING, without MUCH inner conversation with the Lord, through the agency of the House of Prayer reality. The House of Prayer is where I go to “inquire of the Lord” (Psalm 27:4) regarding what kind of KING, JESUS is.

This is the kind of “learning” that the Spirit is actively drawing the Bride of Christ into in these hours of contention, conflict and judgment. He means for us to feel the pressures in our world, let them drive us into the Word, where He enlightens our own thinking, and intimately purges and purifies our heart attitudes and beliefs so they align with the nature, the order and the values of CHRIST, OUR KING.

(Isaiah 26:9) tells us – “When Your judgments are on the earth, the inhabitants of the earth LEARN RIGHTEOUSNESS.” ala. to “LEARN” the ways of our KING.

Without cultivating this ongoing, thought-forging “dia-logos” with the Living Word Himself, we will be easy prey for the rhetoric, temptations, and deceit of devil-inspired human logic.

The devil is only too happy to keep us saying CHRIST IS OUR KING, without bringing our narratives, attitudes and ways into the tabernacle of the Lord.

Mormons, religious parrots, cultists, and liberal liturgies can intone these syllables. Only a person who has dethroned, and crucified the universal king of “self” can say CHRIST IS KING, and walk in league with the true Christ, the incarnate, crucified, resurrected Jewish God/Man, Y’shua of Nazareth.

This is the monumental task that is before us in 2025: in the minutes before our King returns to fully establish His Kingdom on planet earth the Holy Spirit is keen to bring human hearts, souls, minds and flesh into obedient, wholehearted love to the KING, and His Kingly ways.

What follows are 12 specific dynamics that reflect the controversies in the Church and our culture right now that are calling us to come into agreement with the MAJESTIC WAY OF CHRIST. WHEREVER we see these issues exalting themselves within our souls, our fellowships, and our communities He is calling us to reject the predominant ways of our flesh, and the world, and instead choose to follow the radical WAY OF CHRIST. Wherever we do this, we are authentically testifying that CHRIST, is indeed, OUR KING.

Conversely, where we choose our own way, instead of the way of Christ, we betray the fact that CHRIST, in fact, is NOT KING over our lives. The knife cuts these matters quite sharply, beloved.

1. The ways of our King are clothed with humility and meekness. Wherever we act unto the prideful elevation, and the assertive dominion of man, and marginalize humility and meekness – we are declaring CHRIST IS NOT KING IN this place of MY LIFE.

2. The ways of our King are laden with compassion, empathy, and contrition toward the oppressed, the broken, the poor, and the afflicted. Wherever we diminish, and develop arguments against these internal qualities, we must consider the degree to which we have another vision what it means for CHRIST to be KING in our lives.

3. The way of our King often includes “being loyal to One”, at the expense of having many others (including many other Christians) who will laud and support our thoughts and opinions. Wherever we see the magnetic appeal to the power of the crowd, the popular, the majority voice – we must instead declare: “WE HAVE ONE KING”.

4. The way of our King is filled with divine order that maximizes the experience and expression of love. We are to bring this way to bear wherever we see the perversion and denigration of the human person, family, and community.

5. The “order of our King” is one that celebrates unity, congeniality, peaceability, and kindness. Where we feel the draw into hostility, alienation, provocation and elevated exclusivity – we must ask ourselves if we are indeed walking in the loving order of our KING, or the contentious way of selfishness and enmity.

6. Jesus is a curse-breaker. Wherever we hear curse, vile debasement and condemnation being heaped upon others – our allegiance to Jesus bids us to step in and declare: NO. CHRIST IS KING. THESE ARE NOT HIS WORDS. His will is to bless, and love unto redemption.

7. When CHRIST IS KING, all earthly power, wisdom and understanding will be submitted to His heart on a matter. Wherever we see the heart of Jesus being compromised with, and/or subjected to political expediency, earthly power, and carnal wisdom and logic – we must excuse ourselves, in order to declare: OUR WAY WILL BE THE WAY OF THE KING.

8. The way of the KING rings with the pure TRUTH of the WORD of GOD. Wherever we see our self, and those in our world wanting to cut deals, and make compromises with what the LORD has specifically declared in the scriptures, we must (often graciously, but steadfastly) remain true to the WORDS of our KING.

9. The way of the KING will ALWAYS bear the internal fruit of the Spirit. Wherever we see our self, and our world producing something other than the fruit of the Spirit, we must let the Lord examine our hearts and our lives to see if we are, in fact, living out the way of CHRIST.

10. The WAY of the KING will produce much repentance within ourselves, and wherever His glory is manifest within our world. Wherever we see our self, the Church, and our world wanting to avoid, or make little of repentance, confession, and self-abasement, we must understand that we have walked outside of the WAY of CHRIST.

11. The WAY of OUR KING rides on the deep pathways of prayer and meekness and peace-driven faith. The way of our flesh and the world will constantly give us arguments that urge us to rise up in protest, rebellion and insurrection.

12. The WAY of CHRIST JESUS invites us into an ocean of love that far surpasses our own capacity to love. Wherever we are giving ourselves to murder, shame, curse, and lock up our enemies in condemnation we must understand that our KING has much greater power to give us.

Beloved, TAKING THESE thought patterns and talking points captive within ourselves and our world is what having CHRIST AS KING is about! It’s the ONLY meaning that will bring pleasure to the Father. It’s the only way the declaration will prove beneficial to yourself and redemptive to the world.

Again. We cannot appropriate the way of our King, without coming into His Tent, and listening to His distinct, supernatural wisdom, guidance, and empowerment. It requires supernatural work to walk in the supernatural way of our King.

In the end, MANY believers will not do the supernatural work of aligning their hearts with the grace-saturated ways of our King, and instead, will succumb to the narrative of the devil. Without giving ourselves to this work of righteous formation within our souls, we WILL be found OPPOSING the ways of the KING in the hours of crisis, threat, and tribulation – no less than Peter did, (despite his protestations) when he betrayed “the CHRIST, the SON of the LIVING GOD” before a slave girl. (Mark 14:66-72)

Beloved. We want to exultantly proclaim “CHRIST IS KING!” But we must ask ourselves if the Christ we are exalting is the CHRIST of the Bible. And we dare not fail to examine ourselves to see if we indeed have surrendered ourselves to this, the TRUE and rightful KING.

“If anyone is convinced in himself that he is Christ’s, (and CHRIST IS HIS KING) let him again consider this in himself.” (2 Corinthians 10:7)

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JSB • October, 2025