We love the scripture encouragement from Jeremiah 29 – where God states: He knows the plans for us – keep us and give us hope and a future. REALLY, I could and should READ this everyday!  And especially because He is talking about knowing where we are supposed to be: today, tomorrow, and ALWAYS.   

I’m reading about the RAPTURE in David Jeremiah’s book “The Great Disappearance” AND isn’t his last name cool “coincidence” because I am also in the Book of Jeremiah. It is fitting as I ponder that we are technically exiled here on Earth – not yet in God’s full Kingdom come – but that we WILL be – we will return to be with Him as Jesus returns to be with us totally in forever. Yes, due to our blessed REDEMPTION in Jesus. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 

So – I sat down into a wonderful situation – a welcoming of friends at a dinner – and I saw their amazing welcoming faces, great view from my end of the table – it was SO INVITING that I had to take a photo of these friends.  I knew as I thought about it later, that God was setting me up for the best. Not just for the best dinner and it was really good, not just because it had been paid for and it had, but because it reminded me that He has plans for me. Plans that are refreshing and rapturous to be back with Him.

I will tell you that I recognized just in that dinner and in the faces of friends, that it was how I thought I would sit down at HIS TABLE in Heaven – welcomed, paid for, well-fed. Yes, just in one dinner I could tell you that we are all blessed to be the guest of the Lord – oh just at that moment how God was rescuing me from the worry of the world, the worry of work, the worry of wanting. Just like I knew at dinner that the Lord gives me (us) people to take care of me in friendship, He gives us foster-ing care when we find ourselves in failing places too.  Yes, we are to be led to see that we have been in this place before, realizing that the Lord sets us up again and again for great RECOVERY.

SO – dinner and a show? Will it be rapturous for us in these times of the Lord – I am sure it will be – so then since we are refreshed with this look at our futures – let us get back to inviting the others to dinner and speaking how the Lord is making a place setting appealing for them. We know that God doesn’t want anyone to be left behind – keep preaching, teaching and reaching

Listen to our Jesus’s speech (one of 3 main scriptures starting the David Jeremiah book): Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. John 14:1-3

AMEN

Jeremiah 29:1-14 NIV 

This is the text of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets and all the other people Nebuchadnezzar had carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. (This was after King Jehoiachin[a] and the queen mother, the court officials and the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the skilled workers and the artisans had gone into exile from Jerusalem.) He entrusted the letter to Elasah son of Shaphan and to Gemariah son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. It said: 

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the Lord.

This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

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(from the book: 2 more scripture references)

1 Corinthians 15:51-58

Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed – in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.  When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”  – “Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?” – The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

1 Thessalonians 4:14-18

For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.  According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.