Episode 5: Wick Trimming 101

Shannan Painter: Erin Davis has some crucial questions for you to consider.

Erin Davis: Do you long for Christ’s return? When was the last time you prayed for Jesus to come back? Does knowing that He is coming back change the way you operate in the world that He has made? Is there evidence in your life today that you long to see Jesus face to face?

Shannan: You’re listening to The Deep Well with Erin Davis. I’m Shannan Painter. If you were waiting to catch the bus or the train at any minute, you wouldn’t suddenly decide to make a quick trip to the grocery store, would you?

Christians are expecting Jesus to return soon! We do still have to go to the store, but we should always be ready for Jesus to come back. That’s an important theme of 1 Thessalonians. Erin is on the last episode going through that New Testament epistle. Let’s listen.

Erin: I wonder which of my listeners would identify as Type A. To you, I would say that there’s no shame in that game! I'm fond of saying I’m not Type A, I’m Type AA, and girls like us, we get things done! We’re also typically a big fan of lists.

And those of us who are wired that way can come to places in Scripture like the ones we’ve been looking at together in this series that say, “Stay awake! Be ready! Keep your lamp burning!” we can’t help but want to know how.

Well, fortunately, God’s Word is not merely a book of theory. In 2 Timothy 3:16–17, Paul wrote that it’s all inspired; it’s all useful for equipping us for the good work that God has for us. And so in this last episode of the series, we’re going to get practical. 

I’m calling this session “Wick Trimming 101.” If you’ve been listening to the whole series, maybe you’ll connect the dots. That points us back to that Matthew 25 parable where Jesus described these ten virgins who were all waiting for the Bridegroom.

Some had oil in their lamp, and some had not enough. The idea is that one way to stay ready is to keep your “wick trimmed,” because a long wick burns more oil, and we want to have enough oil in our lamps to burn brightly all the way until Jesus comes back!

So readiness for the imminent return of Jesus, first it is a heart posture. It’s all the things that we’ve been talking about. We ask the Spirit to help us to stay awake to the fact that our King is coming! Jesus is coming. We remind each other often, “Jesus is coming back, stay awake!” We live our lives, and we do ministry from that place of hope!

But that also extends into practically how we live our lives. I’m going to wrap up our study of this epistle in the last chapter, 1 Thessalonians 5. I’m going to read us a big chunk of Scripture, 1 Thessalonians 5:12–22. I always hope you follow along with me.

We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves.

And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit.Do not despise prophecies,but test everything; hold fast [to] what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.

Before we get to the application of this text, let’s go up and get the high view again. Right application can only flow from right observation, right interpretation . . . and then, application. So let’s remember what we’re talking about.

Again, 1 Thessalonians is a letter written by Paul and his co-laborers to Christians. These were not nominal Christians, these were not lukewarm Christians. This was a body of believers in whom the fruit of the Spirit was very evident. 

They were faithfully serving Jesus. They weren’t asleep in the way that you might think, in that they were just not living lives of faith; they were. Remember the theme of this letter: it is the return of Christ. The message, again, is: stay awake! Jesus is coming back!

And as I’ve said several times, I’ve come to see 1 Thessalonians as our “hope manifesto,” because the dominant theme is that Jesus is coming back, and that is such a tremendous source of hope! He is not going to leave us on this God-cursed world forever.

Things are not going to go from bad to worse, and then worse to worse, indefinitely. Jesus is going to return! And when He comes back, He’s not going to be wearing the crown of thorns. He’s going to be wearing many diadems! All of them belong to Him, and He’s going to establish that new heaven and new earth we read about in the last episode.

We’re finally going to experience the shalom that we were made for! Well, that’s great, but: 

• How do we continue to love broken people while we wait? 
• How do we continue to serve from these broken bodies while we wait? 
• How does the church be a city on a hill when the darkness seems to be growing all around us?

The right application of all that we’ve been reading is not that we’re actually supposed to keep a physical oil lamp going all the time. So, what does Jesus want us to do in light of His return?

List makers, get ready, this is our time to shine! I love to take a passage of Scripture and break it down into a list in the margins of my Bible. The margins of my Bible are filled with lists! 

In fact, if you could see my Bible turned to the book of 1 Thessalonians, you would see list after list after list. I feel like Paul makes that really easy for us here in 1 Thessalonians 5:12–22. So we’re going to look at these verses again and we’re going to make that list. Paul gives us several “do’s” and a few “don'ts.”

First, he tells us to respect two groups, right there in those early verses (v. 12). “We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you.” So we’re supposed to respect our fellow laborers and we’re supposed to respect our spiritual overseers. 

Now I recognize that that thought can feel very loaded in our day. This is not saying that everything leaders do is okay, and that leaders should never be called to integrity and godliness, but he is telling us to respect those who are also serving Jesus because they’re fighting a difficult battle, too. And, respect those who God has appointed as spiritual overseers over us. 

Verse 13 is kind of an addendum to points 1 and 2: “. . . and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work.” Who is the “them” here? Well, it’s fellow Christian workers and spiritual leaders.

When I read these verses, I think they’re about building cultures of honor in our Christian circles and in our churches. It can feel really elementary, but it’s also really important! Respect other Christian workers, those who are also as Paul said, “laboring and toiling for the sake of the gospel.”

Respect Christian leaders, esteem them very highly. Is that because everything they do is perfect and awesome? Of course not. But they’re in the fight, and it is a fight! God cares very much about your approach to authority and mine, and you don’t have to take my word for it.

Do a deep dive into the topic of submission to authority and you’re going to draw the same conclusion if you look to your Bible for those answers. Why is that? Well, on one level it’s because your willingness to submit to human authority is a litmus test for your willingness to submit to God’s authority. 

So one way you practically live in light of Christ’s return is that you honor others who are also keeping their wicks trimmed, who are also waiting for Christ’s return, and you respect those who are over you in the Lord. All of that comes straight from verse 12.

Look again at verse 13 and we’ll get another task on our wick trimming list: “Be at peace among yourselves.” Paul says it like it’s so easy It’s not easy! I live on a little farm in the Midwest, and I can tell you from experience that hen-pecking is a real phenomenon!

Here’s how it works: the flock of chickens will decide that they don’t like one of the other hens, and they will begin to peck at her until her feathers start to fall out. And she will become so stressed by what is happening inside the coop that she will stop laying eggs. And eventually, they will keep pecking at her until she dies. 

Sisters, sometimes we treat each other like we are in the chicken coop. We peck at each other over things that don’t matter! All it does is lull us to sleep about the fact that we are on co-mission with Christ for the redemption of the world! 

And not only does it lull us to sleep, it makes those who don’t know Christ rightly say, “Why in the world would I want to be a part of their family?” We need to get busy sharing the gospel, so busy that we are not pecking at each other. 

So Paul wrote, “Be at peace among yourselves.” That’s family talk, again. If you really believe that Jesus is coming back, and that it could be at any moment, you can let a lot of things go. Paul said, “Do you want to keep your wick trimmed? Live at peace.”

Verse 14 gives us several things rapid-fire. Let me read us that verse again: “And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.” This list feels like “Women’s Ministry 101” to me.

Admonishing the idle is calling women out of the pews and into the work of the Church. It’s helping them see their gifts, showing them the “on ramps” and reminding them over and over that Christianity is not a spectator sport! And can you see, in light of the big idea of 1 Thessalonians why admonishing the idle is an important action step? “Hey guys, Jesus is coming back! We’ve got work to do!” 

Encouraging the fainthearted is just what it sounds like. You can have faith in Jesus and still be fainthearted. I know, because I often find myself there. And there are a million reasons why a Christian brother or sister might feel fainthearted. This is why we need each other so much!

Paul is saying part of how we get ready for Jesus coming back is that we look to those among us who are fainthearted, weak of spirit, and we encourage each other. We remind each other what is true. My pastor, Tim, is so good at this!

When I served under him as a staff member at our church, he would frequently call those of us on staff into his office and he would say, “Who’s suffering in the church this week? Who’s going through a lot?” We would start rattling off names, and then he’d look us in the eye, and he’d say, “You’re the first responders! You’re the ones who need to go and encourage them and care for them and pray for them.”

Now, he wasn’t saying, “It’s all on you!” We had a small staff for a pretty big church. But he was asking us to be the pacesetters. He was asking us to encourage the fainthearted as part of our greater mission, and that’s what Paul is encouraging us to do here. 

And then Paul says, “Help the weak.” I am confident that if your church still reads the prayer list every week, like mine does, that it’s a long list. There is a lot of weakness inside the body, and we're supposed to help each other with that.

I saw this social media clip not long ago, and it has stuck with me. There was a runner on the track doing an obviously important race, and something happened to his leg. He was still moving, but he obviously wasn’t going to win the race.

A man came down from the stands. A security officer tried to stop him, but there was no stopping him. That man went and put that runner’s arm around his back and the two of them finished the race together.

Well, it turns out it was his daddy, and that runner had torn his ACL, but they finished the race together. I watched that social media clip over and over and bawled like a baby! Isn’t that the Christian life? We get across the finish line together, even if we have to carry each other on our backs!

And Paul told us what to encourage each other with: “Jesus is coming back!” I keep drawing us back to that, but let me ask you: when was the last time you encouraged somebody with that truth? 

Verse 15 is about forgiveness; let me read it again: “See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone.” 

If you’re keeping a list, you could just write, “forgive.” When Jesus comes back none of the things that we are holding onto—that make us feel bitter or angry or jilted—are going to matter. They’re just going to melt away. Why not let that be how we operate while we wait?

There’s a comma in the middle of that verse, let me read it again: “See that no one repays anyone evil for evil”—comma—“but always seek to do good to one another.” Instead of always trying to even the score, Paul said, “Do good to one another and to everyone.”

Do good to each other inside the family of God, and do good to those outside of the family of God. Why? Because we believe Jesus is coming back, and we want to be a part of God’s heart to woo them to Him!

When I think about how I want Jesus to find me when He returns, I want Him to find me doing good for the Church, because it’s His Church, His Bride! And Paul here is saying, “Do good to each other, inside and outside of the Church.”

Now, certainly ladies, we are not called to be busybodies, but we are called to be busy, actively doing good in the name of Jesus. Verse 16 is a tiny little verse that packs a punch: “Rejoice always.”

Can you rejoice always because your circumstances are perfect? No. Can you rejoice always because we live in a culture that is God-centered? No. Can you rejoice always because you always feel like rejoicing? No. Remember the context. 

It’s because Jesus is coming back, because we know our present reality is not the future promise to us, because we know that Jesus will not leave us here forever, that we can rejoice always!

Now, I bet you’ve seen verse 17 on a Pinterest post or two: “Pray without ceasing.” Let me take us back to 2 Peter 3:11–12; we read it in the last episode: “Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn!” 

You know it’s okay to have questions as you read your Bible, right? It’s okay to ask the Spirit, “What does this mean?” So, what does that mean in verse 12: “. . . waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God”? It’s mysterious. But Scripture seems to indicate that, as God’s people, we can accelerate the timing of His return. One way is through evangelism, but another way is through prayer.

Revelation 5:8 describes these golden bowls. And what are they full of? They’re full of the prayers of the saints. Imagine it. Thousands of years of the prayers of God’s people poured into these bowls! 

Now, Scripture doesn’t tell us much more than that, but I like to imagine that as we keep praying, as we cry out like the earliest believers, “Come, Lord Jesus!” that those bowls begin to fill. Perhaps they begin to overflow with our longing for Jesus’ return expressed through our prayers, and the Father turns to the Son and says, “Go get her. Go get your Bride!”

Paul isn’t just calling us to pray without ceasing about a specific need. What he’s telling us to pray without ceasing about is the return of Jesus. Pray for Jesus to come back. Pray that the Church would be awake. Pray that the lost would turn to Him before He comes back. Pray . . . and don’t stop praying about it!

Verse 18 says, “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” “All” means “all,” and that’s only possible if we believe that Jesus is coming back. 

This is a good list. It’s how we keep our wick trimmed; it’s how we stay ready for Jesus’s return.

There’s nothing mind-blowing on that list. There’s probably nothing you haven’t heard before, but what if you and I spent tomorrow living like this list calls us to live? Honoring others, forgiving freely, doing good, praying constantly for Jesus to come back, expressing our gratitude; God would use those seemingly insignificant expressions of faith. He is who He says He is and that He will do what He says He will do. He would use that to keep us awake! 

If we keep reading, we get a much shorter list of “don’ts.” So we had a list of dos and we get a much shorter list of don’ts. 

We pick it up at verse 19, which says, “[Don’t] quench the Spirit.” We don’t dictate the ways and whims of God. This isn’t about putting God on our timetable. It’s about having hearts that are eager to respond to the Spirit’s work in our lives.

In verse 20 Paul says, “Do not despise prophecies.” Now, I don’t believe this is about date-setters. Jesus made that clear that nobody knows the hour or the day. But it’s saying, “Listen to what God has already said through His Word about His return.”

Then Paul pivots to three more “dos” in verses 21–22: “Test everything; hold fast what is good.Abstain from every form of evil.” Test everything. Be discerning! We must be discerning in this age. Christians must be discerning in every age.

Hold fast to what is good. And the inverse of that is, let everything else go. And abstain from every form of evil. If we really believe that Jesus could come back at any moment, we won’t dabble with sin and wickedness.

Now, our flesh will always gravitate towards that. We’ll always see how close we can go to the line without getting burned, but if we keep at the forefront of our minds that Jesus is coming back, we won’t want to dabble with wickedness. We won’t want to dabble with sin, because the stakes are so high! Jesus is coming back!

It won’t be because we don’t want to get caught. God sees all, God knows all. I mentioned God being the cop in the rearview mirror earlier. He already is there. He already sees everything we do. It’s all fully exposed before Him. So that’s not what motivates us. It’s that we want to be found ready, we want to keep our eyes on the prize! It’s a simple list, really.

And it is the list I pulled from when I called you to wake up in Episode 1. The passage doesn’t say that the way to be ready for Jesus’s return is to launch a ministry in His name, although that might be a really good thing to do. But it can only ever be an outflow of these things.

It didn’t say that you have to lead everyone you know to Christ, although of course we want to share the hope of Jesus with others! One way I’m praying that God would use this series is that He would stir in our hearts a desire to share the gospel.

It doesn’t say that you have to be on the church payroll to be ready, which is good, because I’m not. These are everyday acts of obedience that the Spirit of God will use to keep your eyes on the prize.

So here are some questions for us to wrestle with as we consider all that we read, and as you wrestle with 1 Thessalonians moving forward, do you long for Christ’s return? I was teaching about Christ’s return at a church in the past year, and this woman came and found me afterwards. 

She was clearly nervous. “What’s going on?” I asked. 

She confessed, “I don’t really want Jesus to come back.” She had a list of things that she wanted to accomplish, which I totally understand. I have that list, too.

I want to see my boys grow up, I want to see my grandchildren, I want to continue to teach the Bible. But none of that is going to be more significant than Jesus coming back. She also had some sin in her life that she wasn't victorious over, so there was a lot of fear. I so appreciated her bravery. 

I don’t think I had anything wise to offer, we just prayed for each other. I asked the Lord to soften her heart and wake her up to the reality of His return. But maybe as you’ve been listening to this, the Lord has exposed that you don’t really long for His return.

When was the last time you prayed for Jesus to come back? Does knowing that He is coming back change the way you operate in the world that He has made? Or are you living for this moment? It’s only a blip.

Is there evidence in your life today that you long to see Jesus face to face? This isn’t as mysterious as we might make it out to be. According to Paul’s list, as he’s landing the plane on his letter to this church, being ready for Jesus’ return means living a life of consistent obedience. 

It means honoring others, it means forgiving, it means praying constantly for His return, because we look at the world around us and we realize our systems can’t fix this. We need Jesus to come and make all things new! 

It’s giving thanks in all circumstances because we know we have a higher hope than what we can currently see with our eyeballs. I talk about the return of Jesus a lot! It’s real to me because it’s real!

I was in the van with my sons a couple of years ago, and their daddy was out of town. And one of the boys said, “What happens if Jesus comes back while daddy’s not here?” I was still thinking and praying and I hadn’t gotten anything out of my mouth when another one of my sons, without missing a beat said, “Well, then we’ll meet him in the air!”

My sons did not learn that lesson from the books I’ve written. My sons did not learn that lesson from the events I’ve spoken at. My sons have never listened to an episode of my podcast, I’m pretty sure. That’s not where they learned to think about the return of Christ that way.

I hoped they learned it from watching my everyday life, from hearing me say over and over and over—and live like I actually believe it—“Jesus is coming back. It won’t be long now!” And when He does, will your King find you living a ready life?

I want to wrap up this series with 1 Thessalonians 4:16–18. We’ve heard it before, but it is the exclamation point on everything we’ve talked about. Christians, this is our hope straight from our hope manifesto!

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Shannan: Erin Davis has been challenging us to stay awake and keep our wicks trimmed as we look forward to Jesus coming back for His Bride. That kind of watchfulness, that kind of alertness, only comes as we meditate on His return.

The theologian D. A. Carson wrote a book on Praying with Paul, looking at the apostle Paul’s prayers in the New Testament. As you pointed out, Erin, Jesus’s return is not a minor theme in Scripture.

Erin: It really isn’t. Remember, we talked about 1800 verses throughout the Bible that point to Jesus’ Second Coming.

Shannan: That was something that was definitely new to me! 

Erin: Me, too! 

Shannan: Well, Carson says this: 

We are losing our anticipation of the Lord’s return. The anticipation that Paul shows is basic to his thought: the prospect of the Lord’s return in glory, the anticipation of the wrapup of the universe as we know it, the confidence that there will be a final and irrevocable division between the just and the unjust. These have become merely creedal points for us instead of ultimate realities that even now are life transforming!

Erin: You get ‘em, Carson! “The wrapup of the universe as we know it,” that’s what Scripture promises us is coming!

Shannan: And something that may seem so far off in the future, it’s hard to keep on the forefront of our mind. It goes back to something you said earlier this season, Erin, “When was the last time you heard a sermon on the Second Coming?”

Erin: Yeah, it’s just not something that we hear a lot of good teaching on. I’ll follow up your Carson quote with another Carson quote from the same book. He said, “The loss is great.” He was talking about our loss of focus on Jesus’ Second Coming. “It means that instead of investing in the Bank of Heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal [he’s quoting Jesus from Matthew 6 there], we may be seduced into devoting almost all of our time, energy and money to the merely temporal and ephemeral.” Boom!

Shannan: Wow! That’s something that hits home for me, for sure!

Erin: Me, too.

Shannan: Well, if you want to check out that book Praying with Paul, we’ll drop a link at ReviveOurHearts.com/thedeepwell. There’s also more information on the book by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Heaven Rules, which you can receive in appreciation for your donation of any amount. Check them both out. 

Erin Unscripted

Now, Erin Unscripted.Erin, what excuses might people give for why they don’t think about and anticipate and pray for the return of the Lord? 

Erin: Well I don’t know how many of us would own up to this, but the biggest factor for most of us is fear, and let’s just own that! When we read about the return of Christ in Scripture, there is a lot that is fantastical, supernatural, and nothing like anything we’ve ever experienced, and it will be the end of life as we know it.

Now, we know we’re heading into a new life with Christ. If we’ve walked with the Lord any amount of time at all, we do know on some level that that’s the life that we long for, but the unknowns are big. I think a lot of us are fearful to pray for the return of Christ because we don’t know what it will be like!

I think the other thing we’ve been touching on is just that it's not something that we talk about often. It’s not something that we encourage each other to long for, and so it’s kind of out of sight, out of mind . . . which is strange if you think about it. How can something as significant as the return of Christ be out of sight, out of mind? 

I also think that probably unintentionally we’ve kind of relegated this theme in our Bibles, which we call eschatology, to the big thinkers, like: “Let the theologians wrestle with end times!” And Jesus didn't do that. He was teaching about end times to fishermen and tax collectors!

And so, maybe we don’t have confidence in our own ability to understand it. Certainly we can’t understand all of it. Jesus didn't reveal all the specifics to us, but God has given you a mind and a spirit within you, so it is definitely something to take to the Lord and try to understand.

Shannan: Erin, I’m grateful for your willingness to lead us into that and to teach us through it! When you taught this season of The Deep Well, you had an online virtual studio audience. Here are some of the responses to your teaching. We’ll hear from Esther first, and then Rebekah.

Esther: When you were talking about praying for the return of the Lord, I had a little bit of a check in my spirit, you know like, “I want the Lord to return for me.” But I also know so many people who are prodigals, or I have unsaved family members, or things like that. It’s just feeling a little weird saying I want the Lord to return, but I’m also like, “Okay, God, but please change these people first!”

Erin: I think that’s a really healthy tension, and maybe part of how we pray is, “Lord, get Your world ready for Your return!” Because you’re right, for the Church, the return of Christ is going to be so glorious! And for the lost, the return of Christ is going to be so terrifying!

And so we don’t just say, “Oh, we don’t care what happens to them for eternity, because we just want to be taken out of this place!” So I think that’s good. Anytime we pray for the return of Christ, we should probably temper that with those we love who are apart from the Lord.

We talked in a previous episode about how there seems to be an uptick of suffering; there also seems to be an uptick of those walking away from the Lord. It’s happening on a wide scale, and we should be grieved by that. So, I think that’s a good check in your spirit, Esther. Not just, “Get us ready,” but, “Do something! Move in the hearts of those who are apart from You!”

Rebekah: Erin, I am really encouraged, especially by this last portion of your teaching today. I just happen to be reading in Proverbs right now, and just seeing how we are in this place where the fear of the Lord and the turning away from evil is what we have to do. Those are two different things, but they actually are the same thing.

How much of what you taught about today, especially it’s not right for us to just talk about the love of God if we don’t talk about the fear of the Lord and the turning away from evil at the same time . . . Because the beginning of Proverbs talks about the enticement of sinners, and how strongly this world is enticing sinners who come with them.

So there are two messages coming out in this world today: “Come, Lord Jesus!” But then also: “Come with me,” enticing sinners to the world and its pleasures. I just feel like there’s a tug on each person living right now.

And what I think was so beautiful about your teaching is that you talked about both of those. They are a call. There’s a call to wisdom, and there’s a call to folly. But we do have to pursue wisdom, and the source of wisdom is Christ. He is our source of wisdom.

And Revelation 22:6 says, “These words are trustworthy and true”—the words of Christ. And so, we have to really come under them with a soberness and an awareness. What you did today was really bringing that to light.

I think the last thing I would say along with that is that in the book of Jude, Scripture talks about how we’re to have mercy to those, to snatch those out of the fire. I think a lot of what you said today—with the mindset of knowing prodigals in my life which I’m praying for very hard—is that when we say, “Come, Lord Jesus,” that’s going to be the quickening work of the Spirit in the hearts and lives of those we’re praying for. I believe it’s the answer to our prayers!

All the suffering we’re having, that’s just bringing us to the place of, “God, have mercy! Have mercy on me, and have mercy on every one that I’m praying for, and the body of Christ, the Church (with a big “C”).”

I think that’s the ushering in of, “Come, Lord Jesus! If You don’t come and quicken and awaken and turn and revive and do all of the things that You’re going to do, then we have no hope!” And so, I think all of this ushers in the urgency. You did an excellent job of carrying that through today, and so I’m really encouraged. Thank you.

Erin: Thanks for your thoughts. The enticement of sin is part of how Satan lulls the Church to sleep. Unfortunately, we don’t shed our sin nature when we come to Christ, we remain sinners. And you can be as saved as the day is long at the trumpet blast, and you’re going to be with Jesus. But you might also look back on your life and say, “I was lulled to sleep by the allure of sin for twenty years!” That need to turn is so important to keeping us awake! And to your point about prodigals, no one longs for prodigals to return to the Lord more than the Lord!

And so, while we are seeing a falling away, we’re also seeing a harvest. The Spirit is doing what the Spirit does. And so, I think you’re putting some people’s minds at ease, Becky. To pray for the return of Christ is not saying, “I don’t care about the lost,” but it’s saying, “Jesus, You’re coming back, so do the work You need to do to bring your beloveds to You!”

Anybody who has ever loved a prodigal has ultimately had to put their hope in the fact that God loves that prodigal more than they ever could. That doesn’t go away in light of the return of Christ. His love for them never diminishes. He’s ever mindful of it. So, what a hopeful thought!

Rebekah: Amen! Thank you.

Shannan: Erin, thank you for some thought-provoking teaching. Thank you for urging us to stay awake and watch for—and even hasten—the return of the Lord!

Erin: It’s my high, high honor to open my Bible with you. And thank you, Shannan, thanks for co-hosting this season. I love you, I love your heart for the Church, and I love your family. So, I just pray that God will bless you for the time you’ve invested in this season. 

Shannan: Erin, I’m so grateful for you as well, and thank you our listeners. Thanks for listening! Be sure to share The Deep Well with your friends, maybe even your enemies! And keep coming back yourself to draw from The Deep Well.

The Deep Well with Erin Davis is part of the Revive Our Hearts podcast family, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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