“His wife hath made herself ready” (Rev. xix. 7).
There is danger in becoming morbid even in preparing for the Lord’s
coming. We remember a time in our life when we had devoted ourselves to
spend a month in waiting upon the Lord for a baptism of the Holy Ghost,
and before the end of the month, the Lord shook us out of our seclusion
and compelled us to go out and carry His message to others; and as we
went, He met us in the service.
There is a musty, monkish way of seeking a blessing, and there is a
wholesome, practical holiness which finds us in the company of the Lord
Himself not only in the closet and on the mountain-top of prayer, but
among publicans and sinners, and in the practical duties of life.
It seems to us that the practical preparation for the Lord’s coming
consists, first, of a very full entering into fellowship with Him in our
own spiritual life, and letting Him not only cleanse us, but perfect us in
all the finer touches of the Spirit’s deeper work, and then, secondly,
getting out of ourselves and living for the help of others and the
preparation of the world for His appearing.