The Irony

The irony of the entire question of "How can I prepare to meet God" is in the fact that we tend to focus on the "I" and not on God, yes, self-examination is necessary and good to do, but if we only examine self, we have lost sight of the one we should strive to become. This is a hard subject for me to talk about as I feel that many today are not doing enough examination (including me), both of self or God.

Of self: We live in a society that we love to compare ourselves with other, but only a cursory glance. We can always find things that we are better at than people around us, and we can always find fault with other people so that we can take pride in that we are better than they are. We are "good enough," but we rarely go beyond that. We know that if we dig too deep we will not like what we see, so we only compare ourselves with shortcomings of others to make us feel better.

Of God: many today seem to despise the idea of a holy and just God who hates anything at all. They would rather have a jovial and carefree God, who cares not what they do, but will "save" them anyway. Though in a sense this is also false, because if there is no wrath in God there is nothing to save them from. What I mean is this: what did Jesus die to save us from? He did not die to rescue us from Satan, for far be it from God to owe him anything. But rather He saved us from two things: His own wrath, and the bondage of sin. We cannot neglect the reality of hell. If hell exists, we were all damned to spend an eternity there, but Christ came and took upon himself the punishment that we deserved. A spotless lamb, without blemish, dying, covering us with His blood. So that we, undeserving sinners at enmity with Him, should be imputed His righteousness in the sight of God. This is the gospel, if we claim that God is only love, we can lose sight of what He has really done.

So we should examine ourselves, but when we do so we should choose the mirror to look at ourself. Our mirror should be God. In looking at ourselves in that mirror, we should see how much we imitate Him and how we are like Him, if we fail in certain areas we should strive to fix that and become more like Him. Our examination should not compare ourselves with others, but with God and God alone. As we grow and come to know God in a more full and complete way, we can see ourselves in a more full and complete light. We can see how much we need to change and strive to removing our imperfections. This is sanctification, we cannot grow unless we know, we cannot know unless we devote ourselves to knowing, to reading His word and fellowship with those who strive to know Him as well.

I ask you brothers and sisters, do you want to know Him? And are you prepared to know Him? If so, I ask you to come join me on this journey, as we prepare to meet Him.