Where will you be when Jesus comes?

“Do you want to be found in a club, watching porn, having sex out of marriage, lying, stealing? …. If Jesus should come at that moment, would you be proud of what you were doing? Would He take you to heaven with Him?” This question always terrified me as a child and in my early teenage years.  It put a lot of dread in me. Pastors have a knack for asking the most disconcerting questions and this was definitely one of the questions that my nightmares were made of. I would spend the rest of the day (usually a Sunday) and the next few days cautious of my actions and trying desperately to ensure that I was positioned properly for the coming of Christ. Of course, I would soon forget that I was afraid of being left behind and go about my days as usual until the next time the question was asked.

Fast forward to a few years later in university, in a country that was NOT Nigeria and yet the Pastor, on Sundays, would sometimes ask the same question. (I think Pastors have a list of uncomfortable questions and every Sunday they pick a couple just to drive a message home. LOL, I am joking. Calm down) Only this time it would be centred mostly on clubbing and sex outside of marriage and I guess all the other things students are believed to be engaged in at university. I was still slightly terrified by the question because 'who wants to be left behind?'.  Definitely not me. However, my terror was not as overwhelming as it had been when I was a child. It had a defiance to it. All around me in church were people who I knew were like me: far from perfect. I would try to do a mental calculation of how many people may have gone clubbing that week, then add on how many people were definitely having sex and definitely were unmarried. I would try to remember all the gist I’d heard about a lot of my fellow students, most of them unflattering and that made me a little less fearful. I definitely was not the worst of all of us. I did not think Jesus would just leave us all behind and if He did then at least I would have some company. He could easily overlook me and since my actions were not the worst I was perfectly hidden and out of sight. Sometimes my thoughts would add a little sprinkle of “God looks at your mind and you are definitely not a bad person” and that would make me feel way better.

Well I was in a for a rude awakening. Thinking I could just recline and balance in the shadow of collective misbehaviour and pray that Jesus would overlook me and focus on people that were OBVIOUSLY going against the things that He held dearly. It was not too long after my undergraduate degree, that Jesus started tugging at my heart and pushing me to come out of hiding. At that time I had started listening to sermons online. I had this desire to get it right with God. If I listened to sermons and read my Bible then I was okay. I would try not to do all these things that we do not want Jesus to catch us doing. This worked for me for some time but I guess God was not having it. One day I was on Facebook and I still do not know why I did this (shout out to the Holy Spirit for being on fleek since day 1) but I clicked on a link to a sermon by a Pastor at The Village Church. I don’t actually remember the name of the Pastor or the title of the sermon or what it was on truth be told but it was so good that I clicked on another sermon link.  The next sermon was by Matt Chandler who is the lead Pastor at The Village Church and I think it was titled Genesis: The Beginning. He spoke about how everyone has a void which can only be filled by God. That people usually try to fill it with sex, food, people approval, etc but that ultimately only God has the capacity to fill the void because He made us and that is how He wired us.

After listening to it the first time I was a bit puzzled so I listened to it a couple more times and also listened to subsequent sermons because it was part of a sermon series.  As I listened to more of these sermons centred around God being our satisfaction, I started seeing things in a new way. Trust me I became obsessed. I was on Google all time trying to find out everything I could and to know if other people had come to this same realisation; that we had a void and that only God could fill it. Needless to say, a lot of people already knew what God had just made plain to me. I started feeling the urge to read my Bible more (I started reading my Bible with wonder in my eyes. I didn’t look at it the same anymore. I wondered how I had carried a Bible my whole life and not been aware of what it contained. That it wasn’t just a Book of Stories.). It was a strange thing that was happening to me. I felt like I was a new person. Like I had this new knowledge in me. That God could really fill a void I probably did not even know I had until then but which I had become acutely aware of.

Fast forward again to a few years later and I’m sitting on my couch thinking of what to write. I hear loud singing, probably a church group going around the area and preaching. I catch the lyrics of the song “Where will you be when Jesus comes” and I start reminiscing (as I do). I realise that through the years, God has really taken me on a journey of not just myself but of Him. I used to think that I had to position myself strategically or compare myself to other people so that He would take me with Him but He has successfully pulled a Psalm 139 verse 7 on me. “Where can I go from Your Spirit? OR where can I flee from Your presence?”. The truth is God is everywhere, at all times. He is all knowing. He is omni-everything. Nothing gets past Him. Yes, He is coming again but He is already here in the person of the Holy Spirit. God is with us. Think about it. If God is the one who fills the void that means He is present. Unlike my former self who did not understand what that meant and was afraid, my present self loves the fact that God is with me.

God does not only care where I would be when Jesus comes. In fact, I may be dead at that point. He cares about where I am every second of every minute of every day.  He has lovingly nudged me out of that hiding place that I thought I felt so secure in and in the process, I have found myself baring my soul to Him.

Were the Pastors wrong to ask if we want Jesus to catch us in compromising situations? Most likely not but I think what my heart truly yearned for but did not know it at the time was the knowledge that God was and is with me. Not in a creepy, condemning sort of way and definitely not to catch me in some act of wrong doing and send me straight to hell but as a true friend and companion and that I could find total satisfaction in Him.