Please give a short, accurate and concise explanation of what it means to make yourself ready. And I am speaking of practical, recognizable things you think are required to make yourself ready.
[FONT="]1 We must say “yes” to being made ready. [/FONT]
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[FONT="]Looking at the church today, especially in America, most believers are not actively and purposefully making themselves ready as a worthy bride. So how do we get started? [/FONT]
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[FONT="]First, we must say “yes ” to being made ready. [/FONT]
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[FONT="]Those who are making themselves unconditionally available to the Lord in every aspect of their being and life experience are pursuing intimacy with Jesus, maturing as an overcomer, and growing in power and authority are essential dimensions of being made ready as a worthy bride for Jesus. being made read y to participate with the Lord in the outworking of His end-time purposes. This requires our having a single eye in order to hear and respond to His work of preparation, and our spirit set toward the Lord, so we can obey all that is required of us . Only then will we be ready in that day to be lifted into a cooperative relationship with our Lord. ... This process will begin when we acknowledge our unconditional dependence upon the Lord, giving total, unqualified permission to Him to do with us all that may be necessary, so we will not only be able to sing this song [the song of victory recorded in Psalm 149:5-9], but also actively participate with the Lord in its full Out working.[/FONT]
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[FONT="]To be made ready as a worthy bride, we must pursue God’s gr ace aggressivel y. [/FONT]
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[FONT="]Every work of God in our lives is accomplished by God’ s grace . [/FONT]
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[FONT="]Simply defined, grace is God’s power released into our lives to accomplish His purposes in and through us (2 C o r.12:9). [/FONT]
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[FONT="]However, a false view of grace has crept into the church. The thinking goes something like this: [/FONT]
[FONT="]God is in control; therefore, He will work out everything He wants to do in my life. I will just sit by passively and let Him do whatever He desires. [/FONT]
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[FONT="]This type of passive attitude does not activate God ’s grace in our lives. When we are passive, things rarely change. This attitude toward the grace of God is unbiblical. Instead, we should pursue God ’s grace aggressively. We must aggressively desire change, aggressively pray for change, [/FONT]
[FONT="]and aggressively make changes in our lifestyle. [/FONT]
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[FONT="]Realizing that we are helpless to change on our own, we aggressively [/FONT]
[FONT="]cry out f o r God’ s grace, and the changes we need will occur. [/FONT]
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[FONT="]3. [/FONT]
[FONT="]The Holy Spirit is calling the end-t ime church to “eat the book” and to “keep the prophecy.” [/FONT]
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[FONT="]Revelation 10:9 states, “So I went to the angel, telling him to give me the little book. And he said to me, ‘ Take it and eat it; it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.’ " [/FONT]
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[FONT="]In Revelation 22:7, Jesus says , “Behold, I am coming quickly! Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book” (NKJV). [/FONT]
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[FONT="]When Jesus returns , He will reward us for studying His end-time plan (eating the book) and for overcoming whatever entangles us (keeping the prophecy) (Re v. 22:12). [/FONT]
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[FONT="]As we dig into the book of Revelation, along with other end-time Scriptures, and as we obey what is written, we will grow in intimacy with Jesus, we will mature as an overcomer, and we will have greater power and authority in ministry. In other words, we will begin our journey of making ourselves ready. [/FONT]