And surely I am with you always; to the very end of the age. (Matthew 28:20)
Most of us feel like we are waiting in time for something to happen.
Jesus promised that he would be with us through time . . . to the very end of the age. The promise means that there is never a moment in time in which we are without his presence. The presence of Jesus is not someday reality; it is a now reality. For the believer the now is everlasting; he is the God who was, who is, and who is to come. But we will always know him as the God who is . . . with us.
At the same time, we are living between the times. We are awaiting the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God. He is both with us and coming to us simultaneously. We are living, not between the times, but between the presence: Jesus is with us now, but he will be with us in a greater way at his coming. We are moving from presence to presence, not from absence to presence. He is never absent from us!
While he is profoundly present in our lives even now, what we are longing for is his manifestation, his revelation. His coming will be his public unveiling, for every eye will see him. While we must wait for this day to come to experience his revelation in its fullness, as we pray and seek him intently in the present age, we experience eruptions of revelation that foreshadow for us the day of his coming.
As Jesus reveals himself in the church by the power of the Spirit, we are given a glimpse of the day of his coming. If the coming of the Lord at the end of the age was a movie, the moving of the Holy Spirit in the present age would be its trailer. Each time the Holy Spirit moves upon us to reveal the Son of God, we are taken into his coming and experience it already . . . for a moment.
He is present, but he is also coming. These two realities are what form the center of the experience of the believer.
