Prepare to meet your God

Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. – Amos 4.12

We have all the seen cartoons of a long haired guy on a busy city street holding up a handwritten sign reading ‘prepare to meet thy God.’ It is almost always played for comedic effect and some other comment is made by a passer-by and it is intended to give us a chuckle.

I guess that is all meant in good fun, but I think that there is a problem with making light of the idea of being ready to meet God at any time. It helps give the notion that preparing for God is, in essence, a joke and only worthy of some strange street prophet who is slightly off balance.

The truth is though that ‘prepare to meet your God’ needs to be something on everyone’s minds. The day is coming when every single person will one day stand before God. Some will stand with great joy and some will stand in shame and judgement.  God told Israel to be ready to meet God. That same message is one all need to hear.

Every friend and every family member and every co-worker and every neighbour we know will one day meet Him. Those who have already met Him can look forward to that day with excitement. But there is no hope for those who are not ready.

We have the way to help them prepare to meet God. Are we faithfully trying to prepare them?