Welcome back to the ESM podcast. I'm so thankful that you've joined. Today's episode is sponsored by Tyler Kane with statewide mortgage. He's a senior loan officer with 20 years of experience in helping people with their home mortgage needs, whether you're a first-time buyer,

looking to refinance, or just want to discuss future home ownership goals, give Tyler a call

813-380-8487, or you can set up an appointment at his website, which is provided in the show notes.

It just does not get any better than Christians helping Christians.

Speaking of which, thank you again for being here with me.

Let's get started.

Good morning. Welcome back to ESM.

I'm so thankful to get to spend at least a few minutes with you, hopefully encourage you. As you can tell from the title of the episode, I want to talk to you

about how it is that you are preparing for the return of Jesus. If I just ask you outright,

we were enjoying coffee or something, are you ready for the Lord to return? You might instantly

say yes, which would be amazing.

You may need a couple of minutes to say a prayer or make a phone call or something like that,

and then come back and say, okay, I believe I'm now ready. And we know the scripture says we should

always be ready. But I think if you and I were talking, I might ask a follow-up question. What in particular

are you doing or focusing on or praying about that exemplifies to God, I'm ready when you're

ready? We know there are tremendous parables, the parable of the Ten Virgins, the story of the

talents that says Jesus is returning at a time

we do not know, and we need to be prepared. What does that look like? I feel like I've preached

on that my whole life, and you've probably heard plenty of sermons about it, and we come up with a

pretty common list of things, and that's great. We can piece together some things that scripture

talks about,

but today I want to do something a bit unique. I want to cover a text, Luke chapter 21, that we

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