https://odb.org/2026/10/07/longing-for-jesus-return
Philippians 3:17–21 (NIV): 17 Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do. 18 For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. 20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
Longing. We all experience it. Sometimes we don’t actually need what we long for, such as a favorite restaurant. Other times, our longings reflect deeper, more desperate yearnings. Writing to the Philippian believers, Paul reminded them to live their lives in light of their deepest longing—Christ’s return and the full coming of His kingdom (Philippians 3:20). Jesus’ coming would make everything whole and transform believers to be like Him (v. 21). Rather than merely longing for what can’t bring lasting satisfaction, Paul says it’s this coming reality that believers “eagerly await” (v. 20)—the day when there will be no more suffering, when we’ll see Jesus face-to-face. (Lisa M. Samra, Our Daily Bread 7th October 2026)
“There is a longing
Only You can fill
A raging tempest
Only You can still
My soul is thirsty Lord
To know You as I’m known
Drink from the river
That flows before Your throne”
The above is the first stanza of the Don Moen song that we should be familiar with. It speaks of a longing in our soul and spirit that only Jesus can fulfil. That Jesus is the river of living waters, the bread of life that indeed we who drink and eat of Him shall not become thirsty and hungry again. It speaks of the spiritual in the present but more importantly the hope for the eternal in future. The hope of glory that generations before us lived and died for. Not a paradise of the metaphorical 72 virgins of Islamic traditions, but a place where there will no longer be pain and suffering or tears or sadness.
If possible we wish for Jesus’s return now, tomorrow or the earliest possible. So that the world as we know it, the injustices and our struggles with the issues of life will cease. Our health challenges, our fight against our bodily afflictions. That the process towards the emergence of the promised new heaven and new earth will commence sooner than later.
Two things will happen once Jesus returns. One is that the life we know now will cease, at least for us as believers. There will be the rapture and perhaps the worse of trials, tribulations and sufferings will come before Jesus returns or perhaps Jesus will rapture us to escape the coming intense trials and tribulations. The second thing is that it is likely that those who remain behind will find it increasingly difficult to accept Christ as the worldly conditions will be less and less favourable for those who want to believe. It would be poverty, pain and suffering for believers and comfortable living for those against Christ. So perhaps God in His infinite wisdom wishes to delay the second coming of Christ to give every non-believer better conditions and the opportunity to believe in the Messiah.
There is indeed a longing for Jesus in the present, in the spiritual realm but a deeper longing for all this to end and for the new world to be ushered in. The world of the eternal where the tree of life is available to us whose names are written in the book of life with the physical river of living waters. No longer in the spiritual as the new world is where the spiritual becomes natural and heaven is indeed a place on earth! In the meantime as we wait, we may only fulfil our longing in the spiritual realm.
