I am one of those who aren’t excited about the rapture because of a secret fear I won’t qualify to go, even though I’ve been a born again believer for many years. I know I don’t deserve to escape the punishment due me and I worry that at the rapture the Lord will agree with my assessment and leave me here. What can those of us with these fears do to overcome them?
2 Corinthians 10:3-5 says we have divine weapons with which to demolish strongholds. A stronghold is a fortress the enemy has built in our mind from which to attack us. The fortress in this case is built of the lies we’ve been taught that our behavior is what will determine our eternal destiny, when the Bible says it’s our belief that saves us (John 3:16).
The enemy uses these lies to make us afraid we won’t measure up in an attempt to steal our joy and destroy our faith. But we can use our divine weapon, which is God’s Word, to demolish these arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. We can take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ, which means make it comply with the promise of His Word.
The truth is that none of us is worthy to be taken in the rapture, and that’s why the Lord made our salvation dependent upon His worthiness instead of ours. The only condition He has ever placed on us is that we believe His death paid the price in full for all our sins. Once we believe that, we become a new creation in Christ; the old has gone the new has come (2 Cor. 5:17). Our sins have been removed from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). That’s the promise to which every lie and pretension must either be made obedient or be demolished.
“When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:13-14).