Welcome To My Table

Welcome To My Table

 

“Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matt 3:2).  I don’t why but I have always thought that these words of John the Baptist were something of a threat. It maybe the context in which they were presented to me when I was very young, kind of a “Repent of else!” thing, but what if these words are not a threat? Could it be that God is not barking out an order, but offering an invitation to a place at His table? Consider this. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16

 The word “loved” in John 3:16 is the Greek word “agapao” which is a verb meaning: “to welcome, to entertain, to be fond of, to love dearly”. Could it be that God has loved the world by taking actions to welcome us back into His presence even before we first fell away? If it is true that God has been welcoming us, inviting us into His Kingdom, then it was a welcoming invitation He had been preparing to announce before the foundations of the world were laid, and before man first fell in Eden, which of course God knew man would do. Now here comes John the Baptist, sent to announce that the table of God’s provision is at hand, and the invitations to come and sit down are ready to go out in just a few days. If you want to find your place at the table of God, your own space where the wine and bread of the Kingdom are set before you as provisions you can’t earn or buy, here is how you do it. You must respond to God’s personal invitation.

Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins. Turn away from your current life, be baptized into a brand new way of living and start following God’s commands. God promises that when you do you will be given a place at His table, where He will see to all your needs according to His riches, which have been laid up for you in Christ Jesus, His Son. The provisions of God were now so close at hand that He was actually able to send a man into the middle of a wilderness, where no provision are close at hand, and confidently proclaim the message of God’s endless supply, and as unlikely as it seems, as irrational as it was, people flocked to the wilderness to hear this message of abundance. It is not unlike what God promised and provided to the Israelites when He brought them out of slavery in Egypt. Millions of people on a trek that often wound though places that were nothing more than barren wastelands, but who God miraculously kept supplied. How was God able to do that?

   Imagine it, before the foundations of the world were laid down, before God held the dust of the earth in His hand from which He would fashion the fragile bodies that would house our eternal souls, before you and I were formed in our mother’s womb, before we sinned, God determined to set a table before us and for us, and to love us by welcoming us. Every action God ever took was to welcome us. But, it goes even deeper than that. God doesn’t scoop up groups of people like fisherman dragging their nets through the sea. God goes after individuals. The place at the table of God isn’t offered on a first come, first serve basis. We do not have to worry that we may not be good enough to earn a place or fast enough to find one. This isn’t musical chairs, where a loser is left standing in disgrace. There may have been times when we have been invited to eat with a group of people, only to find ourselves utterly out of place. Perhaps it was with a category of people with whom we felt that the only thing we had in common was the sign on the bathroom door marked either “Men” or “Women”, indicating which room we should “go in”. Perhaps their clothes and demeanors spoke of money and influence, while what we are wearing and thinking seemed to us to project little more than poverty and inferiority, but not so in the Kingdom of God. Every invitation God sends out He sends to individual sons and daughters. Every place set at the table of the King has a place card with a name on it. Can you imagine the joy of knowing, of actually knowing, that one day you will sit down at a real table, in a real kingdom, having been lead to specific place to sit, with a place card that reads?

RESERVED

Before the Worlds Were Made,

Before I Held the Dust of the Earth in My Hand,

Before You Were Formed,

Before You Sinned,

Before You Cried,

Before You Opened Your Eyes at Birth,

Before You Closed Your Eyes in Death,

Welcome to My Table

 (Your name here)

Now, imagine that such a table, with its limitless provisions, is at hand now and that by faith you and I can sit down and begin to partake of the wine and the bread of the Kingdom of God. God has extended such an invitation to you. “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come’.”

 Gary Little

February 22, 2013

Mirror, mirror on the wall...

March 28th, 2012, 5:00 AM
   I lay in bed this morning thinking about the need to be thankful. I thought about the Old Testament sacrifices and their connection to the giving of thanks to GOD. I  recalled how GOD struggled so with His people, after bringing them out of generations of captivity as slaves in Egypt, to get them to be a thankful people. Weren't their four decades of desert wanderings meant to get slavery out of the hearts and minds in order to restore them to believing, thinking and living as the children of GOD?
   I wondered why so few couldn't or wouldn't make this transition. Why couldn't they make the move from captivity to freedom? After all GOD had done to get them out of slavery, why wouldn't they trust HIM to get slavery out of them? Why did they so often seem to have one eye back on Egypt, and seem so ready to turn around and go back to where GOD rescued them from? Why couldn't, wouldn't they see the indescribable work of grace and strength GOD exercised to set them free? Why does it seem that so few ever made the leap from discontent and resentment, to authentic, heartfelt, unshakeable, deep-down, desert-surviving, GOD-honoring, authentic thanksgiving? Maybe they couldn't see the big picture. Maybe they couldn't look ahead to what GOD was doing because they were so preoccupied with the looking back.
   I remember a time when I would go out of my way to walk by a mirror, now I try hard to avoid them. The older I get (now 56) the less impressed I am by what a mirror reflects back to me. Well over their forty years, on my own spiritual journey, trying to follow where GOD is leading, (made obvious by the miles long set of heel-shaped furrows in the sand), and I don't have to right either. Oh, how I hate mirrors. "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who the dumbest guy of all..."
 

The Danger of Spirituality

Deut. 30:19
I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:



The danger of spirituality is not knowing if it is authentic spirituality. Authentic, Biblical spirituality, takes the words of God (Father, Son and Holy  Spirit), and then sets out to literally apply them to our lives. In the case of Deut 30:19, when God told His people to choose life, He meant it literally. God wasn't asking for mental assent or correct knowledge. It wasn't that He was looking for the Israelites to agree, memorize and then parrot the words back to Him. God, quite literally, set life and death before them and told them that they had to literally go to work every day, in every situation, and choose life. False spirituality is satisfied to read, to know, and even to teach God's commands, without taking them literally and applying them to own own lives.  It was this kind of spirituality that Jesus blasted the scribes and pharisees for having. Jesus told those following Him that it was the wise man, who after hearing Jesus' sayings, went to work to build his entire life upon them. To do otherwise, Jesus said, is as useful as building a house upon sand. That house may look good, and the average person might never be able to tell the differences between it and the house next door that was built on a foundation of rock, but those differences will soon be as clear as day when the black clouds of a significant storm bring damaging winds and pounding waves. 

   Authentic spirituality is hard work. It requires love that is willing to pay the costs attached to discipline and determination. And anyone who has decided to practice authentic, Biblically spirituality, knows this very well.