Come to the table

“When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”

Luke 14:12-14

Everyone has a seat at the eternal table with the Father. The greatest questions posed to me by the Holy Spirit are intense. Do we choose to sit at the table on a daily basis and encourage others to join? Are we encouraging to have them stay and join each of us every day? What does our familial kitchen table with God look like in our lives and how many sit with us? Who is still sitting in the cold we haven’t reached? Jesus says go and make disciples, that is the largest calling on each of our lives. God calls each of us uniquely to fulfill that call to cultivate new believers as well as spur on believers to go forth in faith. We each have a place at the table of the Father, and it is our duty to help others see their eternal place there as well. We are God’s hands and feet, and our job is to pull people in from the cold and invite them into the glorious mystery, and warm love of God who fills our lives.

God created each of us uniquely and individually with gifts, passions, and vision in order to fulfill Jesus’ great commission of reaching as many souls as we can. Our life long pursuit is a pursuit of relationship with God and relationship with people. God first, people second, is very important to remember. Without God being our main priority, then there’s no way we can reach people with the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit within us. In order to understand who Jesus is and how He walked when He was on this earth, we have to know Him to emulate Him and activate the Holy Spirit in our lives. Jesus set the stage for the way we can live and the things we can do. We are at a huge advantage because He left us with His Spirit which allows us direct access to Jesus and the Father. Yet somehow we lose along the line during our day, week, month, year the true vision Jesus set out for our lives.

Identifying your passions, skills, and positive qualities to serve the kingdom is vital in then being able to see where God wants to use, grow, or change them to reach the people you are surrounded by each day. We are called to ministry wherever we are, church, work, school, social circles, activities, and even very specific callings of ministry. There is no one way that ministry is cultivated in our lives each day. We are to live a life of daily mission, looking to operate from an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the people around us. Jesus surrendered His privileges of comfort and God-nature to live in complete surrender to the Father’s will for His life. He is the image of living on mission, and shows us how to become empty of ourselves and dependent on God; then the Holy Spirit can use us.

“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord: look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him. For the Lord comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.”

Isaiah 51:1-3

So, we as a Holy people, are meant to reach others without judgement with an open hand and invite them into relationship with God. We are to show that no matter who they’ve been or what they’ve done in their lives, that Jesus gave all so they could be washed clean of every iniquity. We aren’t to pass judgement or think of ourselves as higher than others but rather lower oursleves to the lowest and get on our knees and show others the path we’ve walked to get to God’s table. None of us got to the banquet table of God by being high and mighty, rather we accepted the tragic status of our sinful souls and recognized we need God’s grace and mercy. I think we forget that on the day to day and try to raise ourselves above others at times, when in reality, we are all residing in gross sinful bodies and have to constantly pursue a washing of our souls by the Holy Spirit on a daily basis. We have to allow ourselves to be constantly convicted by the Spirit so that we are constantly brought back down to a reality of understanding where we stand. The only reason we have the joy and understanding of relationship and communiion at God’s table is because of His ever flowing grace. We never earned it, so we need to be careful of thinking we are better or cleaner than others because of something we did. God’s dinner table is for everyone of every status and walk of life; our job is to see that we stay on our knees serving our God who wants us to reach the messiest of souls. Giving up our feelings and status so people can understand the humility we try to walk in, is the only way we can reach others, a complete walk of humility and bareness of our soul. Then individuals can see and understand how God sustains each of us every day. Jesus wants everyone at the table with Him, but people need to see Him as the host, not us. Let Him shine, and lower yourself, and let someone see who sustains you. Maybe then they will see Jesus can sustain them too.

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

1 Corinthians 1:4-9