Good and Bad Invited?

The Parable of the Wedding Feast

Love how the Bible always flips us upside down in our thinking.  The parable of the wedding feast highlights 3 kinds of people; good, bad and those who show up in their own clothes.  Only the later are thrown out and yet even the "bad" people who had accepted the invitation and chose to be found "in Christ" (wearing the freely provided clothes) were accepted into the feast.   God looks down upon the sinner saved and sees only the righteousness of Christ.  In fact, he forgets our sins...."And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.” Hebrews 8:12

Matthew 22:10-13

So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.  But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.  Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

What is so wrong with showing up in our clothes?  It signifies trying to earn, based on our own righteousness, our own ticket into heaven.  In every way it belittles God.  He formed us from the dust of the ground and the very life that we have comes from Him (Gen 2:7).  To pursue our own apart from Him leads to our death (Gen 2:17).  It is a complete rejection of His perfect creation and plan for our life.  It is the original sin of "unbelief" and the parent of all remaining sin "pride".  "Unbelief" in that God has already provided all that we need in Him and "Pride" in that we, can by our own actions, achieve our own happiness, joy, significance, pleasure, peace, greatness, etc, etc....  Ultimately, the thinking that we can be our own god.  

Stop eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Instead, seek the knowledge of the Glory of God.  Be restored to life through BELIEF in Him (accept the wedding invitation), and be eternally changed by the washing of your sins (past, present and future) by allowing Him to place upon you that beautiful wedding garment.  Amen!  

Marriage - Beauty in an Earthquake

San Andreas Fault - Central California 

Earth quakes are the result of two very large plates moving in opposite directions. Tremendous energy is stored as the opposing and jagged surfaces become locked with one another preventing movement much like the gears of a machine.  Over time this energy builds until the entangled edges yield to one another.  This stored energy is released resulting in tremendous heat, friction and shaking.  

If the entangled edges were to stubbornly resist breaking under the opposing force of the other, eventually the two masses would completely destroy themselves because of the resulting pressure that would build.  But instead, one locked edge, submits and allows itself to be fractured in light of the opposing edge.  The opposing edges follow suit and allow themselves to be fractured.  In rapid succession, this starts a chain reaction which through a violent transfer of energy, wears down each opposing surface piece by piece, bit by bit until the surfaces become smooth.  What was stored energy heading for destruction, has now been transformed into similar smooth surfaces gently coming to rest upon one another.  

Differences:

Isn't it funny how God takes two people with significant differences and brings them together?  People who were raised differently, people with different life experiences, people with different values, people with different interests, people with different tastes, people with different love languages, people with different expectations, and people with different ideas about marriage.   In many ways, we come together in marriage much like two large plates with rough and jagged edges, destined to be locked in opposing directions with trapped energies.  

The Blessings in Friction:

I have come to believe and experience that God uses the differences that we find in our marriage to perform spiritual surgery in our own hearts.  The truth is that we bring into our marriages our prideful hearts and selfish motivations (our rough and jagged edges).  If we are honest, significant emotional energy is developed when two prideful hearts collide and try to impose our individual wills on one another.  My best evidence for this statement is in the observation of my own heart.  When my will and my desire comes into opposition with my spouse, an unrighteous anger can form within me.  I am too quick to miss that often this friction is working to expose within me, unfair expectations and selfish motivations.  More than not, I stubbornly resist the opposition and hold fast to my prideful and selfish way.  

However, if we are to humble ourselves, seize the opportunity to die to self and leave room for God to work in our heart, a renewing will to take place.  Allow God to use your spouse to reveal to you the rough and jagged edges.  God is not after our comfort in these areas but seeks to mold us in the likeness of Christ.  He is after crucifixion that we might experience the true power in a resurrected marriage relationship.  That His life might be manifested in us that His love can freely flow through and unto our spouse!  

Color - that we might see...

The law was given that we might "see" the truth of our own heart, not as something we must do to earn His.

Think about it, if you were born into a world where red was the only color, could you have any understanding of what red is?  No, because the color red can't be understood apart from ever seeing another color.  In fact, the word "color" couldn't even be understood.  But, if for example, someone were to show me the color blue, for the very first time I would understand both the word "color" and what red is.  Every color I would come across after that would provide a deeper understanding of what red was.  In this example, I would have lived in red all my life, yet did not "know" it.  

In the same way, the law helps to reveal to us the sin (our red) within our own heart.  Sin that we simply can't see until it is revealed.  When you "see" red for the first time, don't run towards the other colors, but instead, run towards the One who eternally covers and forgives red.  In Him, all the beautiful colors will begin to flow through you.

The Ultimate Test

1 John 4:19 - We love Him because He first loved us.

If you know anything about my family, you would know that animals are a huge part of it.  We have a standing joke that when someone asks how many chickens that we have, I inflate the number as large as possible and Allison and the girls deflate it.  They see new opportunities for hatching baby chicks and I see ever climbing chicken feed bills $$$.  BTW, the most brilliant marketing strategy that Farmers Service Co. ever came up with is live baby chicks in their stores.  Any idea what baby chicks do when they grow up?  Multiply faster than you can say "feed bag" and your going to need lots of those.  And guess who sells them?....

About 3 years ago, with the help of our dog Buster, my wife Allison found a tiny kitten in some brush along an old fence line that separates two fields on my cousins farm.  Skin and bones, this little guy couldn't have been more than a few weeks old.  It was immediately clear, with his really long hair, that he was not one of the local barn cats.  Knowing that he wouldn't survive on his own much longer, Allison and the girls took him in to nurse him back to health so that they could "find him a new home".  Well, find him a new home they certainly did, they just forgot to inform me, then, that we'd be the new home.  ;-)

Before long, OP (short for orange peal) was starting to put weight on and look much better.  This little guy was unlike any kitten we had ever seen.  He had a spunk and a wild playful streak that was almost schizophrenic.  He would go from calm to exploding like a lightening bolt in the blink of an eye, running around the house, ears pinned and groaning like a mad man.  Often he makes a noise that is a cross between a bark and a meow which earned him the nickname "Puppycat".  Yep, he goes by many names; OP, Opers, Puppycat, Orange Peel but my favorite is just plain "Stupid". Yep, that one drives the girls nuts.  In defense, they will pick him up, hold him close to my face and say "isn't he cute"? "Nope, not one bit" I usually respond followed by a long "awwww, yes he is, OP, don't listen to him"...

Not really sure how this started but OP likes to ride on Allison and the girls shoulders.  Often the three of them will playfully argue who gets to have him ride their shoulder.  Determining that it was not fair to just grab him from one another, they decided to let the cat choose who's shoulder he would like to ride.  To do this, the three of them would stand in a circle facing one another with OP in the middle held loosely so that he could move towards the victor.  To display his choice, OP would either use his front paws to reach upwards towards their particular shoulder or he would give the ultimate sign - a "head bump".  A head bump is when he flattens his ears, turns his head 90 degrees and rubs the top of his head along your face.  Oh when this happens, the room explodes with winners and losers.  The ultimate test - OP has chosen!  

What's of particular interest to me is the love and affection that the cat receives immediately following the ultimate test.  The winner walks off holding him on their shoulder, rubbing his head, holding theirs close to his and sharing what really is an intimate loving moment.  Truly a loving bond between an animal and a human.  This affection towards the cat by the girls is in direct response to the cat initially choosing to be affectionate toward them. 

This is not to say that the cat only receives affection after the ultimate test is played but that the actionable experience of being chosen and actively loved invokes something deep within ourselves that causes a reciprocating feeling towards the initiator.  This powerful principle can be seen even in a simplistic relationship between an animal and a human.  How much more was it designed to be experienced within human relationships, even more in our relationship with our creator.  It's not even something that we must give thought to but instead is hard wired in the depth of our soul.

Of course, we've all experienced this to some degree or another throughout our life.  I love the simple truth of God's word as this can be so easily seen in 1 John 4:19, "We love Him because He first loved us".   My favorite visual of this is the water and cup example, where we are the cup and His love is the water.  He fills our cup to overflowing, that we may lavish the excess back to Him and those he has placed in our life.  Unfortunately, the opposite is true too, that if our cup is empty, we seek to have it filled by any means possible, good or bad.  

It is part of His design, we were created with this organic desire to echo back such things as unconditional love, forgiveness, and affection.  How can we ourselves ever love to the capacity that we were designed to unless we've known and received His great love, forgive unless we've experienced His great forgiveness, show affection unless we've experienced His great intimacy, be vulnerable unless we've experienced our souls complete worth in Christ? 

The truth is that He has chosen you also.  No matter who you are, what you've done or what you will do in the future.  In fact, he chose you before the foundation of the world.  Get to know the author of love, let Him fill you to abundance that your cup my runneth over.  That in knowing and being the recipient of His great love, we too might be renewed to love in a brand new way...

A loving "head bump" from OP