'The Invitation to the Banquet'
Jesus tells a story in the Bible about a rich guy who had a banquet. The rich guy invited lots of people, but most of them made excuses and didn't come, so the guy sent his servants to invite other folks -- but this time he invited the unlikely ones, people who normally don’t get invited to anything, folks like me. The message he had for this new round of people was simple: “There’s more room.” I think life is like that banquet Jesus talked about. I think God sends out His messengers to tell everybody there’s plenty of room and there’s free food and conversation and adventure and a wonderful and generous host who has invited us by name.
Can you even believe that Jesus would invite people to a banquet and they wouldn’t want to show up? When we accept Jesus’ invitation to show up to life, we get to do life with Him.
A couple of other things happen when we accept Jesus’ invitation to participate with Him in life. Obstacles that seem insurmountable aren’t. Impediments that we believe disqualify us don’t. When we show up to participate with Jesus in the big life, we’re participating with the very Person who made life in the first place. He asks us how we are and invites us to get better -- together with Him.
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Note - for 5th Grade Parents:
The Lesson Focus for our class on June 16th was: Through Jesus we can come to God. This is the first of many lessons that will present the idea of committing your life to Jesus, as Savior and Lord.
The excerpt from Loves Does summarizes a story Jesus told which is recorded in Matthew 22: 1-14, and uses that as the foundation for giving an invitation -- in our class we use the phrase Come to Jesus to express that invitation.
We explain that by saying that your child would believe that Jesus died on the Cross and then rose from the dead on the third day after His death, and that he/she would trust that what Jesus did paid the price for our sins to be forgiven, and that they want that forgiveness. They are willing to confess and turn away from their own sins, and agree to serve Jesus, their Lord, from now on. When they decide that they will trust in what Jesus did, the action that they take after confessing, repenting, and declaring the Lordship of Jesus, is to be baptized in water. We have found that it is important to help our preteen children understand the commitment they are making and the purpose of baptism by having them attend a Baptism class, which is held at the church. There is a new class held every few months.
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