Your Table
Consider:
God’s Christmas Company reappears over and over and over again in Scripture. The Bible contains His divine revelation for us, but episodes throughout include our interpersonal relationships and extending invitations of the gospel to the disadvantaged and distant people in our world.
BUT…
The Messiah’s not done! Which means God isn’t finished either! Believers during this holiday season of 2019 continue the story of redemption God began and we continue inviting people into it. Our anticipation, our Advent, requires connecting with the same people God welcomed, setting the stage for the arrival of the Messiah.
Read Revelation 22:12-16. Who is coming soon?
Read Revelation 22:17. Who says, “Come!”?
Explore:
Have you taken the free gift of the water of life? (For more information on the water of life, you can read the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John 4. In fact, John 4:10 specifically speaks of “living water.”)
If you haven’t tasted this living water, believe me, it will quench your thirst! You can learn more about this free gift by reading John 4 and then ask someone you know who is already living, I mean really living, with evidence of this free gift. If you don’t know anyone like that, email me!
If you’ve accepted this free gift, is your soul chanting along, “Come!”? Do you await the Messiah with anticipation?
While you wait, let me encourage you to consider the company God invited into the Messiah’s birth. Invite God to reveal more of Himself to you. Invite those in a close relationship so you can humbly bless them through the Spirit. Invite the disadvantaged, that they might encounter God and rush to tell their story. Invite the distant to be drawn in to worship the Messiah and be forever changed.
Pray:
Thank God for showing us who to host. Ask Him to reveal more of Himself to you and bring the dear, the disadvantaged, and those people who are spiritually distant to your mind consistently for prayer and promptings in ministry. Thank Him for the promise of the coming Messiah and let Him know you are anxiously waiting!
Lana thank you for these prompts to lean into the Word of God more deeply.
They have caused me to pause and dig a little deeper.
Sadly I don’t live with the anticipation of Jesus’ second coming. I don’t let it propel me with the urgency that Jesus says it is coming. He says it is coming quickly, by surprise, without delay.
That I am a shepherd in my story and that He’s called me to tell the good news to all of what I have experienced in Him.
Father forgive, Spirit burn this urgency upon my brain and soul. Let it be the driving force of every day.