The Banquet

I had a dream early this morning.  It was one that was intended as a message.  It all started with a banquet, the largest I had ever seen.  It was at a country club, and the table settings were amazing and expensive.  The food had not been served yet.  The table itself stretched out of sight to the far end of what seemed to be and endless room.  There were a lot of empty places at this table, and there were a lot of conversations.  I was facing the windows which lined the wall, and I was three seats from the right end of the table.  I was sitting next to a man with a shaved head, about in his late twenties or early thirties.  He seemed like the biker type.  He wore a gray tank top and jean shorts and sandals.  To his right was a woman who was having a conversation with my wife and her friend, all three, oblivious to me and the man.

I started to have a conversation with this man, and I felt really at ease in his presence.  Suddenly, I realized that it was Jesus.  I don't mean that as it was just a some guy in a dream claiming to be Jesus.  I mean it was Him!  I knew it without a doubt as I have been in His presence before.  (see last blog entry)  I could feel it throughout my being.  I was excited.  We were joking, laughing, and talking, and all I could do was ask Him things.  I wanted to know more about Him.  I could tell that He didn't want me to tell anyone else who He was because He had wanted them to come to Him.  You would figure that I would ask him to cure my ailments or solve my financial problems, but no, I just wanted to get to know Him as my friend.  After all, you can't be friends with someone you don't really know.  It was just an amazing vision.

Well, when I had woken from the dream I felt great, and prayed for interpretation.  This is what the messages in the dream were.  First of all, everyone, and I mean everyone in the world, was invited to this banquet.  This is the same with God.  He invites everyone to be with Him throughout eternity.  He sent His only son, Jesus, to die for our sins so we could do that through Him.  Then there were the empty places at the table.  Not everyone accepts this gift of salvation.  We have free will, and we have to make that choice for ourselves.  God gave free will to everyone because He loves us all that much.  Then there was the fact that I was spending time getting to know Jesus while everyone else were distracted by their own conversations.  We can be like that.  We allow the world in general to take away the time we have to get to know Jesus as our friend.  We are distracted by jobs, worries, illness, disease, other people, friends, family members, vacations, money problems, and the list goes on and on.

I'll leave you with a few questions that you have to decide the answers for yourself.  Have you really accepted the invitation?  Have you found a church home?  Do you know someone who has chosen not to accept the gift of salvation, and what can you do?  Have you invited someone to church or to a church event?  Have you spent time in prayer, no matter how short a time that is?  Have you read the Bible?  Have you done anything like a Bible study or a daily devotional to get to know Jesus better and have Him as your friend, Lord, and Savior?  Have you shown anyone what the love of Jesus really is by example?

The Eyes and the Heart

When I was a teenager, I started playing keyboard by ear.  I could hear a song to the point where it stayed in my head, and I was able to reproduce it on the keyboard.  I remember one time, I had finished playing My Heart Will Go On, from the movie Titanic, and a friend of the family had asked me when I had learned the song.  My reply was "Just now."  I had played it note for note without a single mistake just then, for the first time.  I had even won a talent show when I was in the 4-H for my own composition, The Horror Hymn.

However, I'm not here to toot my own horn.  I know a lot of people who are way better than I am.  One day, I had gone over a friend's house and played some songs on his Korg synthesizer.  He asked if I always played with my eyes closed.  It was something that I had never thought about before.  I did tend to close my eyes while playing songs.  The reply was simple.

"Sometimes the eyes can deceive what the heart knows."

When I play music, I have to feel it in my heart.  Sometimes by looking at my hands, I mess up.  It's like my eyes are telling my hands to do the wrong thing.  However, if I listen to my heart, I don't.  It wasn't until recently that I had realized that the same quote that I had said many years before applies to being a Christian.  Too many times we allow what we see on the surface to stop us from being true Christians.

How many times have we not approached someone in church or on the street, or anywhere to share the love of God just based on someone's appearance?  Doesn't God love them too?  Shouldn't we let them know it?  Shouldn't we be the examples?  How many who are lost can be found if we share in the love of God?

We can never know the heart of another.  There are always questions.  Does this person know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior?  Does this person even know about the love that led to the sacrifice for our sins so we may have eternal life?  Do we approach, or do we judge?  Do we welcome, or do we exclude?

Think about it.  Can we be effective as Christians if we shun someone because they didn't "dress properly for church?"  What is the proper "dress code" for church?  If you don't know the answer to the question, read your Bible.  Jesus came to those as they were, not as they should be.  He had spent more time with the outcasts of society than with the "in" crowd.  The Pharisees were the ones that the society held up as the pious, as the examples of what it meant to be righteous.  Jesus was quick to point out that they weren't referring to them as "whitewashed tombs" or that they clean the outside of the cup but keep the inside dirty.  He had called them a "brood of vipers."  They were only concerned with what was on the outside and boasted of their false righteousness.

Who do you think should join us as fellow Christians in the adoptive family of God?  Who does God want there?  Everyone!  God loves everyone.  Do not let your eyes deceive you.  Your heart knows.  Use it.

Written on November 2, 2009

"I got to go. My dad is calling me."

Funny how the significance of that statement took me ten years to realize its truth. Ten years ago tonight, those were the last words that my mom had spoken to my dad. Immediately after, her heart stopped, and she breathed her last breath. The medical staff tried to revive her, but failed. Dead from sepsis, brought on by gangrene, a complication of her diabetes.

I had arrived well after that moment. There was her body. A tube still protruding from her mouth. One less leg than I had last seen her when she was alive. Quite a different image of the woman I knew for my 29 years.

My mom had grown up in a large, poor family. Her mother was an abusive alcoholic. Her dad, the only one who had shown her love. He was golden gloves boxer, and he taught her how to fight. He had died when she was 18, and her aunt took over raising her at that point. Her hobby as a teen, she had told me, was beating up Pagan motorcycle gang members. She was tough, a warrior, and she expected her son to be tough too.

She had succeeded in that. For me to even admit that I'm in pain, it would be considered crippling for most people. Even after that time I was hit by a car at 16, I had walked home, pushing my mangled bike for blocks while bleeding to get back home. I have chronic pain that most people don't know I have. I just deal with it, forgetting it's there most of the time.

However, this isn't about me. It's not even about my mom on the 10th anniversary of her going home. You see, I was driving home today and had an epiphany about my mom's final words. When it hit me, I couldn't stop crying. Yes, I do miss her, and maybe that is part of the reason, but most of it was joy. It was like the meaning of those words were hidden from me for ten years. Then it hit me at that moment. The words spoken, and the truth behind them. Put together as one for the first time. Can you see the meaning?

For ten years I had gone on thinking that she was talking about her dad. I thought it was her dad, who had loved her as his child, who was calling her. Then I thought about it, and it became clear. How many times have we said, "Our Father, who art in Heaven?" The word that had been used by Jesus was aba or abba, depending on how you want to spell it. It's a more affectionate term, like daddy.

Jesus had mended that relationship between us and our Heavenly Father. We can call Him "Dad" now through Jesus. He was calling her home. Personally. Yes, PERSONALLY. We can have this personal relationship with God now. There it was; put before me. So obvious now. God in the flesh came down from Heaven to sacrifice Himself for us. It's not us as a collective. It's us as individuals, by name.

"I got to go, my dad is calling me."

Someday, He wants to call us all home, to be with Him, to be loved by Him, for eternity.

Amen (So be it!)