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Don't Miss The Party, Don't Come Alone

Bert Pretorius

Don't Miss The Party, Don't Come Alone

October 18, 2015

Don’t miss the party! Don’t come alone… Luke 14:18 But they all began making excuses. One said, ‘I have just bought a field and must inspect it. Please excuse me.’ 19 Another said, ‘I have just bought five pairs of oxen, and I want to try them out. Please excuse me.’ 20 Another said, ‘I now have a wife, so I can’t come.’ (NLT) As God’s children, we have been mandated to manifest His heart to the world. It is our responsibility to invite anybody and everybody into the Kingdom of God. It is His heart that none should be excluded from the feast. We should action the heart of our Master with urgency and determination to see every person in our world saved. The parable Jesus shared in Luke 14:16-24 renders a very clear picture of how God wants us to go about reaching out to our worlds. In this parable Jesus makes it clear that the Master makes absolutely no distinction between rich and poor, healthy or sick or in any other way disadvantaged souls – He wants each and every one saved! It is our joyful duty to reach out and invite everyone we come across so as to fill the banquet. For this very purpose, God has empowered us through the Holy Spirit to boldly and with much love testify to the goodness and mercy of God. In the parable Jesus identifies the three most common excuses people use to justify their lack of responsiveness when it comes to answering the call of God: • Possessions (Luke 14:18): Sometimes we become so busy looking after or enjoying our possessions that it hinders our commitment to God. In this way the maintenance and enjoyment of money and things become a priority over our walk with God. • Work (Luke 14:19): Oxen represent work and our capacity to earn an income. Most people live in debilitating fear of losing their source of income and ultimately suffering lack. This fear has the potential to turn any normal person into a slave that has to put their means of generating an income above all else. In this way we find that important eternal factors, such as the time we invest in our families and also in the things of God are seriously compromised in pursuit of a career. • Family (Luke 14:20): Marriage, children and family are a blessing directly out of the hand of God. All these relationships should however have serving the Lord together at its very center in order for it to work the way God intended it. When we use the very thing God blessed us with to justify our lack of responsiveness to Him, our blessing becomes devoid of the blessing of God… In the parable Jesus told, the Master responded to the lack-luster attitude of the invited guests with anger. It is a priority for God to have the banquet filled. It is our mandate to not stop inviting until this has happened. We have a God-given responsibility to extend the invitation to everybody in our world, our neighbours, our colleagues our friends and family and then even those that would not normally be in our circle of association. Join us this week in passionate pursuit of souls – those in our direct communities as well as the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame, those that can be found next to the highways and behind hedges, those that are disregarded, marginalized, forgotten or abandoned, literally anybody from any walk of life that does not yet know Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. May it never be said of us that we excused ourselves from living the dream of God by failing to embrace the purpose of our Father and Master as our own…