He will come in and dine with us…but what then? Is that all there is? Sitting and dining for all time? Or does dinner-time conversation lead us to live our lives differently the next day?
I’d like to think that Jesus, at dinner, invites us to go out the next day. Almost a play-date if you will. He wants to get us out of ourselves to see what else He has going on. Perhaps to introduce us to other people He has dined with already, or maybe to get us to make friends with those around us who have never shared a meal with Him so that we can encourage them to do so when He next comes knocking.
He wants to get us out for exercise, to work out what He has put in during our time together. He wants us to personally experience where else He is at work. To see how else He is countering the enemies’ strategies in ways far more genius than I can imagine. And to quote a very old Nike ad, “You won’t know unless you go.”
If we always sit around the table, taking in and taking in, all we become are spiritually obese. And the longer we take it in without working it out, the more worthless to the cause of God we become. Not because we don’t want to be out there, but because we enjoy the feast far too much and simply want to stay at the table and continue to gorge ourselves. But to what purpose?
If I never put into practice all of the spiritual richness I have been able to ingest, it simply goes to my spiritual waist…and that my friends, is truly a spiritual waste.
Dining in is where it starts. But going out is His command. Perhaps we need a few less conferences and training events and a few more spiritually exercise-inducing activities. Perhaps we need to keep that date with Jesus each morning and go out excited to see where He is at work today and simply join Him there. To work ALONG SIDEJesus, instead of working FOR Jesus would perhaps be the ultimate spiritual exercise.
So please—open the door when He knocks. Dine with Him—daily. But don’t stay at the table. There is a world already alive where God is working. Ask Him to guide you to see what He wants you to see, to be in the spot where HE wants you to be, and then roll up your sleeves and take your place beside Jesus and work there to help rescue a dying world.
