good appetite

The Wild Weekend of YEC

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

I’m tired. It’s been a hectic, crazy 48 hours, but it has been so much more than worth it. I volunteered again for the Youth Evangelism Conference at the Municipal Auditorium in downtown Nashville. The atmosphere was electric, with close to 10,000 students and adults in attendance, anticipating what God was going to do next.

Well, God didn’t disappoint. I saw lots of students going forward, making decisions for Christ, not just being satisfied with playing religious games but willing to give everything to follow Christ.

One thing I remember from the weekend was the speaker talking from Jeremiah how God boiled down his people’s rebellion into two things: forsaking the fountain of living water and trying to quench their thirst from broken wells. They gave up the living water to drink mud.

The solution to my struggles and your struggles isn’t to try harder or to be more committed. The issue isn’t about effort. It’s about appetite. What are we feeding on? Is it everything the world says will fulfull us? Those things may taste good at first, but they leave us unsatisfied and still hungry and thirsty.

Or are we seeking after Living Water and the Bread of Life? For me, am I cultivating a good appetite for God and letting him fill me up so that I’m too full for anything else?

The answer is to feast on Christ. Let him be enough. Let him be your strength, your power, your supply, your joy, your reason for living. Anything else that you devote your life to or prize highly is an idol. Anything other than Jesus that tells you that it will take care of you no matter what is an idol.

I’m sure that I heard this somewhere else, so I can’t take credit for it. How do you defeat an idol? You starve it. You don’t give it any time or a affection. Instead, you give all that to God who deserves it in the first place.

I went to serve and be a blessing and once again found myself blessed and served. I was challenged and motivated to hunger and thirst after God more than ever before.

I hope that’s your desire, too.

 

Invited

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

(This was largely inspired by a sermon I heard today at Fellowship Bible Church. I highly recommend checking out the podcast on their website, fellowshipnashville.org.)

“You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat” (Matthew 5:6).

Imagine the most lavish, ornate dinner party ever thrown. Call it a banquet or a gala if that helps.

Or if that’s not your cup of tea, imagine the biggest, wildest rave ever thrown with a top-notch dj and a lineup of great bands.

Imagine the guest list. You would think it would be full of celebrities and moguls and people who are listed in places like People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People or Time magazine’s 50 Most Powerful People or Forbe’s 50 Most Wealthiest People in the World.

It’s not. If you look at the list closely enough, you see the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame, the outcast, and the orphan. You see people that ordinarily wouldn’t even be let in the door.

Look closer. You see your name and my name there. We’ve been invited.

That’s the idea behind Jesus’ parable. The original guest list accepted but then backed out at the very last minute. So the King authorized the servants to go find the least of these and bring them in. Then he told them to go into the highways and byways and find people and compel them to come.

That’s our job as believers. Invite people to the best feast with the best food they’ll ever eat. We’re to compel them to come. Not in the sense of holding them at gun point, but to do all that is in our power to get them to come.

Jesus Himself told us what was on the menu. He said things like “I am the Bread of Life” and “Whoever drinks of me will never be thirsty again.” He’s not only the one inviting us, He’s the feast. He is the party.

We say, “You can come as you are. You don’t have to get cleaned up first. You don’t have to bring anything other than just your appetite”

That’s the Kingdom of God– a party like you’ve never seen offered to people like you and me who can’t seem to ever get their acts together and always seem to make stupid choices and dumb mistakes.

The sad part is that the most religious people and the most holier-than-thou types won’t be there. Jesus said matter of factly to the Pharisees that they wouldn’t even get a taste of the banquest because they rejected the offer a second time.

The best part is that for people like you and me, the offer still stands.

Will you come? Will you invite someone else?