Leaders

P 2388 His will is always our priority.

/ DVH

Matthew 22:1-14 “Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’“But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.”

“Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not DESERVE to come. So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests. “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless. “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

At this time, Jesus was preaching to the spiritual leaders and the crowds about a King who was holding a wedding feast. Astonishingly, at that moment, the Master of that feast was standing right in front of all of them inviting them all to think differently about God Himself. I think the Lord was giving the religious leaders who were listening, a chance to understand, that although they thought they were so right with God, they were actually rejecting Him in favour of their own more self-important made-up chosen ways! They are the people saying NO in this parable! They are the invited guests who are too busy with their own lives to respond to the honour. He is saying, if they are not careful, the little people, the so-called bad, less-spiritual people that they look down upon, will actually be the ones who end up at this feast – not them. Because the religious people will exclude themselves.

All of these different types of spiritual leaders had presumably come to check out His theology. They enjoyed a prominent spiritual position before God and man, and they were revered because of their place in that society. In His parable, the Lord is saying that they’ve used their privilege to avoid going to the feast – even though they had the invitation first. Because what they wanted, and deemed important, was more important than honouring their agreement. The Master of the feast is always more important than anybody invited to it! However, these men were so entrenched in what they had embraced, they couldn’t see Him and spent all their time trying to catch Him out.

Now, if anyone ought to know about the things of God it should be them! These guys studied the truth for a living … yet they still missed it when the Truth was standing in front of them. They did not see the value of their invitation to be His chosen people, and they blew it off. Even though the food, everything needed was all ready for them, and the Master of the feast would have to waste it … they still said no. Their religious ideas had grown so big, so all encompassing and powerful, that they thought their theology was more important to them than what He was saying. Just to be clear, the feast is actually God Himself, knowing Him … and He was standing right in front of them. But their pride in what they knew, said they knew better. They were too greatly invested in proving Him wrong and themselves right!

Now, you and I — who were never going to be a part of that elite group without Christ’s sacrifice — have been temporarily given their place. Let’s be clear, MAN cannot dictate the terms of any agreement between God and us. Almighty God does. And if He says ‘come’ we come – and if He says ‘GO,’ we go! Otherwise we are acting like we are in charge and we are not. Actually, when we think we are in charge, satan takes advantage of us! As outsiders, we have now been compelled by His love to be His honoured guests at that bridal supper. He personally sent the Holy Spirit to bring us in! We’ve been given brand new bridal garments washed in Jesus’ blood – because our own clothes will not do. 🙌

Our Heavenly Father God wants His house full of people who are glad to be included, and they are rejoicing because they know they are so blessed to be asked to His feast. In the mean time …let’s not ever forget how easily we can exclude ourselves, like these religious men in Matthew did. We must not use good-sounding excuses … they show the Lord our hearts, and reveal our lesser priorities. We’ve been invited to live the Way Christ lived this life. He is our priority. We must not ever make our personal priorities bigger than His. His free Grace is not permission to do what WE want.👋🏻

P 2156 Our children belong to all of us.

/ DVH

The Western world has very firm ideas about how to raise kids. No smacking or corporal punishment of any kind. You are supposed to reason with them, or maybe bargain with them, and/or bribe them. Well that’s not in my bible! And it could be why we have teenagers rampaging about, doing things that are not good for the community or themselves. Many kids are being left alone daily by their parents in favour of a bigger TV, car or house. Kids need love and attention, first. 

The first point I want to make today is this: nobody’s flesh is reasonable. Even children are little bags of ‘gimme gimme, I want want … ’ We are the adults, we need to carefully choose what is actually good for them. Meanwhile despite public opinion, kids are not basically good – left to their own devices they can create havoc. While I agree that we should not thump the daylights out of a child to govern its behaviour – because when you do that you introduce fear – we definitely need to do much better than we’ve been doing. Toothless warnings don’t work. If we don’t discipline our children then rebellion takes over. “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of discipline [correction administered with godly wisdom and lovingkindness] will remove it far from him.”  Proverbs 22:15. 

My best advice is first of all, asap, introduce kids to Jesus. We desperately need people prepared to dedicate their lives to raising the next generation for the Lord – people who are called by God, to witness to and share with kids. And then we must deliberately DISCIPLE them. Teach them daily how to follow Him. It can be helpful to remember that you are teaching individual children. Blanket statements are not as effective – the Lord Jesus sees individuals so we should too. He knows their names! When you have a bunch of kids together you will quickly find none of them are the exactly same. Love the kid in front of you like it is the only one. And BTW, don’t typecast them either. Nobody is all one thing.

Back when I was an active parent, I learnt that some children need strong discipline, and others barely need a feather… plus a whole range of stuff in between. So you really do need to know what is what, before you sail forth and do them harm! Discern the child’s nature as well as the reason for its behaviour. Back to my point – our children belong to all of us – this world around us will not profit if we only care about OUR kids. There are too many orphan-spirited kids in our world today. Children get into mischief and trouble without supervision. We are so busy saving the whales, etc. we’ve forgotten, first of all! –  We need to save our children! They won’t magically arrive as mature adults – they need direction and supervision.

I want to share a story from my own history. When my son was much younger, he used to play with a kid who lived up the road. That kid was a bit of a bully. One day this boy picked up a big lump of concrete and threw it at my son’s head and hit him on the temple. There was blood everywhere … I calmed my boy down and fixed his head, then, my temper took my feet out of the front door. I’m pretty sure I was NOT thinking very Christian thoughts at the time … I imagine I left my Christianity in the sock drawer! I was so furious, I marched up the street and banged on the front door of the other boy’s house. 

This boy’s father was often home and the man was a huge fellow.  Sadly, I can’t tell you why he was home – I didn’t know them well enough. At the time I was shaking like a leaf with anger … as well as quite a bit of fear chucked in. However, when he opened the door I still shouted at him. I told him to control his son or else … I have no idea what I was going to do about it if he didn’t BTW! The guy just kept laughing at me and slurping his beer – I truly don’t think I had much of an impact on him at all. However, he must have told his son to stop playing with mine and there were no further incidents. 

Recently, I’ve begun to realise that when you are under pressure, what is really INSIDE you – comes OUT. And the only kid I cared about that day was mine! At the time I was not even remotely concerned about the poor kid who had a beer-in-his-hand-father-drinking-away-at-two-o’clock-in-afternoon!  I’ve repented, but I don’t ever really remember even apologising to the guy nor did I speak again to that boy. I just sort-of kind-of avoided them after that. I let my embarrassment and pride win.

My point is this, these kids are the future, and it is unrealistic to label badly behaved kids as: ”Somebody else’s problem,” like somehow we have no part in them. Undeserved kindness has a profound influence on kids, I know it did on me when I was young – I can actually remember the names of people who were kind to me. Punishment may become necessary, but it needs to be tempered with wisdom and mercy. Psalms 127:3 says: “Children are God’s love-gift; they are heaven’s generous reward.” Matthew 18:10:“Be careful that you not corrupt one of these little ones. For I can assure you that in heaven each of their guardian angels always see the face of My heavenly Father.” Mark 9:36&37 “Then He had a child come and stand among them. He wrapped the child in His arms and said to them.“Whoever welcomes a little child in My Name welcomes Me.”

I have learnt the hard way that when things get difficult we can easily forget what we believe – in favour of simply taking care of our own. We all live on the same planet and we need to remember that today’s children are tomorrow’s leaders. This world’s children belong to us all.  We simply must care enough to help them find their true selves in Christ. 👋🏻