To Be Within God’s Will: We Must:
Seek It—Obey It—Wait for It—Be Alert to What God is Doing!
“Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying,
(The Gospel According to Matthew 22: 1-3 & 11-14 NASB)
“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son.
And he sent out his slaves to call those who have been invited to the wedding feast,
and they were unwilling to come.
. . .
But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes,
and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?’
And the man was speechless.
Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness;
in the place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
For many are called, but few are chosen.”
Today is my little sister’s thirtieth wedding anniversary—YES 30 YEARS!
Happy Anniversary little sister!
You may know what I am about to write: Just yesterday, she was a kid playing with her dolls—OR—Just yesterday, she was a prom queen being escorted by her-then-boyfriend-now-husband of thirty years. “Time is tricky.” Just this past weekend, I heard another say these words and immediately agreed deep in my being because, time does have a way of slipping up on us, even while we are walking within it (time).
Thus, as we re-read today’s passage depicting Jesus’ parable about a wedding ceremony and feast, we may also find ourselves remembering a similar wedding from the Old Testament, one that God instituted from the beginning with His Covenant Promise.
Go with me back to the beginning, back to the time of Father Abraham who waited twenty-five years for God’s Promise to come. Get that. He waited 25 YEARS! From the moment God walked Abram out to gaze up and attempt to count the stars in the sky until the moment Sarai & Abram were in grandparent age, time had passed. YEARS of WAITING! I struggle to wait one full year or one month or one week or even one day. There’s a lesson there.
In Abraham’s faithfulness, God gave to him a son, Isaac, who grew to become a man. In that day, sons took wives during their teenage years, but not Abraham’s son. Isaac was forty years old before Abraham sent his servant to their home country to find a wife for his son. Maybe there’s a lesson there as well.
Abraham’s son Isaac—
- Forty years old and wifeless.
- Forty years of waiting for his dad to find him a wife.
- Forty years of knowing of God’s Covenant Promise given to his dad, to Father Abraham.
- Forty years is a long time.
In the chapter in Genesis where we read of Abraham choosing a wife for his son Isaac, the LORD works in His perfect timing, giving us sixty-seven verses to digest, to receive His point. Maybe God knows we are slow learners and that we need so much verbiage to understand the message we need to be taught.
- The servant of Abraham was sent on a long journey, all the way from Canaan (the Land of Promise) back to Abraham’s home country.
- The servant of Abraham was sent to find & to bring a wife for Isaac, Abraham’s son.
- The servant of Abraham was sent to retrieve a woman who would birth sons that would carry-out the Promise of God given to Abraham as he stood before the starry sky that long-ago night.
- The servant of Abraham was sent because Abraham knew Isaac’s wife must not come from the land of the Canaanites, a people of unbelief.
- The servant of Abraham was a man of faith. We know because once he reached the land where he was sent, he paused to pray.
- The servant of Abraham saw the hand of the LORD at work as the LORD answered his prayer!
- The young Rebekah responded exactly, drawing out the water, taking water to the servant’s animals, and willingly leaving her family to go to a new place, to the Land of Promise.
There are so many lessons the LORD is revealing today—
- It is never too early to begin praying for our un-born children’s spouses, asking God to lead them to a man or woman of God.
- It is never too early to begin praying for our children’s spouses, asking God to lead them to a man or woman of God.
- It is never too early to begin praying for our grandchildren’s spouses, asking God to lead them to a man or woman of God.
- It is never too early to begin praying!
- It is never too early to begin praying for someone we love to come to know Christ!
- It is never too early to receive Jesus as our Savior!
- It is never too early to humble ourselves and to accept Jesus!
- It is never too early to enter the Covenant Promise with God, to become the bride of Christ!
Happy 30th Anniversary little sister.
- God has granted you a godly spouse, a man of God.
- God has granted you two daughters who have given their hearts to Jesus.
- God has granted to your two daughters’ godly husbands.
- God has granted to one of your daughters two children: a daughter and a son.
Truly, it is never too early to begin praying for our grandchildren’s spouses, asking God to lead them to a man or woman of God.
[Have this attitude to—]
- “Do nothing from selfishness
- or empty conceit.
- but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves;
- do not merely look out for your own personal interests.
- but also for the interests of others.
Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus,
who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.
Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
(The Letter of Paul to the Philippians 2: 3-11 NASB)
To Be Within God’s Will: We Must:
Seek It—Obey It—Wait for It—Be Alert to What God is Doing!