Coffee With The Lord

There are parts of the Bible that challenge me deeply every time I read them! They are revolutionary – they fly in the face of conventional social norms. I don’t know about you, but every time I encounter them I have a deep feeling that what they talk about holds a secret of rich and largely undiscovered blessing!
Here’s the passage like that I encountered again this morning during “Coffee with the Lord”…
“One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees… He said to the man who had invited him, ‘When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.’” (Luke 14:12–14 ESV)
What Jesus said that day to the “ruler of the Pharisees” runs so counter to customary social practices! The normal practice for us is to carefully form our guest lists to impress – to influence – to nurture advantageous connections. You invite me for dinner as an expression of friendship – my responsibility is to invite you to dinner in return. Then, if things go well with the extension of friendship, we’ll make some decisions about who pays the next time around… we’ll probably decide to “go Dutch treat” (each person paying their own tab). We rarely invite “those who cannot repay us.” The social rule of the day is reciprocity… You invite me and them I’m expected to invite you. Once in awhile at Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Years we break out of the norm, but rarely as a matter of habit or normal practice. And I am convinced that as a result we miss a rich and satisfying blessing opportunity!
The question is… What if we are NEVER repaid? What if there is NEVER reciprocity? The answer is, we’ve just got to trust the Lord… He says, “You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just!” – the biggest, grandest, most prestigious banquet of all, “the Marriage Supper of the Lamb!” (Revelation 19:9)
I had parents who really worked hard to put this principle – this blessing opportunity – into practice. We NEVER spent a Christmas alone! Mom and Dad ALWAYS shared a wonderful Christmas or New Years meal at our house with someone less fortunate! (And we were cautioned… “You boys must let their children pay with your toys or they will be reclaimed and you will not have the privilege of playing with those toys in the future.”) Tough love, eh? But it was good spiritual training for the Bartel boys! As an aside… we NEVER knew who Dad would invite to share Sunday dinner at our house. New people who visited our church were at the very top of his invitation list (and Dad was a layman, not the preacher).
I think I know what you’re thinking… Dr. Bartel, do you have this one down? How good – how consistent – are you at practicing what this passage teaches? I gotta tell you, I’m still working on this kingdom principle! Every time I read about it in my Bible I am deeply challenged! I desire to discover the blessing opportunity it provides! I want payday – “the resurrection of the just” and “the Marriage Supper of the Lamb” to be extra special events in my “eternal life”!! Don’t you?!

Sometimes things come together in such a way that you find yourself exclaiming, “That had to be God orchestrated synergy! This morning during “coffee with the Lord” Sharon, my wife, and I experienced such a neat moment…

I had just finished reading the following verses from Psalm 119 when she said, “Honey you got to hear what the late Bill Bright wrote…

Here are the verses from Psalm 119…

“Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day… I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word… How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way.”

I just had underlined those words in my Bible when Sharon read me these words from Bill Bright’s little book “FIRST LOVE: Renewing Your Passion for God”…

“Please do not think you can rediscover your first love for God without immersing yourself in His Book. There is the place where we feel the Spirit’s touch most powerfully! That is where His great teachings for us are recorded. The words will seem to jump off the pages and galvanize your life. Begin a new, exciting study of the Bible… Go to a Christian bookstore and look for a volume that will jump-start your devotional times. Once again, think of the things you first did – the ‘flowers and candy’ of your early times with God. How did your practice His presence in your daily life back then?”

Excellent advice! I don’t know about you, but the daily devotional time I call “coffee with the Lord” has become the life-blood of my relationship with the Lord. It is a delightful time of reflection on God’s word, a time of worship, thanksgiving and fellowship with the Lord I look forward to every day – a “centering time” that helps put my entire day in perspective! “Oh how I love thy law! It is my meditation all the day” – it is the “flowers and candy” that brighten and sweeten the ordinariness of life!

You know what? I can’t remember a day in my life that the sun didn’t appear in the morning! (Even on a very cloudy day, when I couldn’t see the blazing globe we call the sun, I recognized the evidence of it because daylight dawned.) Same with the stars at night… they’re always there (and even when I can’t see them because of an overcast sky, I know they’ll reappear when the clouds clear away!) In fact, the reliability of the stars are tools that from times immemorial, navigators have used to fix their location and guide their journeys. The sun has never risen in the west in the morning and set in the evening in the east! The North Star has never been located in the South! They’re reliable – “firmly fixed” in the heavens…

The Psalmist put it this way…

“Forever, O LORD, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens. Your faithfulness endures to all generations; you have established the earth, and it stands fast. By your appointment they stand this day, for all things are your servants. If your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction. I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life… I have seen a limit to all perfection, but your commandment is exceedingly broad.” (from Psalm 119:89–96 ESV)

Here’s what I’m banking on… Just as the heavenly bodies are “firmly fixed” and we depend on that (even assuming that because of their regularity every day of our lives); God’s word… God’s faithfulness to His word, His character, and His people – is even more reliable! I’m depending on it! … Yup, just checked – the sun came up this morning over the rugged Rockies in Montana (Oh, and it was the east … and I’m pretty confident it will set in the west)!