Beyond Your Wildest Dreams
One
The Wedding Feast
Jesus tells a parable in Luke chapter 14 of a King who prepared a magnificent banquet and sent out invitations. The terrible thing was, people didn’t want to come. They all sent their RSVPs with “regretfully decline.” They all gave their excuses.
One said, “I just bought a field which I need to inspect. But I hope the party goes great!” One said, “I just bought a pair of oxen, and I need to look them other. Appreciate the invite, though!” The third said, “I just got married. So sorry not to be able to make it!”
It’s an amazing thing. So many people do not want what God is offering. So many people are not interested in Heaven. They’re not interested in God. They’re not interested in an eternal ecstatic celebration! Why on earth is that?
Two
Can’t Picture What We’ve Been Invited To
We always have a difficult time picturing things we haven’t experienced yet. That’s especially true of Heaven.
Actually, since the heart of Heaven is union with God, that makes it even harder to imagine. We can’t picture God in His full glory. We can’t even conceive of what, exactly, God is, and what, exactly, participation in Trinitarian life will look like.
So we say, “No thanks! Not right now! I have other things to think about! Lands and oxen and family stuff. You know how it is! A lot going on, a lot going on. But thanks for thinking of me! Maybe later!”
We put off the path to happiness. We refuse God’s invitation to draw closer to Him and the eternal celebration he’s prepared for us.
Three
We Can Never Imagine Goods We Haven’t Yet Experienced
We human beings are generally completely incapable of imagining great goods we haven’t yet experienced.
A baby in the womb can’t imagine colors and sounds, or the sound of his mother’s voice, and the beauty of her smile as she looks down at him. A five-year-old can’t imagine the of parenthood. So we very, very often just cling to a good that we have now, or we pine nostalgically for a good we used to have or maybe we just try to get more of what we’ve been given already. But it’s really hard for us to open up to a radically new kind of experience, especially if it demands that we mature, that we sacrifice, that we allow ourselves to be purified in order to attain it.
Why do you think so many people are afraid of marriage and family? It’s for the same reason that the rest of us are afraid of God making us saints. Because we know it’s going to really stretch us in painful ways and we can’t really imagine the payoff.
But if we look at what God has already done, it should make us more willing to trust that whatever suffering He has in store for us, whatever we need to give up, it’s going to be worth it for what God is offering.
Four
Trust in God’s Generosity
Everything you have been given, and everything that has been taken away from you, is for the sake of preparing you for God’s ultimate gift: Himself.
Every gift you’ve been given and every gift that’s been taken away from you is the invitation to the wedding banquet. You accept that invitation by accepting both gifts and losses at God’s hands. This is the great principle Job presented to his wife, “Shall we accept good things from God, but not evil?”
We accept good fortune from God and misfortune because both are the invitation to prepare for the eternal wedding feast. You’ll notice, if you look over the course of your life, that whenever you have accepted both blessing and misfortune without complaint, without resentment, God has always followed both with greater blessings than you could have imagined. Just as Job ended his life with greater blessings after his trials than before.
If God has given you gifts, given you lands, or oxen, or a good marriage, then praise God!
But if He takes those things away or takes anything else away, then praise Him just the same.
That is your personal invitation to eternal happiness and you accept that invitation by trusting submission to the things God allows to happen in your life. Because you know experience has taught you that greater blessings are in store for you.
Five
God as the Ultimate Blessing
All the blessings and all the trials God sends us are tending towards the one supreme blessing: Union with Him. And because we can’t imagine what that’ll look like, or even conceive of it, we’re tempted to decline the invitation in favor of more familiar goods.
To really accept the invitation, to really welcome blessings or trials as precursors to the greatest happiness, to actually get excited about the wedding party
For that to happen, we have to actually desire that supreme Good – God Himself. That requires a special grace from God.
We will never fully trust God, and so we will never be fully docile to His program for our lives, unless we desire the ultimate goal it’s all leading to.
So, dear Lord, we are sorry we do not love you as we should. We are sorry that the thought of growing closer to you doesn’t excite us the way it should. Please give us a desire for you, so that we can enthusiastically respond to every invitation you send us, every circumstance of life that comes our way. So that we can delight forever with you at your wedding banquet, in your glorious home.