Stop inviting God to be with you
When was the last time you asked or invited God to be with you as you approached a certain situation, conversation, or activity? How many times have you heard a preacher talk about "inviting Jesus into your heart"?
It's time to stop.
The notion of inviting God into our day or even our life paints a poor picture of the Triune God and our relationship with him. We don't invite God. Well, we do, but we shouldn't. If I invite God to be with me, then it's my initiative, my work, my effort.
The story of Scripture reveals a different perspective. I don't invite God to be with me. I accept God's invitation to be with him. If God invites me to be with him, then it is his initiative and his work, and it becomes a free gift to me.
Who reached out to Adam and Eve?
Who reached out to Elijah on Mount Carmel?
Who sent prophets to woo a people back to God?
Who emptied himself through incarnation in order to deliver in the flesh the invitation to be with God?
Who will return to redeem creation out of bondage so that we can be united forever with the Creator?
In all these situations, God took the first step. God extended the invitation. God reached out. God pursued. That is the good news of the Gospel.
So instead of saying, "God, I invite you [or ask you] to be with me as I..." let us say, "God, I accept your invitation to be with you as I..." In fact, I've come to see salvation not as me inviting God into my heart, but as me accepting God's invitation to be with him.
It takes the pressure off of us, perhaps from thinking we need to "clean up a bit" or be worthy in some way, before asking God into our day, heart, or life. He was already extending his hand to us before the thought of communing with him even entered our mind.
The Triune God exists in perfect love and community. In and of himself, he is completely complete. But he also, in a sense, chooses to be "incomplete" without you. By that I mean he chooses relationship (which requires an other). He chooses love (which also requires an other). He chooses Creation (which is the other). He desires for us to participate in perfect love and community, and he invites us to participate with him in that already existent love and community.
I love the last verse of Psalm 23 as written in the New Living Translation:
Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me
all the days of my life,
and I will live in the house of the Lord
forever.
Did you catch that key word? Pursue. That is not something that requires my initiative or invitation. It is something to which I respond. The pursuit is on, whether we want it or not. The only question is whether we will yield and say "Yes" to his invitation that has pursued us our entire life, and continues to pursue us every moment of every day.
In other words, saying yes is not a one-time thing, but a daily, moment by moment thing.
PAUSE and REFLECT: Let's end where we began: when was the last time you invited God to be with you?
It's time to stop.
What would it be like for you to say to God, "I accept your invitation today to be with you, just as I am, and I trust that the mere fact of me being with you will change me to be more like you."
The invitation is always there, it's always free, and it will never give up following you wherever you go.
So say yes.
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Photo by Marco Bianchetti on Unsplash