You’re Invited to the Banquet

This past week was the 3rd week of the month in which I have multiple Truth@Work roundtables. For various reasons, meeting attendance was down in several of these meetings as well as other meetings across the nation. One particular morning, I was sitting in the room praying prior to members arriving and received what I felt was a bit of visual from The Lord. Let me explain.

You see, we live in a world that is messy. Over the past few weeks alone, I have had interactions with people who are in serious pain and suffering. People who are losing their businesses, have been hurt by a loved one, lost members of their family, fallen into the trap of sexual immorality, and various other life struggles. While it doesn’t make the best tagline up on a billboard, one of the things we say at Truth@Work is that we’re a “safe and confidential place to go and vomit”. Yes, the transparency we see is beyond what most ever could imagine and we turn our eyes upon Jesus to seek His wisdom on how to encourage one another.

So, as I am praying looking around the room, I begin to visualize a banquet table. My heart starts to grow heavy as I am realizing that I desire so much to have the spots around the table full such that we can love and encourage one another. Yet, people are distracted by life and don’t want to join us at the table. I was later reminded of the following passage in the Bible:

But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ (Luke 14:16-20 ESV)

I then began to realize that this is a glimpse of what Christ feels like. He has set the Great Banquet table for all to come and enjoy. He longs for His sons and daughters to all come and enjoy the table; however, few receive and embrace the invitation. Looking at it further through the lens of a Christ-follower, the banquet table can be viewed as our relationship with Christ. He longs to spend time with us, yet we tend to get distracted by the great deceiver. Let me elaborate on this a bit further.

While I don’t want to ever attempt to equate our roundtable meetings to the banquet table our Lord offers, I do believe that for Christians in business, it’s likely one of the best uses of time a member could spend over the course of their month. In a fun and loving way, we hold our members accountable by saying to them that this is a tithe of time and “do you think you can entrust your business to God for four hours a month”.

Taking it a step further, the past few months, we’ve been encouraging our members to take a half day retreat. The intent of this time is to unplug from all of the electronic devices and other distractions of this world. We recommend you simply take your Bible, a notepad, and allow The Lord to speak to you. For those who have chosen to participate, there has been great encouragement in their own personal time and corporate sharing of their experiences. Again, the emphasis here is on our true loves desire to spend time with us if we’ll only come and share at the banquet table.

Friends, while today’s message is presented in the context of Truth@Work, the challenge is to be directed at each and every one of us as Christ-followers. What distractions are you allowing in your life to stand in the way of growing your relationship with Christ? What can be so important that you wouldn’t take time each day to spend time growing the most important relationship you could ever have walking this earth.

If this message has challenged you and called you to action, we’d love for you to share in the comments below words of encouragement for our followers.

Have a Christ-centered day!