Tag: bible

Wedding Banquet For All

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The Parable of the Wedding Feast

Matthew 22: 1-10 ESV

22 And again Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying, 2 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, 3 and sent his servants[a] to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come. 4 Again he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, “See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.”’ 5 But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. 7 The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. 8 Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. 9 Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.’ 10 And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests.

I have been thinking about God The Father a lot this Advent season. Christmas draws you in to think about Jesus as a sweet baby, the manger, angels and shepherds. The lights and trees, the music and food. The coziness. All of it celebrating the joyous birth of our Savior. The one thing I guess I have never really thought of is God the Father’s feelings. We know He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. He sent angels to speak with Mary and Zechariah and to announce the great news to the shepherds. Miracles were abounding. But, I have never thought about the preparation He was doing for His Son.

As a mother, I hate it when my children are rejected. If I could take that pain from them, I would. I would swallow it whole. My heart aches for them until they feel better. When I think of God sending His holy, perfect Son into this world, knowing the difficult life He would have to live and the even more horrifying death He would have to endure and still He chose to send Him, my mind is blown. The Father preparing everything for His Son’s birth, knowing He would also have to prepare everything for His Son’s life and death.

Jesus tells the parable of The Wedding Banquet to express His Father’s heart. Jesus is the bridegroom and His Father is the King, lovingly setting up a feast to celebrate His Son’s wedding. Every single person who believes in Jesus as their Savior is the bride. The King has created a lavish feast, the fattened calves, the servants sent out to personally invite everyone. Everything was ready. The King had done His part. He wanted everyone to celebrate His Son. When people did not respond He sent His servants again. Then the excuses started coming in, they ignored Him and went off to their daily lives. So the King pivots and says invite anyone you can find. The desperation of a perfect Father wanting to spare His Son from empty seats and tables, from rejection. The perfect Parent wanting to rejoice with and over His Son. This is the reality that God faced when sending Jesus to be born here. He knew His perfect Son, the Son He was so excited for us to know would be rejected. God had done all of the work, Jesus would do all of the suffering, miracles and teaching and there would still be so many who would not be bothered to even show up. God also knew that Jesus would be the most misunderstood and loneliest person to have ever been born.

Isaiah 53:3

He was despised and rejected[a] by men,
a man of sorrows[b] and acquainted with[c] grief;[d]
and as one from whom men hide their faces[e]
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

John 15:25b “They hated me without cause”

His life began in a manger. Born to a woman who didn’t fully understand who He was. Born into a family who would reject Him before they believed in Him (Mark 3:21). Though His birth was prophesied for hundreds of years, as John Piper points out in his Advent book, when the wise men came to seek him all of Jerusalem was in an uproar but the scribes and pharisees did not even bother to go and look for Him. This Jesus, Son of God and God Himself, born to live in a body that would now experience pain, and suffering beyond any human experience before or after. Jesus who had not one person fully understand Him or what He was to do until after His death, Jesus who left perfect Heaven and came to this corrupted earth. Jesus who was worshiped and glorified constantly, night and day, living in a world that questioned who He even was. He was hungry and tired and slept on the ground. He was mocked and doubted by the very people who should have recognized Him. His family turned against Him, His friends all left Him, denied Him and betrayed Him and He still took on all of the sins of the world. The sins of the doubters, the haters, the mockers, the indifferent and the ones who not only wouldn’t show up to His wedding feast but would lie to get out of it. The King of heaven, the Lord of lords rejected every single day of His life. And God the Father watching it happen. Feeling the rejection that as a Father ached His heart but still He invited us all. Come to the banquet, I’ve prepared everything. It’s perfect, come celebrate my only Son. Take part in this joyous occasion with me. All powerful, all knowing, infinite, eternal God, desperate for us to know His Son, to celebrate with Him. He has sent out His servants, the prophets, pastors and teachers to issue the most holy of invitations. Come honor my Son, come and partake in my joy. This banquet has cost both of us everything, this banquet is for you.

Oh that we would fill the seats and sit expectantly at the table, ready for the party to begin. We are the servants and the bride who need to go out to the highways and street corners, the work places and prisons, the social media spaces and our own families and say “Come! The King has invited you! You are welcomed with Jesus’ whole heart and life. Come!”

©Bobbi Adams 2025

Christian Forgiveness

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1 Corinthians 13:4-5  Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 

 On my way into work this morning I was talking to God about someone I thought I had forgiven but I haven’t forgotten how they treated me. It is a person who hurt me deeply as a child. Someone who went out of their way to humiliate me when I was just a kid. It was an adult who professed to be a Christian. When this person’s name gets brought up I just smile and nod but my heart cringes. I remember what they did and how they went out of their way to do it. They were a person that other people thought highly of. They made sure I knew that I was less than. My circumstances were less than. My divorced parents? My beautiful, BEAUTIFUL, divorcee Mother, low-income lifestyle, clothes? My ADHD? Who knows. I just know that they were unkind to me and kind to others, and it confused me. I wanted them to like me, to experience their favor. What I got was cruelty. I have forgiven them a long time ago but, BUT, every time I hear something about this person, a little fire flares. Those embers that remain in your heart that never quite fully extinguish. Those thoughts that still sting are unforgiveness. They are my brain keeping a record of the wrongs they had done.

Christian Forgiveness is hard. It’s not like the world’s view of forgiveness. As a Christian we are required to forgive and the hardest part, keep no record of wrongs. As God’s child, we cannot hang onto festering fumes of anger and hurt. It’s hard enough to forgive but how do we forgive and forget?

In 1 Corinthians 13, The Bible says love. Love is patient and kind and keeps no records of wrong (vs 5) The ESV translates “keeping no record of wrongs” as not being resentful.

The NASB says love “does not keep an account of a wrong suffered“.  

To Take an account, to reckon, to keep track of in Greek Strong’s: 3049 logízomai (the root of the English terms “logic, logical“) – properly, compute, “take into account”; reckon (come to a “bottom-line”), i.e. reason to a logical conclusion (decision).

It’s the root of the English word logic. An accounting. To keep track of someone’s sins, to remember their wrong doings and to become resentful of them. The EXACT thing we hope The Lord Never does for us. The exact thing Jesus died to give us, forgiveness with no account, register or log of our flaws, failings and sin. God is not checking His record book of your wrongs. If God The Father was presented with a list of our sins, He would only see the brush strokes of His Sons precious blood painted over our worst transgressions. It defies logic. That is how powerful forgiveness in Christ is! It makes no sense, you can forgive and not keep a record of it. Hear this, You can because that is exactly what God (in Christ Jesus) does. He forgives us and remembers it no more.

Hebrews 8:12 For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”

Psalms 103:12 as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

Forgiveness is a two-step process. First, we drag it kicking and screaming before the Lord. He helps us whittle down the mountain (or maybe just a little hill) of hurt and anger until we can honestly say we forgive someone. Then the harder part, in my opinion, is to stop keeping a record of their wrongs. This isn’t done in a vacuum. We need God’s help to stop those intrusive thoughts and move forward. Of all the things Paul says love is in 1 Corinthians, it is all of those and it is also a practice. It is forgiving over and over in our hearts and minds. It is redirecting those angry, hurt feelings away from the person and putting our focus directly on The Holy Spirit to lead us away again and again until we are looking at it in the rearview mirror. Forgiveness is not pretty and it’s not easy. It’s that beautiful little flower that just suddenly pops up in the crack of a concrete sidewalk, surprising you with its beauty. It is an illogical miracle, one that can hardly be understood this side of heaven. One day it is not there and then suddenly it is. It is so precious to the Lord because if you can forgive the worst of what someone has done to you, you can briefly, infinitesimally, for one zeptosecond understand what it cost Jesus to forgive you. Illogical, illimitable love.

The communication of Christ

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I was thinking about nothing this morning while making my bed and Jesus just dropped a thought into my mind. He experienced a change in communication with His Father while He was here on earth. Jesus, The Father and of course The Holy Spirit existed together perfectly for all of eternity past until Jesus was born here on earth. The way they communicated in Heaven is only something we can try and fail to imagine. To coexist together without limitation, to never wonder what the other one thought because you are all omniscient, all one, all holy. To completely know and be known. God doesn’t wonder, He knows. That was the life, the existence, Jesus had before He came to save all of mankind. Then He was born. Certainly, a baby cannot communicate the way an adult does, and never like God can. Did the fact that Jesus was 100% human while still being 100% God cause His communication with His Father to be different? How could it not?

10 years ago, my family started to go through what would be a difficult decade. All of us humans can wake up any day and face unexpected tragedies, I never in my life thought we would all have gone through so very much. Ever. I didn’t think we deserved a free pass from trials but when the hits kept coming, God seemed to go silent. When people say they went through something awful and God drew near to them, I’m glad for them but I didn’t experience it that way, at all. The Lord who was so close to me, speaking to my heart, teaching and guiding me every single day seemed to have broken up with me. That is the only thing I can relate it to. One day we were solid and the next He seemed to change His mind. I didn’t see it coming. It was devastating. My prayers went from joyful praying, secrets kept between us, His divine guidance and humor, to nothing. I felt like I was praying to a brick wall. No whispers, not an utterance. I cried out to the Lord countless times, what have I done? Where are you? Why don’t you want to speak to me, but I was met with silence. The dryness, the darkness of those times are something I cannot express in words. I just can’t. Had the Lord forsaken me? I felt like king Saul. Chosen one day and tormented the next.

I don’t know how long it took for God to show me that while He was no longer communicating with me in a more direct sense, He was still there. Still listening, still working. I didn’t want that. I wanted it the way it was. When He speaks to your heart so strongly, and so often, you know it’s Him. Him changing things up at the worst times of my life was unkind in my opinion. How gracious and good is our God to not care what our opinions are. He is holy and will always do what is best for us, even if we do not understand. Praise you Lord. His stepping back (but never leaving) showed me how very tiny my faith was. If He wasn’t there holding my hand every second of every day, I was like a lost child in a supermarket. Prone to panic and tears. I questioned Him so much all through this time. What was the point of being quiet? How did that help me at all? If He was only and always good, how could breaking my heart with what felt like His absence be good in any way? I cried, I pleaded and I railed against Him. I expect to be hurt from the world, but not Him. Never, Him. After fighting and struggling, anger and a trash can burning, dumpster fire of discovering what a massive amount of false pride I have, I finally understood He was trying to grow my faith. It’s not hard for a child to feel safe when they have their parent in their sightline but what about when they step around the corner. Just because the child can’t see them makes them no less there. It’s not about the child’s perception of where the parent is at, it’s a fact that they are still there, sight unseen. I needed to learn that He has made a promise to never leave or forsake me, it was up to Him to keep it. It is up to me to believe it.

Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

If He is real then He is right. If He is right then everything He does in our lives, everything He allows, is right too. Not only right, but good in the sense that it is always for our good. Man, that’s a hard one.

And just when you think He cannot possibly understand what it’s like for you as a human, we remember Jesus. Our precious Savior. King of kings, Lord of lords, born on this earth, fully human and unable to speak. One day existing in the fullness of time and power and the next limited by the fragile humanity that He himself created. As a newborn was He able to pray? The Word became flesh. The most vulnerable of all, a newborn baby. Though in His infancy He may not have known or understood, His Father was there. When He went to desolate places to pray, wasn’t that entirely different then Heaven? There is no desolation in Heaven. And when He was in Heaven with His Father, did He pray then? Wasn’t it more like talking or communing? Did He need words in heaven or was it more like a constant, spiritual state of being? I would certainly never venture to guess, I’m just trying to point out that from Heaven to earth, communication with God the Father certainly changed for Jesus. I just wonder how much. Jesus did not have false pride and He surely did not need to grow His faith so why did He have to go through that?

The only answer that makes any sense is, US! When He was hanging on the cross and asking His Father “Why have you forsaken me” (Matthew 27:46) He wasn’t just quoting David. He felt forsaken. Our sins, laid upon Him, occluding His Father’s presence. Deafening His voice. But, Praise be to our omnipresent God and Father, He was still there. He is everywhere at all times, always. He did not leave His son and He will not leave us. And the tragic beauty of it all remains, Jesus understands what it feels like to experience a lessening. A lessening of God’s presence in our most dire of circumstances. Jesus who by the word of His power upholds all things (Hebrews 1:3) cried out to God, “Why have you forsaken me?”

Forsaken in Greek Strong’s (G1459) means to abandon, leave behind, left in dire circumstances. That is a life changing alteration of communication. What an incredible love He has for us. He wasn’t just born to die and save us from our sins. He was born to be like us, to completely know us, not just as His created beings but as a created being in and literally of Himself. To inhabit the pain of the created. The limitations, frustrations and anguish. We can honestly say that Jesus bore all of that and infinitely more in His life here on earth. He too wondered if He was left behind, abandoned, forsaken. He wasn’t and neither are we. The Lord may have stepped out of your sightline, but never your life. What is He trying to pull out of you today? He is the Creator, that’s what He does. A painter doesn’t leave a painting half done, a builder doesn’t build a house with no roof, a gardener doesn’t till the soil but plant no seeds. The Lord is doing something beautiful in you. He will never be satisfied with halfway. The further down the road that you walk with Him, the less He seems to give words and affirmations and the more He wants us to rely on our faith. The communication may change but so will we. The longer the stretches, the more we know how fragile our faith can be. The stretches, the dry times are meant to expose our lack of faith and strengthen where we are weak. Christine Caine has a brilliant quote “Will you trust Him when you can’t trace Him?” That is hard and beautiful and painful. In a world so dependent on Wi-Fi it’s hard not to feel like our prayers are getting dropped like our cell phone service. Can you hear me now? The beauty and the lesson are, He can. He can hear you, even when you can’t hear Him. He can see you even when you can’t see Him and that is the garden that faith grows in! The communication may change but the God of all creation doesn’t, but He is hoping we will! His goal in our lives is not always communication to prove that He is there, but for us to trust that He is there when there seems to be zero communication. The communication of Christ on the cross went from “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” to “Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit” (Luke 23:46). The communication of Christ to us, in us, will always take us from fear to trust. Forsaken to forgiven, silent to sacred. Don’t stop praying, don’t stop knowing you are so fully heard and known. Keep committing yourself into your Father’s hands, that is the communication of Christ.

The wood in the water, the water on the wood

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Exodus 15:22 Then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. 23 When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah.[b] 24 And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” 25 And he cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a log,[c] and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.

The last ten years have been rough for my family. From diagnoses to death, accidents and incidents. The hits kept coming. I feel like everyone in the body of Christ goes through these seasons. What started out as bad, quickly snowballed into worse and then worse again and again and again. We all just kept trying to hold each other up. After years of hard times, it was more like trying to put up a tent with no poles. More like stringing plastic wrap between two trees for shelter. It felt like If we weren’t at a hospital, we were at a funeral. The times in life when you can’t even recover from the last thing before the next thing hits.

Emotional devastation can quickly lead to spiritual dryness. I try the best I can to just keep going. Keep it status quo. Most days I can put on a happy face, go to work, come home and be the wife and the mom. Keep praying and trying and giving. Keep serving.

I should have noticed sooner. I did wonder, what is wrong with me? That question played over and over in my head most days. Wasn’t I praying enough? Then I will pray more. Wasn’t I giving enough? Then I will give more. Try harder, do better, give more, be more, help more. But what do you do when you all of the help, doesn’t help? When all of the trying seems to add up to failure? The prayers and questions go unanswered? You dry up. Your soul dries up. You get parched. Paper mouth, cracked desert sand tongue, dried up. Do you know what happens after your soul gets that dried up? In my case, bitterness. Bitterness.

Bitterness seems to work like dehydration, you don’t feel it creeping up until it’s ready to take you down. That’s where I found myself. After years of asking the Lord to help, to intervene, to make straight the paths, I found myself questioning Him. Too scared to outright accuse Him but sinful enough to hold those hurts against Him. I’m sick of wondering what is the lesson here? I’m sick of lessons and growth and change. I’m horrible at it. So on top of having to go through all of this terror and tragedy, I end up feeling like a loser for not handling it better. Not praising in the storm and all of that.

I could feel myself becoming bitter though I hadn’t named it yet. Just a turning in my spirit. A hardening in my heart that felt quite justifiable considering what all we have been through. The things you cannot unsee are nothing compared to the things you cannot unfeel. So the bitter root reached down and that’s how satan gets you. The things that grow up, reach for the light, the things that grow down, grow in the dark. Unseen, untouched until those roots twist and turn and choke the life out of everything around it. It’s hard talking about it, sharing this piece of my journey. I once heard a lady on Instagram say she had a really hard time that was so devastating to her because the Lord was silent in her life for 3 months. 3 months?! I’m so glad she wasn’t saying it directly to me. Oh, the scalpel sharp words a bitter heart can deliver with surgical precision.

The Lord’s deliverance often feels more like devastation. And that brings us to the bitter water. God had delivered the Israelite’s out of Egypt but they had not yet reached the Promised Land. They were in the Wilderness of Shur, 3 days with no water and they came upon the waters of Marah but it was too bitter to drink from it. Hadn’t they already been through enough? It wasn’t that the thirst was so bad, it was everything that came before it. The water was right there but could serve no purpose. So God told Moses to throw a log into the water. The Hebrew word for log here (H6086) is more often translated as tree. So God tells Moses to throw a tree in the water, and he did and the waters became sweet. Sweet waters. Can you imagine drinking that?

After asking God what is wrong with me for the umpteenth time, He dropped the word bitter into my heart. The first thing I thought of was the wood in the waters at Marah. My first question was “Where do I get wood to drop in my bitter water?” His response was of course, Jesus. It took me a week to realize what He was saying.

John 19:33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.

When God sweetened the waters at Marah He had Moses throw wood in the water which would be strange except for the fact that when God wanted to pardon the bitterness of our sin, He had Jesus put His very own water on the wood. Jesus, our Living Water, poured out His life, to give me mine. When they pierced His side, literal water from His body was spilled on that wooden cross.

Wood in the water, Water on the wood.

God not only let Him do it but it was His will for Jesus to die for me. I finally realized that the bitterness in my spirit had grown from the terrifying question one tries never to think about and dares never to ask. Is God really good? Is God really who He says He is? Is He really good all of the time? God pointed out that I was the one trying to determine what was good. What makes something good? How it feels? Tastes? Looks? How it makes me feel? By that definition alone I could be describing sin. That is why It is not I that determine goodness, it’s God alone. If I’m not willing to believe that He is good, how can I ever trust that He has me during the hard times? That is the darkness that nurtures bitterness.

I love the story of how Billy Graham walked into the woods one night to grapple with questions about his faith. He determined to trust God at His word, in His word that night and thank God for all of us he did. I’ve been in the wilderness grumbling for decades. Where are you, Lord? Why won’t you fix this Lord, why won’t you talk to me Lord. I want Him to make everything make sense to me.

But if I am constantly determining that what is good, is bad, because it feels bad or hard, how can He ever make anything make sense to me? Bitterness and arrogance go hand in hand. False pride says that I can determine whether or not God is good based on whether or not I like what He has given me. As if I can be the only Christian to reject the trials and tribulations package.

Jesus is the Living Water. He makes all things new. He makes the bitter water sweet. The Israelites came to the water but the water could NOT serve the purpose it was created for because of it’s bitterness. It was still water, but it needed to be purified. It is the same for us. Jesus, The Living Water, who is in us, purifying us so we can then fulfill our purpose. We cannot serve our purpose if we are bitter any more than the waters at Marah. Jesus is either the Good Shepherd who knows where He is taking His sheep or He isn’t. That is the wilderness we need to step into and not come out of until we have decided that God is in fact good. All of the time. All of the hurting, broken, lonely, questioning time.

Romans 8:28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

Jesus pours into us, purifies us and we can then pour it back out into this hurting and broken world. Everything that honors Him, tiny tributaries flowing straight back to His heart. We get to take the Living Water and pour it on the dry, cracked places. Aren’t we all the little rivers of Jesus?

©Bobbi Adams 2024

Israel

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I love Israel. A land I have never and probably will never see. The only country in history whose borders were measured out by the will of God Himself. Israel, where the promises of God materialized. Literally, The Promise land. A foreshadow of all that is yet to come. The God of all creation taking His people through the impossible by doing the impossible, to deliver them to a land where He would bless them. Our journey to Heaven mirrored so long ago.

Israel, where God chose to birth a nation and where He chose to birth His only begotten Son, Jesus, our Jewish Messiah.

You cannot reset boundaries made by God. You cannot determine the fate of a nation blessed by God. And you better believe you cannot stand against a nation protected by God.

The feet of Christ walked that land. The tears of my Savior were shed in that land. The King of kings and Lord of lords living and dying, shedding His blood for me, by His choice, in the holy land of Israel. The very DNA of God exists in Israel alone. What a precious land indeed.

© Bobbi Adams 2023