The Perfecting Church

Some of the greatest teaching moments in our lives happen right after we catch a glimpse of the true condition and position of our hearts. Reckoning tables are like final exams. They reveal what God knows about us, but we have yet to realize. God uses reckoning tables to show us ourselves and to order our steps. They are His way of adjusting our course so we hit the mark.

There are times in our lives when sacred tables are prepared to help us encounter God and His promises. There are also times when hindering tables are positioned to keep us away from God and His promises. We will experience both in our lives. When Jesus came across hindering tables, He overturned them. Jesus is still turning hindering tables over today and giving His followers the authority to do the same.

Sacred tables are places of intervention, confrontation, instruction, implantation, and promotion. God prepares sacred tables in our lives, where He encounters us personally. God also commissions us to serve others on His behalf. We are God’s wait staff, called to serve His truth and eternal perspective to those being repositioned by sacred tables and those being confronted with His truth while sitting in positions of power.

Tables are sacred to God. They are places of intervention, confrontation, instruction, implantation, and promotion. David, the Shepherd King, experienced God setting up sacred tables all throughout his life. But it was the tables God arranged and put in place in the presence of his enemies, that had the deepest and most transformational impact on David. God is still setting up tables in the presence of enemies and those tables still change us in “never to be the same again” ways.

The Resurrection is the source of the most profound hope we will ever find. Through His suffering, death, burial and resurrection, Jesus rescues us from a debt of sin while modeling how to RISE above our darkest days and crippling doubts to enter into His joyous plan. When Jesus rose from the dead, He laid a foundation upon which we can rest, knowing there’s nothing from which we cannot rise, nor is there anything that can separate us from His love.

There was nothing good about that Friday for those who loved and followed Jesus. Friday marked the death of their Rabbi, their Messiah, their hopes and their dreams. But Friday proves the Father has better hopes and grander dreams than we do. Friday represents the day(s) where what we know and value is crushed, so what God knows and values can be revealed. There’s a goodness in Friday that has the power to change every other day that follows.

Scarcity entered this world back in the Garden of Eden, when we separated from our Source. Scarcity does not return to generosity until we are restored to our Source, the Prodigal Father. Scarcity works to deceive us into believing what we really need is resources and control, but we didn’t lose resources and control back in the Garden. What was lost in the Garden was the life-giving connection with God as our Source, and our distinguished position of being the Prodigal Father’s Beloved.

“Prodigal” is expending resources freely, what some might consider recklessly, wastefully or extravagantly. The God of heaven is The Prodigal Father. He uses all kinds of resources, means and approaches to extend His loving, abundant Kingdom to those who are locked in and disfigured by the scarcity of this world. He is determined to see us restored and reconciled to Him and His ways. The Prodigal Father is constantly inviting us into the feast of relationship with Him and a place in His Kingdom.

The global health crisis has awakened us all to a truth we too often forget. No matter our religious beliefs, socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity or culture, we all share one world. In this one world we all live with two choices. We will live and ultimately perish in scarcity or we will live and live abundantly in generosity. We all share this inescapable truth of living in one world with two choices.