📖 Evil people are invited too

I. Romans 12:1–2 is a well-known passage calling us to be living sacrifices, not conformed to this age but transformed by the renewing of our minds so we can discern God’s will.

Unfortunately, when we read those verses, given our hyper-individualist culture, we think the way we transform our mind is by having more quiet times and listening to more sermons.

While those are not bad things, the rest of Romans 12 is all about following Jesus in community. It’s not about personal spiritual disciplines.

In other words, the way to live holy and pleasing lives for God happens best not individually, but communally with other believers, where we get the chance to work out and grow in our faith.

The point of individual sacrifice, or submission to God, is for the benefit of the body of Christ.

Remember: faith is personal, but it is not private.

Follow Jesus in community.

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II. In Matthew 22, Jesus shares the parable of a king giving a wedding banquet for his son, where a bunch of guests are invited but ignore the invitation.

So the king instructs his servants to go out and invite everyone they can find to the banquet. And verse 10 says this:

“So those servants went out on the roads and gathered everyone they found, both evil and good. The wedding banquet was filled with guests.” (emphasis added)

Jesus’ point: the Kingdom of God is an invitation for all people, but many reject that invitation. However, both good and evil people are invited.

This means that our invitation has nothing to do with merit or deservedness. It is based only on God’s love for you.

No matter what you have done, Jesus’ sacrifice counts for you, and he has invited you in.

Will you accept his invitation?

It’s easy to delay obedience when something feels inconvenient or uncomfortable. But partial obedience is still disobedience.

Jesus puts it plainly in Luke 6:46:

“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and don’t do the things I say?”

This week: Do the thing you already know God is calling you to do. Don’t overthink it. Just take the next step.

The New Testament contains over 300 direct quotations of the Old Testament.

But when you include allusions and indirect references, that number jumps to over 600 and possibly closer to 1,000, depending on how they’re counted.

Scripture is a unified story that leads to Jesus.

On Democracies and Death Cults by Douglas Murray

This book is primarily a journalistic endeavor about the terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. With that, it secondarily sheds more light on the history of the current nation of Israel.

This book is a heavy and sad read. Yet I am very glad to have read it. It was helpful to learn more about the conflicts the surrounding Arab states wage against Israel and how Israel functions in light of that.

The author is not Jewish, but he spent most of the year following the October 7 attack in Israel, with trips to Gaza and Lebanon, interviews with IDF forces, those who survived being attacked on October 7, and with many of the families who lost people in the attacks.

It is a well-written and documented source for those who want to understand more about what happened and the ongoing tensions in the Middle East.

Without hesitation, I can also say Hamas is demonic, and many of those protesting for Hamas and their Jihad are ignorant, naive, and have no idea what they are actually supporting.

The book does jump around a bit between stories of the victims and other details, so I would have liked the book to be a bit more structured. Overall, I was glad to have read it and would recommend it.

8/10

P.S. Hitting your health goals is all about consistency…