John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him, shall be saved.” – OR – God sent the world an invitation to come to His house, live and eat at His table, but it is up to us to RSVP (répondez s’il vous plaît, meaning “reply please” or “please respond”). We must RSVP. Respond please.  What a beautiful thing that would be, to eat at God’s table, and live at His house, and all we have to do is respond. That sounds simple to say, “all we have to do”, but the truth is our RSVP is, of course, not just a onetime response, but many responses across the course of a lifetime, in many situations. That is RSVP in an “on and on” motion, as in continuously. The Lord will extend us an invitation to join Him in many adventures, and then He’ll wait for our RSVP. We must RSVP.

i consider it the supreme and highest honor that the King of the Universe has invited me to dine with Him at His house. i’ve wondered out loud, Lord, who gets invited to dinner at your place? How do we get on God’s friend list? It would seem to be a point of believing in Christ, who is the Messiah, and has God-built character, character attributes like “Walk straight, act right, tell the truth; “Don’t hurt your friend, don’t blame your neighbor; “Keep your word even when it costs you, make an honest living, never take a bribe.” There was Abraham in James 2:23 “And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” And he was called the friend of God.” Or there was another fellow, Theophilus, whose name means “friend of God”, which Luke addressed the Gospel of Luke to in Luke 1:3, and Acts 1:1.

Do you believe you are a friend of God? How did that happen? You know, we can’t just go buy God a Hallmark card and mail it to Him to show our appreciation, i think He’d much prefer we give Him our time and attention instead of just dropping a couple dollars on a gift for Him and hope He understands when we say we’re just to busy to visit, but it’s a really nice card. How do you think we get on God’s dinner list? Good question. You know i heard a man say once that when people say they don’t have time to RSVP or even simply take 10 seconds to reply to a text, what they’re really saying is “it isn’t very important to me to RSVP”.

So, here it is again: When Jesus came and got eyelevel with mankind, Who is on God’s ultimate dinner list, as in the last supper? Judas was on the list. Judas was invited to the dinner table of Jesus. Even though there was a very difficult moment when it was revealed who would betray the Christ, Judas was still a part of the 12. Peter was there. He was a rough ol’ fisherman. Tough, testy, made lots of mistakes although he was the only one of the 12 who walked on water with Jesus. He talked when he should have been listening, he was argumentative and even had a problem telling the truth sometimes, but he was on the dinner list of the Son of God. Paul was a murderer and God included him on the dinner list. You might not include yourself because you’re so neurotically obsessed with all that you are not, but God isn’t doing that.

Here’s another invitation from God for us to join Him in His work: John 1:12, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:”. There is a key word in John 1:12 and in John 3:16. For John 1:12 the key word is “receive”, and in John 3:16 the key word is “believe”. To receive Jesus, and to believe Jesus is an action on our part, it is something we do, it is our RSVP to God that we accept His invitation to participate in eternity with Him.

Though there is the initial RSVP required to dine with God, there will be, in our lifetimes, oceans of invitations from God, some to do dynamic things, some to simply grow up and be mature, some to confront, some to accept His comfort when life is at a low ebb. Our RSVP represents our suppleness in the Master’s hand, our willingness to bend and go with God in the sense of being like joints that work together.

i’ve wondered how many people get God’s invitations in their mail, read it, and then set out to re-write it so it says something other than what it does? It wasn’t enough that the invitation simply said, “Come join me for fellowship and conversation. Love you, God”, but we re-write it to say, “I am so impressed with you, therefore I, the Lord am sending you to do amazing things in the earth that will stand as a sign for all others to see your greatness. Come talk to me when you have time. Love you, God.” We invented that and that’s not what His RSVP said. Some of us may simply scratch out a word and write in another, and yet i believe there are others who go so far as to actually reprint the invitation, and then tell others of the “extra-special” invitation they got from God.

We should all know that our Heavenly Father has a way of addressing all our needs, and even the ones of re-written invitations. His main interest though, is that we actually do RSVP. He has plans for each of us, but none of us can enter in to those plans if we don’t RSVP God. RSVP please.

i’m Social Porter with Living In His Name Ministries.