The Invitation to Experience God
In the beginning, God clothed us with an invitation. As Genesis says, we have been created in God’s image (Gen. 1:27). The first thing He offered His people was an invitation to partner with Him, to be His ambassadors (Gen. 1:28; 2 Cor. 5:20). From the start, God revealed to His people that relationship and invitation would be a key part of the kingdom. Everything about creation, including ourselves, points us back to God and invites us closer to Him. The same thing happened when Jesus was born on earth; He held the image of His father and held fast to the importance of invitation.
“Come to me…” Matt. 11:28, John 7:37
“Come and dine…” John 21:12
“Come and see…” John 1:39
“Come and take up your cross…” Mark 10:21
I want us to take a second (or more!) to be captivated by Jesus’s spirit of invitation. While these are just a few of the invitations Jesus extended to His people, there are far more to study in scripture. He calls people toward Him and cultivates relationships with them. The neat thing about Jesus’s invitation is that it is paired with a purposefully prepared space to experience God.
Jesus invites the sick, the crippled, the possessed, the rulers, the beggars, the scandalous, the lame, the outcast, the leper, the Pharisee. Jesus invites anyone and everyone—He carries within Him a constant spirit of invitation. What I see in His invitation is that He knows and embraces the reality that everyone is made in God’s image and therefore is worthy of knowing Him. He is quick to extend the invitation because He values the truth that God believes everyone deserves to experience Him. We must see all people as worthy of experiencing God.
When practicing discipleship, we must be clear about what we are inviting people into. The more I learn about Jesus, the more I believe the first step is to invite people to experience God. It’s the “come and see” mentality. We invite people to walk with us as we walk with God. Imagine if we were quick to create intentional space to experience God together! I cannot emphasize enough the power that comes from an invitation saying, “I want you to walk with me.” This kind of invitation helps show people what you value: relationship. Showing people this purpose helps them become familiar with what the Father desires to have with them, too.
To help others find comfort in accepting the invitation, we must learn there is power in presence. The way Jesus spent time with people shows an example of presence that is foreign to many of us. In Jesus’s being with people, He proves to us that 1) He sees us and 2) He desires to know us. This act of recognizing and understanding paired with a verbal invitation creates space for curiosity and, ultimately, belonging. Jesus spent time with people in the way that God desires to dwell with and have a relationship with us. This is the kind of presence we must learn and offer, and it is something the Lord offers us every moment of every day.
Inviting others and allowing ourselves to experience God testifies to the belief that God is with us. There is no space that God does not desire to fill with His presence. Thus, invitation is best followed by attention. Jesus’s invitations ask people first to come, and then to see.
God clothed us with invitation. The image we bear is just one of many ways to be attentive to His presence. When inviting people to experience God, we must practice being attentive to God, because God is already here. We create the space to be still and know. We silence the commotion. We tuck away our to-do list. We let ourselves just find space where our only responsibility is to recognize God in and around us.
If we were to approach every stranger, neighbor and friend with this kind of attentive presence, I believe that our invitations would go much farther. The better we learn to connect and build relationships, the more others will be able to understand what we are inviting them into when we speak of salvation. Jesus is not just inviting us to know, He invites us to experience a relational and transformational life with Him.
May we learn to create space for others and ourselves to experience God together. I pray the presence you offer people proves to them that the God we love sees them, knows them and loves them—and we do, too. If they will know us by our love, may our love let them catch a glimpse of the way Jesus desires to dwell with and know them, too. God wants to partner with you in making His name known. I urge you: spread the invitation, be the presence, and create the space to experience transformation.
