You Are Invited...

So today, I greeted every car that entered our church parking lot while wearing green hair and a cow costume.  You may ask why would you do this?  The children of our church are raising money for missions, and my husband and I had a challenge going.  If the girls won, Kyle would greet people for Sunday school dressed like a cow (Pastor Cow...heehee).  If the boys won, I would wear the costume.  Needless to say, you can see the loser of this challenge.  It was a fun way to welcome people to church.  My ladies' book study group started a new book, The Pleasure of His Company, by Dutch Sheets.  In the same way, I invited and welcomed people to church, God is inviting you to come into His presence.  Just imagine, the One who created the universe with only spoken words wants to spend time with you!  I wanted to share a little of what we covered over the first five chapters.  In Chapter one, Dutch mentions that when God requests the pleasure of your company.  What really stood out was that God doesn't need your worship.  He wants your worship.  He doesn't have such a big ego that He needs you to feed it.  He wants you!  He would rather have the singer, than the song.  In Chapter two, he mentions that no one likes to be misjudged.  Yet, we misjudge God all the time.  If He doesn't do something we want, we misjudge Him as not caring.  Only later, we find out that He had something bigger and better in mind for us.  God wants to change your life like the woman at the well.  Jesus knew her whole life, but valued her in spite of her past.  He invited her into His company.  In Chapter three, Dutch mentions that He loved to play hide and seek with his children.  However, because they were young, he could stay hidden forever.  He would make some sort of noise to give away his location so that they could find him.  He mentions that God is not hiding from us.  In Dutch's own life, at one of his lowest points, God got his attention.  Dutch mentioned that God made sure he could find Him.  God is not hiding from you.  If you  seek Him, you will find Him.  In Chapter four, he mentioned that God is passionate about spending time with you.  Zephaniah 3:17 says that He will rejoice over you with singing.  The Hebrew word for rejoice used here is "Guwl" which means to spin around violently with joy/emotion.  If you won the lottery, there would be some guwl going on.  God does this over you because He loves you so much.  In Chapter five, he mentions that he has memories of spending time with his family.  He said it wasn't what they were doing, but the company that made it special.  God stands at the door and knocks asking for the pleasure of your company.  You have to open the door to Him.  He wants to "sup" with you.  In Hebrew families, sup means to not only eat together, but also to plan the day together.  God wants you to take the time to plan your day with Him.  Imagine how much better our day would be if God were the beginning and end to it.  As we continue this book study, I want to encourage you to seek God.  The Creator of the universe wants to spend time with you.  Do you really want to turn Him down?

Have a great week high-heeled warriors!

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