An Invitation to Invite

“And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” (Re 22:17 AV)

 

Him that heareth are those who have received Christ as their Savior.  The Spirit and the bride say, Come.  The bride is the Church.  As a whole, the church extends an invitation to receive Jesus Christ as both LORD and Savior.  Note here this is an exchange between the willing.  There is the one who hears and the one who realizes he is thirsty.  The invitation to the one who heareth is to extend an invitation to the one who is thirsty.  This takes a willing servant to extend the invitation.  There is the thirsty one who must, by an act of his own free will, accept the invitation and take of the water of life freely.  He must accept Christ as his Savior.  The Spirit and bride can extend the invitation in a general way to the multitude of humanity.  But it still takes an individual to extend that same invitation to another invitation.  The one that heareth is asked to invite another.  This is the way of evangelism.

Thirty-five years ago this past October, my wife and I were married.  Like all couples preparing for the day, we sent out hundreds of invitations.  We shopped for the right ensemble.  We signed each one.  We placed each one in an envelope.  We addressed each one individually.  We placed a first-class stamp on each invitation.  As we did so, we placed them back in the boxes in which they came.  We did them all as a batch.  We didn’t do one at a time.  They were all neatly stacked in boxes.  Then came the day that we mailed them out.  We carried the boxes to a post office and went inside.  We tried to give them to the clerk, but he said to simply place them all in the general mailbox located on the wall.  So, we marched over and emptied all our boxes of hundreds of invitations into the wall slot.  They went out as a batch.  From there, someone behind the wall sorted them by zip code.  Then someone else sorted them by route.  From there they were canceled and sent to the mail carrier assigned to the route in which they were going.  Many left our city and went to other states and cities.  Many were local.  But each invitation, no matter to whom it was addressed, was carried by an individual to another individual.  The invitation had been extended from an individual by way of another individual.  This is how invitations work.

The bride and groom are the Spirit and Church.  There is a general invitation that goes out.   The mail carrier is the one who hears.  He or she places the invitation into the mailbox through a person-to-person exchange.  There is no other way in which God has ordained that those who are thirsty must come to the river of life and drink freely.  God has ordained person-to-person disbursement.  If we are saved, the Spirit and Bride extend an invitation to the thirsty to come.  But they also extend an invitation to those who have heard to extend that same invitation on their behalf.  Like many post offices today, ours is tremendously understaffed.  We get our mail about every other day.  Sometimes it is mixed with mail belonging to our neighbors.  Sometimes, we don’t receive our mail at all.  There aren’t enough people who want to serve their community by getting the mail out.  If our churches fail, they will fail because those who have heard are not sharing the invitation to come.  If our churches shrink, it is because too many of those who have heard are silent.  If there ever was a time when the world needed the gospel, now is the time!  We need those who have heard to tell those who are thirsty that Christ is the answer to their situation.  We need those who have drunk of the river of life freely to share with those who have not.  We need this or else the church has no reason for existence.