FRIEND, COME UP TO A BETTER PLACE!

 I was only eighteen and in the first year of university when God began speaking to me about His plan and purpose for the rest of my life. My parents were both strong Christians and our family was very active in our church. I had received Christ as my savior as a young boy and now, in university, I was really struggling to understand what God wanted me to do. I believed He was calling me to prepare for a life of service to Him but I wasn’t sure what that meant. 

One Sunday night in early June of 1963, I was attending the regular Sunday night church service and God began to talk to me very strongly about my future. As soon as the service was over, I made a beeline for an area of the prayer room where I could be alone in prayer. I just wanted to understand what God wanted me to do—more than anything I wanted to please Him.

As I poured out my heart to the Lord, my pastor came and knelt beside me. He put his arm around my shoulders and began to pray for me. I can still hear his voice and his prayer reverberates in my heart and mind.

“Father, You call a man into Your service and give him a level of responsibility. When he has learned to handle that responsibility, You then give him increased responsibility and when he learns to handle that level of responsibility, You again increase his responsibilities.”

I didn’t understand my pastor’s prayer at that time and, frankly, did not until later in life when I began to understand Luke 14:10-11.

Nearly one-third of the recorded words of Jesus in the Gospels are in the form of parables. Parables were a popular form of communication in Jesus’ day and, in fact, during most of the Old Testament days, as well. Proverbs is a book of parables. A parable is a story that is meant to illustrate a truth.

In Luke 14 we read the Parable of the Wedding Feast. Jesus observed the invited guests attempting to figure out where the best seats were before the feast got started. The telling of the parable follows His noting what was happening as He saw the guests jockeying for position.

The core message of this parable is really quite simple: When you are invited to a feast, don’t automatically assume that you are important and try to get a seat close to the front. You may be embarrassed when the host invites someone else to take the seat you incorrectly assumed you should have. Instead, take a humble place and when the host looks around to see where everyone is located, if he wants you closer he will invite you to move, with the invitation, “Friend, come up to a better place” (Luke 14:10, NIV). And if he doesn’t move you right away, at least you won’t be embarrassed.

The host of the wedding feast is God and the principle is: “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:11, ESV. See also 1 Peter 5:5-6). Jesus takes the axe to self-promotion within the Kingdom of God.

The greatest struggle for most of us is the waiting for His invitation to “come up to a better place.” There is only one host of the “wedding feast” and we have been instructed to wait for His invitation. In the meantime we are to “humble ourselves” and take the lowest seat. We are never to make an assumption but we are to wait for His invitation.

 “Friend, come up to a better place” is an invitation that is both rich with meaning and a little scary. To be invited to step out into the unknown is almost always intimidating; what we don’t know or can’t clearly see tends to be unsettling. The openness of the invitation helps us to recognize that there are levels of understanding and growth for us as we increase in our knowledge and move closer to Him. God will never move anyone until He knows he or she is ready for the “better/higher place.”

The word friend is loaded with meaning. The original word used here means that because God sees that we love His Son, He extends to us the love that He has for His Son. Think of that! God loves us with the same love and affection that He has for Jesus and He freely extends it to us because He sees that we love Him.

I cannot think of any other word I would rather have the Lord use to address me than “friend.” Couple that with an invitation to, “Come up to a better place,” and the greeting is really special. When we keep a humble attitude toward who we are and what we know, and maintain a strong relationship with the Lord, we will hear Him say, “Friend, come up to a better place.”