Called or Chosen?

Last night I dreamed I was at a church with many others, and we were all waiting for a wedding. The vicar was asking us for stories about the groom. I was concerned that my story was too old, and that although I used to know him well, I had lost touch with him in recent years. Meanwhile my husband (who had dropped me off) was driving around outside because the town traffic was so bad he couldn’t find anywhere to park. What was even more concerning was that the bride also couldn’t make her way in, for the same reason.

Most of the dream was very clear to me on waking. The wedding is the wedding of the Lamb, Jesus to His Bride. Although some of us were there waiting, the Bride – the Church as a whole – was held up.
I believe my perspective in the dream speaks of those in the Church who used to know Jesus well but who have lost the strength and depth of relationship they once knew. God is calling us all back to making Him our first love.
My husband’s position in the dream represented those who are invited to the wedding of the Lamb but can’t find their way in. It wasn’t immediately clear to me what the traffic represented, but as I prayed into it I felt it could be to do with busy-ness, so I asked God to show me more, and three things happened almost simultaneously:

• I felt God say “I want My people to show – not tell – that they are Mine”.
• He also drew my attention to a song that was playing on my playlist, where a worship team was singing “we surrender”, and I immediately had a sense of believers singing those words earnestly in a service but then going home and continuing in self-centred, worldly lives.
• I heard the words from Isaiah 29:13-14:
  “And so the Lord says, “These people say they are mine.
  They honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
  And their worship of me is nothing but man-made rules learned by rote.
  Because of this, I will once again astound these hypocrites with amazing wonders.
  The wisdom of the wise will pass away, and the intelligence of the intelligent will disappear.””

This took me on a train of thought that gave greater depth to the meaning of the traffic which seemed to be the focal point/ main problem in the dream…

We are so good at singing and talking about loving Jesus – especially when we are in church gatherings – but do our actions outside of church meetings truly reveal Him as Lord? Are we truly transformed by Him or just paying lip-service where it’s safe and comfortable? (I’m not judging anyone – I’m asking myself first!) When Jesus quoted Isaiah 29:13 in the Gospels He was talking to the Pharisees, who we all know were rooted in and clinging to religion – the ‘baddies’ in our modern narrative. We modern Christians like to identify with the radical disciples: we have accepted Jesus as the Messiah, after all! But I believe God has been working through 2020, and continues to work to reveal how Pharisaical we can still be in the West – how our well-established religious traditions and rules have a firm grip on us and can get in the way of simple (radical) child-like obedience.

You see, we know the answer to His question to the Pharisees: “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”, but we fail to recognise that their attitude was not just one of pride, there was also genuine confusion. They had been taught to adhere to the law and had lost sight of the relationship with God that would have revealed the more full truth of His compassion and mercy to them. They weren’t just being obstinate (though some probably were). No, over the centuries of no-one hearing God’s voice in relationship, their religious practices had simply left them blind to the full truth.
So we might pat ourselves on the back for knowing the answer to that question, but are we really that different? How about if (or rather when) Jesus asked, “Is it OK for Me to close your church meetings?”
When we first went into lockdown, how many of us thought ‘What??? That can’t be God’s will when His Word tells us not to forsake meeting together?’
When we look to law before looking to relationship we are in trouble. Of course God’s Word is truth and stands forever, absolutely inerrant. It is rightly our unshakeable foundation. But are we really so arrogant as to think we might not have misunderstood, or that He couldn’t do something deeper than our understanding? If we don’t know God well enough to ask Him to reveal His more full truth, we are little better than the Pharisees who built on law without revelation.
Any time & anywhere that our rules/ traditions/ preconceptions are trodden on, we need to be open to God wanting to reveal a deeper truth to us.
Jesus is still asking as He asked the religious leaders 2000 years ago, “Is it OK for Me to move outside of your rules; your understanding?” We can’t just glibly answer “yes” because we know it’s the right thing to say without Him then treading on the religious assumptions we hold most sacred. Are we open to Him removing more of what we once held dear? Perhaps a better answer would be “Yes Lord – remove whatever is not of You – but when You do it please remind me what You are doing so I don’t cling to the wrong thing”.
Because it’s coming. Another wave of stripping back is coming, because God in His mercy wants us restored and free.

So that is what He showed me this morning. And with that, He took me back to the traffic in my dream.
Traffic can be symbolic of many things in dreams, and I think most of these can be applied to mine:

• Frustrations and setbacks (feeling stuck in a rut).
• The daily hustle and bustle of life distracting us.
• Going with the flow, not making decisions. Living life as routine.
• A lot going on, being caught up with what others are doing rather than directing our own journey.

All or any of these could be factors in stopping people from entering the wedding of the Lamb. But what I felt God showed to me above all these, was that traffic jams can happen when everyone is following the rules, but there are just too many of them, bringing the town to grid-lock. And from my dream I believe He showed me that there was/ is a need and a call right now for people to get out and walk to the wedding. It might take them longer in theory, but they will get there.
Walking represents personal relationship and journeying with God, with no shortcuts – no hiding inside religion or ministry/ occupations (which cars often represent).

As Jesus said, “Many are called but few are chosen” (to the wedding banquet in Matt 22). We have all been invited (‘called’) to take part in the wedding of the Lamb, but there are many obstacles, some of which we have created with our religious assumptions. We need to choose to get out of our cars with all their many rules and distractions, and simply walk: to make relationship with Jesus our utmost priority, not caring for how long it will take or how difficult it might be (difficulty is irrelevant when we are walking with Jesus – with Him by our side no obstacle is insurmountable). Let Him strip away whatever it takes, for when we choose to put Him first – truly first, not just sing about it – we become those chosen.

Amen, Lord!