Be the Warmth: Cultivating Hospitable Character

Dannah Gresh: It’s cozy season! You know what that means. It’s time for pumpkin spice lattes, cozy cookie candles, and curling up with a good book as you watch the leaves fall.

That makes me wonder, how can I make my neighbors feel like fall makes me feel? How can I be a breath of fresh pumpkin-spice-scented air for both friends and strangers? Or a warm, cozy blanket—a safe place for the weary to find comfort? I don’t just want to cultivate a hospitable space in my home with all the fall candles and decor, as wonderful as that is! I want to be hospitable. I want to be warm and inviting—helping others feel seen and safe. 

I'm Dannah Gresh and this is Revive Our Hearts Weekend. That’s why today’s episode is all about cultivating hospitable character. We want to be the warmth! Several friends are going to help equip us for just that. 

First up, we’ve got the lovely Rosaria Butterfield, author of The Gospel Comes with a House Key. If you aren't familiar with Rosaria’s story, we’ll link to the rest of this series where she shares more! Just search for the transcript of today’s episode at ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend. In the meantime, what you should know is that Rosaria is committed to something she calls radically ordinary hospitality.

Her door is always revolving as friends, neighbors, and strangers in need come to find refuge in her home. But she also takes this philosophy with her everywhere she goes, because radically ordinary hospitality has become a part of who she is. Nancy and Rosaria talked about what this looks like practically. Let’s listen. 

Rosaria Butterfield: I think sometimes we do this: “We’d love to have our neighbors over, but we don’t know what’s going to come out of their mouths.” And that’s true. You don’t.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Or, “How are we even going to have a conversation if their lives and their worlds are so very different?”

Rosaria: Right.

Nancy: You talked on an earlier program this week about the philosophical and theological questions that come up. You used to be a college professor, and your husband’s a pastor, but I can hear some people thinking or saying, I wouldn’t know what to do if those questions came up about suffering and hardship and why hard things happen to people.

Rosaria: Right. Well, what I would say to that is: If you simply share what you learned in your morning devotions, you would bless this world more than any philosophical conversation I would have with anybody about anything.

If somebody said, “I don’t know why evil exists in the world.” You say, “The mysteries of God are some of the hardest things for me also, but in my devotions this morning, I was learning how God answers in abundance, and because I serve a God who’s real and who’s here and is risen, I’ll pray for you.”

You can’t walk a Christian walk for somebody else. You’re not supposed to. You’re not supposed to steal glory from God either by claiming that you’ve got all the answers. But if you simply point them to what you learned that week in the sermon, what God taught you in His Word, what you heard on a radio show, a Christian radio show that really just changed the way you thought about something—that’s huge.

And you know the reason your neighbor is going to you? Your neighbor’s not going to you because they want a treatise in philosophy. Your neighbor’s going to you because you’re safe. You’ve made yourself safe. And probably you’ve shown that you’re a human being, too, with problems and questions and unfulfilled hopes and dreams.

Nancy: And I think the thing that is so hard for people, no matter how hardened they may seem, the thing that’s hard for them to react negatively to is genuine concern and interest.

Rosaria: Yes. Right.

Nancy: Robert and I have found over and over again, from people with all kinds of backgrounds and not even close to coming to faith, but when we just say, “Can we just pray for you about this?” We’ve never had anybody turn us down.

Rosaria: Right. I think they take that as interest.

Nancy: We’ve had people break down in tears, like a server at a restaurant, because her world is imploding, and somebody just cared enough to notice her.

Rosaria: Right—to look her in the eyes.

Nancy: So she’s not invisible anymore. She’s a real person with real needs. And then just to say, “How can we pray for you?”

Rosaria: Right. It’s disarming.

Nancy: It opens incredible doors to friendship and then to the gospel.

Rosaria: It does. I think also, when we are living as covenant members of a Bible-believing church . . . This is important because individualism is the heartbeat of atheism. You know that, right? Individualism—the “I find meaning in myself alone. I find purpose in my autonomy”—that is the heartbeat of atheism.

If people see the family of God living like the family of God, that says something. And what it says is: “If I’m in trouble, I could ask them for help because they wouldn’t be patronizing about it because, look at them, look at these Christians—they all need each other. They’re the neediest bunch of people I’ve ever seen in my life. They’re always needing each other. They are genuinely needing each other.”

But I think that’s where it’s crucial. I don’t know if we’ve talked about this, Nancy, but it’s the verse that’s on my heart and has been on my heart for years. It’s Mark chapter 10, verses 28–30. When Peter suddenly realizes that he has lost everything for Jesus’ sake, and Peter began to say to Jesus, “See? We have left everything and followed You.” And Jesus said,

Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.

That hundredfold means Jesus is risen. Jesus is real. I commit my life to Him. I lose everything, but I have a family of God. I know where I’m going to live. I know where I’m going to eat dinner. I know it’s okay to say I can’t get through these holidays without living here. I know we don’t have room. I know we’re going to make room. I know it’s going to be real cozy.

And I know that I’m going to get through it because that hundredfold is a promise. It’s a promise right here in the gospel of Mark. It’s not going to fall from the sky. That’s not a spiritual promise. That’s not Ephesians—I’m giving you every spiritual gift. It’s . . .

Nancy: . . . flesh and blood.

Rosaria: It’s flesh and blood. Here’s a sandwich. Here’s a dog to walk. Here’s a meaningful connection. Here’s the promise that you are a brother in the Lord, which means that while you may struggle and battle against all manner of sin in this world, you don’t have to do it alone.

Dannah: Mmm, you don’t have to do it alone. Just beautiful. That’s Rosaria Butterfield, author of The Gospel Comes with a House Key.

We’re about to press into this idea even more with Kelly Needham. She wrote a book called Friend-ish: Reclaiming Real Friendship in a Culture of Confusion. She’s super passionate about fostering relationships that are authentic and rooted in what God’s Word says they should be. What are friends really for? Here’s Kelly.

Kelly Needham: You need friends to share your joy with. You see this in Revelation. What more joyous thing can we think than being reunited with Jesus in the flesh? That’s not happening on an individual basis, is it? We are together. 

If I see a great movie, you know what my knee-jerk reaction is? To call a friend. “You have to go see this movie with me!” You go to a great restaurant: “You have to come with me!” Our joy is heightened when we share it with somebody. If you think of your favorite memories, they’re probably ones you shared with people. God has designed us to experience our joy most fully when together.

Joy is heightened when we share it with somebody.

That’s true in our enjoyment of God. We need people near us to enjoy Him with. It increases our joy in Him. So on a really basic level, we just need people to enjoy life with. That is a right and good need.

But we also need people to battle with us. We see in the New Testament that we are fighting against our own flesh, our own sinful flesh, the patterns of the world that are against us, and Satan, who is also against us. This is a battle we cannot do alone. We see things like Hebrews 3:13, which says, “Encourage one another day after day, as long as it is called today, so you will not be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.” 

You will not make it through with a soft heart without people to encourage you. You need people to encourage you; you need people to confess your sins to. Confess your sins not just to God but to one another. You need a friend when you have stumbled in sin to call up and speak out loud, “Here is how I’ve failed, and I need you to remind me of the gospel.” You need another human being to tell you that is a legitimate need. You need people to fight this spiritual war with you; that is legitimate. You need that.

Sometimes we just need friends to carry us. I think of the paralytic on the mat who couldn’t get to Jesus. He had four friends who knew they weren’t the solution, they weren’t the Savior, “But we can sure carry you there.” 

I don’t know if you’ve had these seasons in your life where you’ve just been too weak to go to Him on your own, but I have. Whether it was just a season of depression or something really hard I’m facing that I don’t have any faith anymore. I have looked at friends and said, “I need you to believe for me, because I don’t have any energy left. I need you to carry me to Him, because I’m struggling. I need you to pray for me.” 

Sometimes we need that physically. I had several miscarriages early in our marriage, was on bedrest for one of them. My husband was out of town traveling, touring. I needed friends to come to my house and physically do things for me. You may have been there. We need it physically, emotionally, spiritually sometimes; people to come in and carry us, because we can’t do it alone.

We do actually need people to be there for us. We do need people we can count on. But here is what differs for us as believers from the world. The world would have us look to individual human beings. “You go find your BFF and you make a pact with them to never leave or forsake each other.” No individual can bear that weight. 

But what the Bible tells us to do is, “You go unite yourself to a local church, and you commit there, because you need those people to be there for you, and you need to be there for them.” We are called to look for that in a corporate body, not an individual. Church membership is a big deal, and I think that is the primary way we see these needs be met. We do need people to be there for us, but it’s going to show up corporately, not individually. It feels scarier to us, but it’s how God has told us to practice this.

Now, those are just a few things you legitimately need from friendship, and I want to just remind you right now: you are responsible to get your needs met. You are responsible to fight for these needs to be met. When you have a bad day, no one gets an alert on their phone that says, “Ding, ding! Kelly is really discouraged today and fighting to believe the truth. She needs you to reach out and text her.” That would be really nice; I would love that, because it’s really hard to reach out to people when you’re in a bad place. But if I have a legitimate need, it is my responsibility to reach out and fight for that to get met through the corporate group of people that I do life with.

I think my first daughter was eight months old and crawling around on the ground when I cut my hand open. I was at home, by myself, just because I was cocky with a kitchen knife. I was like, “Aw, I can cut toward myself. I know what I’m doing. It’s fine.” I sliced into my hand and immediately knew, “Oh, this is bad. This needs stitches. I’m home by myself, we just moved, I know three people in this town.”

So I wrap my hand up in a kitchen towel, and I’m like, “I can’t drive; what do I do?” I have a legitimate need. I cannot do this on my own. That gave me the courage to go get the need met. It took courage. I had to call somebody I’d met once at this new church we visited. She was the only person whose number I had. Out of the blue I say, “Hi, Jessica. I know we don’t know each other. I just cut my hand open. I’m by myself, and I need someone to come to my house and put my eight-month-old in the car and drive me to someone else’s house to watch that child, and then take her out, then get back in the car and drive me to the ER, and then sit with me in the ER and fill out forms and wait with me while I get my hand stitched up, then drive me home, help me pick up my daughter, put her back in the car, help bring her home, get her back into her crib or whatever. Can you do that?”

That was a huge ask for me to make of somebody I had met once! What gave me the courage to ask it? I knew I couldn’t do it on my own. I knew it was a legitimate need that I wasn’t making up. I had enough clarity to know, “I’m in a hard place, so I have to be bold here and call some people and say, ‘I have a need.’”

I know now that if these are legitimate needs the Bible has mapped out for me, that I need people to fight with me in the spiritual battle. I need people to carry me sometimes. I need people to be there for me when my life’s falling apart, through my church. If I have legitimate needs that God has told me other people need to meet, it gives me the courage to reach out and go to someone, even though it’s scary, and I might be rejected. It gives me courage to say, “I need someone to pray for me at least once a week. I’m really struggling. Maybe we could have a phone call once a week and you can just pray over me.” Sometimes I’ve called a friend and been like, “I don’t know what you’re doing right now, but I’m really discouraged and fighting this lie in my head.” I’ll give my friend the script. “I need you to tell me this! But I can’t believe it on my own right now. I need you to tell it to me.” 

It takes a lot of courage to make those kinds of phone calls and those ways to reach out. It takes courage when that person can’t do that for you to move on and ask somebody else. But if it’s a legitimate need, then it is my responsibility for me to fight for that to get met, because God has told me I can’t do it alone. If I’m wise, I won’t try to. I will fight for that in my friendships. It’s uncomfortable, but the gospel redefines these needs for us and then gives us courage and boldness to go into our communities and fight for them to be met.

Dannah: Kelly Needham there on biblical friendship. 

You know, I think a big part of cultivating hospitable character is just being a friend. Like Kelly said, it’s sharing our joys, inviting others into our shortcomings, and allowing others to serve us when we need it. Life together—the kind that is fragrant like pumpkin spice, warm and safe like a fluffy blanket. It really can be this simple. 

But we can’t become women of hospitable character on our own. We need the Holy Spirit to help us bear the fruit of kindness. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and author and speaker Mary Kassian sat down to talk about this very fruit of the Spirit. Let’s listen.

Nancy: As I'm in the process of working with our team and with people that I'm close to, I find myself saying, "Lord, would You make me more kind like You are? Kind in my thoughts, kind in my words, to notice the people around me." I tend to be very task oriented, moving quickly from one thing to the next. I can just leave a wake of busyness and stress around me. But I want to stop and notice and say, "How can I minister to you in the name of Jesus?" It's transformational.

While we're in the book of Titus, when you come to chapter 3, you see this stated again. Paul says, "We were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another" (v. 3). And I think, Wow. That's a pretty awful kind of person.

And so how did God treat us?

Mary Kassian: "But when the kindness of God appeared . . ."

Nancy: "But when the the goodness and kindness of our God and Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy" (vv. 4–5).

So you think, It's easy to be kind to people who bless you, who encourage you, who strengthen you." But to think of strangers, people who rub you the wrong way, people who irritate you. We were all that and worse to God, and yet He showed us kindness.

Mary: And the other thing I love about this verse and the way it is structured is "when the goodness and kindness of God appeared, he saved us." Well, who is the He? The He is Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is the kindness and goodness of God appearing in the flesh. It's like God sent His kindness. That was His . . .

Nancy: . . . gift to us.

Mary: His means and His gift of kindness, and Jesus Christ coming for us and dying for our sins was God's demonstration of His kind heart.

Nancy: That really is the gospel, and that's what draws people to Christ. In fact, Romans 2 tells us "that the goodness and kindness of God brings us to repentance."

We say, "We don't deserve this." It leaves us awestruck when we think about it. God was kind to us when Romans says we were His enemies, we were separated from God, we were aliens from God. We hated God.

Mary: So it's not His rules. It's not His condemnation. It's not His, "Tsk, tsk, tsk, you should do better." It's His kindness that draws us to repentance. And that's really powerful. Kindness is a drawing agent. It draws people in. It draws people to the source of it.

That's why I think the Lord wants us to be kind and to demonstrate kindness—not so people are drawn to us, for instance, to say, "Oh, Nancy is so kind and I want to know her." Drawn to the kindness of God so that we can draw them to Jesus.

Nancy: And it really does do that. There are lots of opportunities we have to show kindness or lack of kindness, and there's a whole lot more of the other side of that in large supply in this world.

Mary: Yes.

Nancy: But it has to do with the way we talk to others, the way we treat them.

We've been discussing recently about how much unkindness there is on the Internet, on social media.

Mary: Yes.

Nancy: I don't know what it is that we feel, even Christians, like we get a pass if it's something on Facebook or Twitter

Mary: It's because we're not face to face; we're not having to deal with the person eye to eye.

Nancy: I think that's an important thing to say when we're posting something or we're putting out a tweet. If we would say, "If we were sitting across the table from each other, this nameless, faceless person that I don't know in cyberspace, would I say ugly things? Would I say the same thing?"

And it's a good thing for us to consider in every area of our lives—in our relationships, in our homes . . .

Mary: . . . when we're out shopping, when we're driving.

Nancy: Think about clerks in stores and how much incivility and curtness they probably get.

Mary: Or think of those customer service agents. By the time you get up, you can tell that people have been harsh to them all day.

Nancy: I've got to tell you, and this is being really personal. One time I had an issue with an airline. They had botched my ticket royally. I was so frustrated. And, of course, to get a live person is a big challenge. So I was at high frustration level by the time I got a real person, and the impatience was like, "I've had enough of this." It was coming out in my spirit and my tone. It wasn't actually the words I was saying, but it was just how I was communicating.

So I'm talking to this nameless, faceless person in who knows what part of the world their customer service agent is. All of a sudden she says to me, "Now, what did you say your name is?" I said, "Nancy Leigh DeMoss." And she said, "Oh, I love your radio program! I listen to it here in this city." And all of a sudden . . .

Mary: You turned into a very kind woman?

Nancy: I did. I turned into a very kind woman! In that moment, though, I really wasn't a kind woman, in my heart for sure. I don't know exactly what she picked up. But it just shows, if we will stop and think about how we're representing the Lord, which was my concern at the moment. I don't want this woman to think this message doesn't matter, that there's a crusty, negative, old woman who's behind this. When I stopped to think about what was at stake, then it turned to kindness.

Mary: I see it when I go somewhere with my husband. Brent is so cognizant of acknowledging the people in front of him. If we go through a teller, through a checkout, he'll ask the young girl, "So how's your day going today?" Or the parking lot attendant, "So how's your day going today? How are you doing today?"

It's fascinating to me how often that just that small kindness is a door for ministry, because often the person will say, "Well, I really haven't been having a very good day." And then it opens the opportunity to say, "Well, may I just pray for you for a moment about that?" Or to give them a word of encouragement.

Nancy: And it really takes just, sometimes just a moment, not a lot of time, but just the thoughtfulness. And when we do, we're expressing the kindness that God has shown us in Christ. He filled our hearts to the brim with His goodness and His kindness. That's why Paul says in Ephesians 4, for example, "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you" (v. 32).

So it's really just the outflow and the overflow of an awareness that God has been incredibly kind to me through Christ.

Dannah: What a beautiful gospel truth to close out our time together today. That was Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth talking with Mary Kassian. 

Now, as we’re nearing the end of another year, our team has finished putting together the brand-new Revive Our Hearts ministry wall calendar. It features uplifting quotes from Nancy, Scripture verses, and stunning design. This calendar is your perfect daily companion as you move into 2026—helping you reflect and meditate on Scripture to strengthen your walk with the Lord.

The calendar is not only inspiring, it also includes a daily Bible reading plan, making it a practical tool to read through the Bible in a year. We hope it will guide you into a deeper understanding of God through His Word. Request yours when you make a donation of any amount to support Revive Our Hearts this month. You can give by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com.

I hope you enjoy sweet rest in the Lord this weekend as you worship with your local church family. Be sure to come back next weekend as we spend some time celebrating God’s abundance. He’s the God who provides! We’ll talk about that more when we’re back together.

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time, for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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