Heartfelt Hospitality: Celebrating Christ through Holiday Welcomes

This episode contains portions of the following programs:

"Hindrances to Hospitality"

"Faithful Hearts, Not Flawless Homes"

"A Climate Conducive to Life"

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Dannah Gresh: Okay, I wanna know. Is your Christmas tree up yet? Are you playing Christmas music at your house? The Gresh home gets a Christmas tree on Black Friday. We don’t shop. We hit a tree farm—have been doing it since my husband and I first got married. And now our kids are all wed and have sweet babies of their own, well, it’s a tradition. 

Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend! I’m Dannah Gresh. Let’s pretend you and I are sharing coffee together. And maybe for the next twenty or thirty minutes beside my newly decorated tree, all the chaos of life can just fade into peaceful non-existence, so we can just sit and listen and hear from God’s Word.

This time of year is full of extra opportunities to show hospitality.

So I’m calling today’s program “Heartfelt Hospitality.” I want to talk about how we can celebrate Christ through our holiday welcomes.

We’ll also hear from Amanda Kassian and Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. They have a great perspective on keeping our homes Christ-centered, all year round. Cuz let’s face it: hospitality goes way beyond hosting a Christmas party every now and then.

Let’s start with Amanda. Here she is, speaking to a group of women at a recent True Woman conference. She says there are some things that can get in the way of a Christ-centered welcome.

Amanda Kassian: It is important to bring awareness to the hidden influences that hinder our obedience to this spiritual discipline. 

When I say these are three “hidden” hindrances to hospitality, do you like that? Three hidden hindrances to hospitality. So, this is what we are up against. I say that they are hidden because we don’t even notice it. It’s so ingrained in our culture that we don’t even know that it’s affecting how we are hospitable to other people. 

So, number one, our culture is becoming increasingly more isolated. Psychological studies and science have proven that the need for social connection is crucial to our well-being. We are created to be with other people, to be together. 

Sadly, as our communities are unraveling, people especially in western countries, are becoming more isolated and disengaged than ever before. 

According to an article by Psychology Today, “Since the 1980s the percentage of American adults who report being lonely has doubled from 20 percent to 40 percent.”

So, what is driving this trend of increased social isolation? Number one, changes in family structure. Families are spending less time together.

We have misguided priorities. Money and status are increasingly prioritized in the West, sometimes at the expense of the quality of our relationships. We were brought up in a culture that tells us that the more money we make, the more things we accumulate, the better title and fancier job we have, the happier we will be. 

And lastly, technology. This is just a small list of the things that are hindering hospitality. Technology is one of the biggest culprits of social disengagement. We are the most connected we have ever been, yet the loneliest.

Secondly, our culture is fearful and suspicious of the other. We live in a world that is suspicious and fearful of others. I currently live in Canada as a permanent resident and technically, I am an immigrant. I am an “other” living in another country. I am an American, born and raised in Texas. When I share with Canadians that I am from Texas, they often get really excited and intrigued and ask lots of questions, like, “Do you say y’all?” “Oh, Canada! Are you surviving the winters up there?” “What is chicken fried steak?” They don’t know what that is. You know the usual questions. 

I am an “other.” I am a welcomed immigrant in Canada, but this is not how all interactions go with people who are starkly different than us. For all of us, there are certain people we keep at a distance. 

We don’t take the time to ask difficult people or people we don’t understand friendly questions, let alone invite them over for dinner.

My brother-in-law said it perfectly. He said, "Our natural instinct is to fear what we do not understand. We mock the other, we fear the other, we shame the other. But the reality is, we do not understand the other. "

Maybe that’s a republican for you, maybe that’s a democrat, maybe that’s a progressive Christian. Who are you distancing yourself from? Who are you mocking? Who is the “other” for you? 

Christianity was never meant to be a safe, comfortable journey. Oftentimes, God asks us to speak to others, love others, and invite others, and this may include inviting the other into your safe spaces.

I am not advocating that we let anybody into our homes. I’m not up here saying, ‘Alright, just take Jimmy off the street and just bring him in.” I do believe that we do need to be prudent and use discretion when we invite others into our personal spaces. However, some of our fears may be unwarranted, and this may be an area we need to practice courage. We need to wrestle through those fears with God. 

If you are struggling with fears of inviting others into your home, ask yourself, “Are my fears justified, and are they biblical?” Are we allowing our fears, our prejudices, our suspicions to hinder our obedience to God in loving others? 

Thirdly, our culture values busyness and productivity. Some of you may be listening to this message and thinking, Okay, how do we fit this practice into my life? We already have so many relationships to manage. We have so many activities. How can I add one more thing? We live in a world that values results, productivity, and activity. 

In their book, The Art of Neighboring, the authors say this, “Instead of having more free time, we’ve added more things in our already crammed lives. Even though we get more done, we still pile up the tasks. Our calendars continuously stay full, no matter how many time saving devices are invented.” 

We live our lives at warp speed. We’ve become champion multitaskers. We put our heads down, zip to work, dropping kids off at school or daycare on the way. We eat on the run while having meetings on the fly. We get home late at night, watch TV, check our messages, hang out with our kids, send text messages, do the housework, pay the bills, and crash. Then we wake up the next day, and we do it all over again. 

Does this resonate with you? Are you living your life at an unhealthy pace? Are you justifying your imbalance?

The reality is, when we are living a fast-paced life, we miss important opportunities to love others well. Jesus was not hurried. His life was full, but it was balanced. 

If we want to be a good hospitable neighbor, we need to recognize that we will be at war with time, busy schedules, and hurriedness. 

Dannah: That’s Amanda Kassian, who I just visited a few weeks ago in Canada. She was listing three main hindrances to Christ-centered hospitality: 

• Increasing isolation
• Fear of people who are different
• Being too busy… not building in enough margin in our lives.

You can hear all of Amanda’s message when you go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend, and click on today’s program.

We’re in full-on holiday season right now, and that can mean opening up our homes more than we normally do. As we do, it’s important we do it with the right motives, the right attitude. 

I had some things to share about that at a recent Revive conference. Let’s listen.

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Christians are people of the table, because there we experience the presence of God.

Now, I think this has very special implications for us as women, because this is where we get to set the tone as well as the table for Christian fellowship. Are we doing that well?

I had to confess as the Lord was convicting me that I am often, because I’m very busy and I’m an overachiever and I like my house to be absolutely just so and have a meal that everyone’s like, “That was amazing! Did you taste Dannah’s apple pie?” I mean, I want them to say that at the end! So, I tend to get stressed.

Recently my husband said, “Baby, I’m feeling like I need to tell you something. You need to let go of having a perfect home and a three-course meal every time God calls us to open our house.”

I didn’t really like it that he said that, but that week the Lord showed me a Scripture that pretty straightforwardly agreed with Bob. It’s 1 Peter 4:9; it says this, “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.” 

We are to be showing hospitality to each other, not just passing each other on Sunday mornings in the aisle, and we’re to be doing it without grumbling. I struggle with that.

Let me say this to you. We don’t need flawless houses, we just need faithful hearts. One of the greatest table fellowship gatherings that I’ve ever had was at the home of Erin Davis, my dear friend Erin. Now, Erin has a beautifully decorated home, and at the time she had two toddler boys. They also liked decorating her home—with swords and trucks and balls! So, there was a lot of that kind of decoration around.

After she put the toddlers to bed, she tucked those toys in a basket. Then there were three ingredients in the food she prepared for me: popcorn kernels, salt, and in the blessed name of Jesus, butter. (laughter)

But I want to tell you something. In the crazy of toddler living, with only popcorn, Erin Davis and I had sweet Christian fellowship. I want to say this again: God doesn’t need flawless homes, He needs faithful hearts.

So, I’ve been trying to say, “Thank You, Lord, for the opportunity to make my table a space where people experience Your presence.” I am practicing, because I still get stressed out. But I believe the Lord’s convicted me that that would not be what He has for me.

The early church was grounded in community together. Together is a really important word. Together: with or in proximity to people; in companionship.

I want you to look at verse 44. I want to read this to you. “All who were believers were together.” All who believed were together. They were with each other; they experienced true companionship. Now, this is really important. You know why? Because I believe there are a lot of lonely hearts in our churches every week, lonely hearts feeling isolated, not feeling together. We have to tend to that. We must do something about it.

Isolation in the body of Christ is the medium that Satan works in.

First Peter 5:8 reminds us that the devil “walks around as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” 

Years ago, my family got to go on a safari in South Africa. We were on a mission’s trip. We thought, We’ll never get back to Africa. Let’s see some lions and tigers and bears. Well, I don’t think there were bears or tigers, but you know, we’re not being ecologically accurate here.

As we got in the Range Rover thing with the ranger guy, early on we started following these four lionesses, and they were obviously hunting. You could tell they were hunting. I’d never seen a lion hunt, but I knew that’s what they were doing. They were crouching. They were talking, communicating to each other, and they were looking for something to devour.

Then, suddenly, there was a lone wildebeest, and as confident as if it was already done, he said, “They will eat that wildebeest. They will catch it, and they will eat it.”

I said, “How do you know that?” because I was rooting for the wildebeest.

He said, “Because it’s alone.”

Satan wants you to isolate yourself. He wants you to be alone. He wants to devour you with sin, with selfishness, with temptation. Roaring lions look for lone prey. Don’t be alone; be together!

Maybe you’re saying, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. I am together. I am going to the formal gatherings. I’m going to the table gatherings. But I still feel lonely.”

Let me suggest that true togetherness, true community does not happen when we come together as pious, perfect people. The church is not a country club where we all behave the same. The church is a hospital. The breakthrough to true community comes, the true togetherness comes when we become humble, broken sinners who desperately need Jesus together and aren’t afraid to tell our sins one to another. The church is a hospital for those who understand they are sick and in continued recovery from a very fatal condition.

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You’re listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m Dannah Gresh. I was talking there about the biblical idea of community, and how it should affect our attitudes as we open our homes in hospitality. 

How can your home be a reflection of the goodness of God this Advent season? That’s something to think about.

Maybe Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth will give you more to chew on along those lines, too. Here’s Nancy.

Nancy: Our homes are intended to be places that reflect God, that reflect the gospel. We need a vision for our homes. I think so many people are just doing life without thinking about why and what they’re doing as it relates to their families. Our homes were intended to be visible reflections of God. They were intended to be miniatures of the kingdom of God, the household of God. In fact, the Puritans saw the family as a little church within the church.

This reminds me of something I stumbled onto on the internet the other day. It was so fascinating. There’s a British sculptor named Willard Wigan who makes detailed, microscopic miniatures. His most recent one is a miniature of an entire church. You’ll find this hard to believe, but it really is true. It’s carved out of a single grain of sand that is set inside the eye of a needle. You can’t see it with the naked eye. They have to put it under a microscope. But when you do, it’s an amazing likeness of a whole church in England—detailed.

He’s done other things, like the Statue of Liberty and famous people. He does these microscopic miniatures and people come and line up at these exhibits and displays around the world to look at these through microscopes. This is, as you might imagine, slow, painstaking work. But he said, “I want to show the world that the little things can be the biggest things.”

Your home may seem tiny and insignificant in the whole scheme of things, but it’s intended to be a likeness, a miniature of the family of God, the household of God. Our homes speak. They send a message; they communicate what we really believe.They communicate what we believe more than what we say communicates what we believe.

So the question is, what is your home communicating? What message does it send out about what God is like? Does it manifest His love, His grace, His beauty, and His order? Does it point people to the gospel? Does it help them see their need for a Savior and make them thirsty for Christ?

Let me say, by the way, as we’re talking about home and nurturing, that single women are not excluded from this. All of us have the privilege of making homes places of grace and beauty and order. Your home may be one side of a dorm room. It may be a prison cell. It may be a palace. It may be a double-wide trailer. It may be a hotel room if you live on the road as I did for many years. I’ve often said home is where you sleep at night in the years when I was traveling so much. But we can make homes out of wherever God has placed us, that minister grace and the gospel and the likeness of Christ to those around us.

You see God is the ultimate homemaker. When we make homes, we reflect Him. We are aliens and strangers that God has welcomed into His household of faith. He is preparing a place for us in heaven, which is His eternal home. We will feast with Him there. He will be our host at that meal.

The cross itself, as Christ extended His arms on that cross, wasn’t He issuing in effect an invitation to us to live with Him, to spend eternity in His home? God is a homemaker. So we’re called to be deliberate, to be intentional about building homes that honor and glorify God.

Let me encourage especially you young wives and moms from the beginning to think about how you can make your home a welcoming, gracious, peaceable haven. First, for your husband: welcome him when he comes home from work. Sometimes we make our homes spectacular havens or places of refuge for our guests, but we treat the people inside our homes like dirt. We need to treat the people in our homes as honored, esteemed guests.

You might want to consider having one room or one part of your house that’s ready for company. It’s mostly picked up, and so you can feel comfortable to have people stop by, to bring people in, to welcome people into your home.

We want to establish homes that provide a climate conducive to nurturing life. We hear a lot of talk today about environmental concerns, climate change, pollution, how the environment affects the ability to sustain life. But I don’t think we hear nearly enough about how lives are impacted by the climate inside our homes.

That climate is affected by our attitudes, by the activities that take place in our homes and by the general atmosphere of our homes. A climate conducive to nurturing life would be a climate of order, peace, grace, unconditional love, kindness, truth, a home where we experience the reality and the presence of Christ. Where we talk about Christ. Where we talk about His Word.

We talk about the gospel with our children. Are you "gospelizing" your children? I don’t know if that’s a word, but it is now. Are you declaring the gospel to them? Or do you wait until they get to Sunday school or to their youth group and say they’ll evangelize them there? Your children need to hear you talking about the things of God as a way of life.

A home that is conducive to nurturing life is a home that is Christ-centered, it’s Word saturated. Everything relates to Him. Now to a large extent, we as women set the climate in our homes. We’re the thermostats, the ones who set the temperature. We determine what the temperature is like.

So I have to ask, what is the climate like in your home? What was the temperature when you left home today? Is it a climate that is conducive to nurturing life or does it stifle and kill life?

Dannah: Ah, some good questions there from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. We need good climate control in our homes!

That’s true all year round, of course, but it certainly includes this time of year, when there’s more hustle and bustle, more music playing, more guests coming and going. 

Hey, I wanted to let you know about our upcoming #GivingTuesday campaign. We’re trusting the Lord to raise a total of $230,000 this Monday and Tuesday. We’re planning to use that money to fund translation of Revive Our Hearts programming into both Vietnamese and Khmer, the language spoken in Cambodia. So please be praying about how much God would have you give, and then contact us this Monday or Tuesday, December 2 and 3, with your donation. Help us spread the message of freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ to women in southeast Asia!

Our website is ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend. You can review today’s program there, and you’ll find links to more of what you heard on the program today. 

Next week, we’ll take a closer look at Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus. I think we can learn a lot from her life and her response to God’s will for her life. 

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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