The Hospitable Leader DevotionalSample

It’s quite common to hear someone say, “You can be anything you want to be!” But to be sure, that’s not what the Bible says! Certainly, we should encourage people to chase after big dreams, inasmuch as those dreams are within God’s destined area for us.

Today’s passage, addressing our God-given destinies, comes from the apostle Paul encouraging the local church to understand their place in God’s mission. Paul was writing to a church that was misusing certain spiritual gifts, and they seemed to have been inordinately privileging certain gifts over others. 

See, once Christ left the earth after his resurrection appearances, he sent his spirit, the Holy Spirit, to indwell us and empower us to be the bodily manifestation of Christ’s work in this world. By collectively uniting our unique gifts, we create the totality of the “Body of Christ,” still accomplishing his mission of bringing the kingdom of God to earth.

But as the Scripture says, God is the one who puts the body together. We certainly don’t put the body together, as each of us are assigned stations appropriate to our gifts. As Terry Smith expands on in The Hospitable Leader, though each of us has a particular area given to us by God, within that area we have limitless possibility. We can become the best and do the most within our assigned sphere. Our goal, then, is to find what our place is, or our Area of Destiny, and then do the best we can there. This allows us to graft into the larger “body” and accomplish God’s tasks for us.

As leaders, we are also responsible to help those in our spheres of influence find their Areas of Destiny. Once they do, they will be both personally fulfilled (which is our role as good shepherds, hospitable leaders), and they will function better in the area that you are leading them. By seeking God’s plan for every individual in your sphere, you can serve the larger mission of God in the world.