The Hospitable Leader DevotionalSample

Sometimes we may have difficulty creating environments of home for others to enter into because we don’t feel at home ourselves. It’s hard to pour out your life serving others if you feel dilapidated and broken down yourself. This is a common experience for high-capacity dreamers who spend countless hours committed to their calling. When we feel called by Scripture to create welcoming environments that feel like home for those who follow us, we feel more stressed than excited, for how can we make a home for others when we don’t feel at home ourselves? The reality is that only when we feel at home can we truly lead others to feel at home. But how do we get to a place of feeling at home? Doesn’t that take more work than it’s worth?

In John 14, Jesus beautifully describes how we can feel at home, and how it’s not by our work, but by Christ’s work. Before Jesus will be sacrificed on the cross, he tells his disciples that he is going to make a place for them in his Father’s house, and that there is plenty of room for them there. Once he prepares the room, he will come back and bring them there so that they know the way. And when they ask about the way, he says that he is the way. Though many of us may take this as Jesus making a room for us in the future, perhaps even in eternity after death, that’s not the sole intent of this passage. Yes, Christ is preparing a room for us after we die, but he’s offering the room for us now as well, and then on into eternity. Christ says that he will ask the Father to send another “Helper,” or the Holy Spirit, that will indwell us, allowing us to be in Christ, and Christ in us, helping us to remember all that Jesus has done and said, and to bring peace into our lives. This is the “room,” the “home,” that Christ has made up for us and has prepared for us to live in.

The key is to remember that it’s Christ who will take us to that place. It is by his work that we enter the house of God, and when we follow him in all of his ways, we are enabled to do even “greater works” than Jesus! When you are feeling like you don’t know how to be a hospitable leader, when you don’t know how to create a “home” because you aren’t at “home” yourself, remember that it’s not your work that will lead you home—it’s Christ’s work and his Holy Spirit in you. So we shouldn’t feel the pressure to become hospitable leaders on our own—we should put our faith in Christ and do the work to follow him (and his yoke is easy and his burden is light!). His Spirit and teaching will help you develop into the leader you’re meant to be.